Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Índice da Obra Atual Anterior: Seção VI Seguitne: Seção VIII
The correspondence in the terms
which mark the times are no less remarkable than those in the dates. Here is Mr.
Goschen, just returned from
The proposition for a new
translation of the Bible was vehemently opposed by one whose name has long been
a synonym for moral rectitude combined with Christian benevolence; but who, as
if content with following his intuition so far in one direction, has refrained
from tracking it in any other. Hence he has remained true to the orthodoxies in
respect of the religion of blood, and failed therefore to find the same
illumination in his other regions that he had found in his moral. By reason of
the same
(p. 388)
limitation he was found on the side of those
who objected to the n e w translation of the Bible: “So many good clergymen and
others,” he said, “would be deprived of their favourite texts!” Yes, with all h
is moral excellence, so dull were Lord Shaftesbury’s intellectual perceptions,
that even while believing firmly in the inspiration and infallibility of the
Scriptures, he actually thought that man had by his blunders of translation
produced something better than the inspiration of the Divine Spirit. This is
really a typical instance of the divorce between the m ale and female elements
of the intellectual dualism of man, on which I am enlarging.
Glancing round in search of
“signs,” I am reminded of one that may not unfairly be included in the category,
though at the time of its occurrence it struck me as a wild extravagance. It
carne, however, through a typical man; and I am learning to believe that
whatever occurs in connexion with a typical man, is in some way itself a type. I
had just been hearing Dr. Richardson deliver his famous lecture on his projected City of
(p. 389)
under the paralysing touch of a devitalised
Science the Life had disappeared; and Hygiea stood forth, no longer the radiant
goddess of divinest Health, but the veriest dead machine and waxwork that ever
failed to find a sensation wherewith to respond to the tormentor’s art. Before
the finish my feeling became one of positive pain. Science had become all to us,
and all that science could do was limited to the bettering of our physical
conditions. Our moral and spiritual nature was wholly omitted; while for our
animal brethren there was to be no amelioration, save only that they were to
pass through a narcotised chamber on their way to the slaughter-house.
Dismal indeed, I thought, the
prospect for the world’s future, if the regime of blood and the slaughter of the
innocent, and the inevitable hardening of the hearts of a large class of our
fellow-citizens, and our general degeneration in constitution and character
through the use of an unsuitable diet, are to continue for ever.
I expressed to the lecturer
afterwards my wish that he had banished the shambles and the butcher together
with the liquor-shop and the publican; for that I knew that improper diet was at
the root of our addiction to stimulating drink; our
(p. 390)
food being such that we cannot vitalise it
without artificial aid. He said that he had written a passage precisely to that
purport, but had not inserted it because he feared to tread upon too many feet
at once. He “should not be surprised, however, to find
(p. 391)
cannot look steadily in the face the new
prodigy, so lately an infant of days, so soon to become their destroyer and
supplanter.
Meditating on this incident, I
find another signification in it. For I find in it an evidence that even the
soul of the vivisector is not proof against salvation. With all the good work he
has done, Dr. Richardson has been, maybe still is, one of the most inveterate
tormentors in England of his animal brethren; and yet he has been suffered to
obtain an intuition that has made him one of the most potent antagonists of the
devil of drink. Let him receive this from me: – That he has done so much has
been due, not to his violation of all the laws at once of true science and true
morality, but in spite of that violation. If he has genius, it is in so far as
he has sympathy. When the veil that has hitherto been cast over his spiritual
eyes shall be with-drawn, and the divorce subsisting between the two halves of
his nature shall be abolished; and when he shall have thoroughly purged himself
in principle and practice, mind and body, from the taint of innocent blood; –
then shall his genius shine out in all its full lustre, to be a glory to himself
and a blessing to the land. But he will renounce his Hygiea.
The notion that because a thing proceeds from
(p. 392)
some source transcending sense, it should
therefore on manifesting itself in fact appear full-grown and perfect, is one
which finds no support from the analogies of Nature. Had the Creator wished
everything to be as perfect as Himself, He would . have remained content with
Himself, and refrained from creation. We have in this truth the condemnation of
the doctrine, so much insisted on in the pulpit and confessional, of what is
called the “exceeding sinfulness of sin.” The millions of souls who have been
plunged into woe unutterable by the practice of representing the Deity as
damning the sinner equally with the sin, has been the most fruitful of all
causes of unbelief. The human consciousness is naturally too-well disposed
towards its Divine Parent to treat as other than a libel the endeavours of
orthodoxy to blacken the Divine character. It is only consistent with the
general principle of orthodoxy to substitute the perfection of a ready-made
manufacture, for that of development by gradual spontaneous growth. Hence it
fails, alike in religion and in science, to recognise as good in itself whatever
indicates vitality, and as bad whatever indicates morbidity. The first essential
of existence is the force called life. That present, all the rest may come.
Without
(p. 393)
it, and the individual torpid, listless, and
indifferent, the case is hopeless. On every plane of Nature does this
correspondence hold good.
The contempt, for instance, with
which the manifestations of what is known as “spiritism” have been received by
many persons generally reputed to be scientific, has been due to causes of this
kind. It is not that the forces in action are themselves contemptible, but that
modern modes of life and thought are unsuited to the operation of those forces
in us. Our structure has become too coarse, our blood too impure, our whole
being too crass and dense, for those finer influences which are around us to
enter into communion with us. Their music is played to deaf ears; their visions
are spread before blind eyes. Our nostrils cannot detect the sweet odours of the
gardens of the spirit, nor our palates detect the exquisite flavours of its pure
suggestions. Degenerated in our mental as in our spiritual perceptions, we are,
if amenable at all to the “spirits,” amenable only to those which, by belonging
to the lower strata of their own spheres, approach nearest to our own level.
That the manifestations hitherto for the most part obtained are of a low
character, is thus but a proof, not that they are wholly a delusion or a folly,
(p. 394)
but that we ourselves are incapable of
anything higher. If the movement be real, and represent a design ou the part of
higher powers to interfere more actively in human affairs, it was absolutely
necessary that those first commissioned to act as pioneers to cut a road through
the dense thickets of man’s degenerated spiritual nature, should belong to the
lowest of the rank and file of the army of the skies. But as for determining the
character of “spiritism” by the phenomena in which it presents itself, either on
its first appearance or through rudimentary intelligences, that would be as
absurd as to judge either religion or science by their corresponding initial
manifestations.
Orthodox science is characterised
by at least three defects, of which any one is fatal to its pretensions. It
assumes, in the first place, that it knows in advance of experience both what
are the limits of natural fact, and what are the limits of the natural
faculties, whereby fact is to be judged; and it assumes moreover that there are
no facts which are not expressible in terms belonging to a single plane of the
consciousness. That is, in short, it assumes the reality of all that is
perceived by the senses on a single plane, namely, the physical; and it attempts
to explain,
(p. 395)
in terms derived from that plane, phenomena
which appertain to other planes; or failing to find such explanation, within
such limits, it rejects in a mass, as the product of fraud or credulity, all
phenomena which refuse so to be included.
There is yet another fatal defect
in the method of the class to which I am referring. They are told by those who
claim to know, that it is necessary, in order to come into contact with
spiritual phenomena, that the inquirer subject himself to such discipline of
mind and body as may tend to develop a finer and more subtle set of faculties
than are considered necessary for the ordinary purposes of existence; that a
regime must be pursued which will have the effect, for instance, of
subordinating the outer senses to the inner, and, by clearing the system of the
grosser elements by which it ordinarily is obstructed, setting the perceptive
and receptive faculties free from any obstructive influences, as that, for
instance, of an actively antagonistic will.
It would naturally be thought that
the enormous importance of the subject would have sufficed to call forth a
number of inquirers sufficiently ardent on behalf of truth to be willing at some
cost to try how far such a process of self-purification really conduces to the
declared
(p. 396)
end. But so far from this being the case, the
ranks of orthodox science have not produced a single candidate who has submitted
to the discipline which, through the entire course of human history, has
invariably and universally been declared to be indispensable to success in this
particular quest; while it has only to lift up its finger for a host of ruffians
with knife and fire, and every conceivable implement of torture, to rush upon
their defenceless fellow-animals. And then, renouncing no single indulgence, but
reeking with innocent blood, Science dares to boast of its humility and
self-sacrifice!
The truth is, that science has
sunk to that depth of subserviency to the spirit of sacerdotalism, that it
steadily sets its face against any kind of investigation that might compel it to
acknowledge the reality of what is called the Spiritual World. Possessed by the
foregone conclusion that nothing exists save that which can be submitted to
tests which are merely mechanical or chemical, it declines to tolerate the
notion of a
being that is not mere seeming. Hence it exhibits its affinity
with the essential principle of religious orthodoxy by entering the temple of
Nature, not as a pure student and humble worshipper, to comprehend as far as it
may the mysteries it finds there, and to seek honestly for their signification;
(p. 397)
but to occupy itself with the
decorations, the vestments, or the ritual, while wholly as indifferent to and
ignorant of any meaning as if the service were in an unknown tongue. In short,
the attitude of the orthodox scientist in regard to the most profound mysteries
with which he deals, those of life and health, is that of one who should set
himself to dissect a live coal in order to ascertain the nature and source of
its heat. It is under a delusion exactly of this nature that his worst
atrocities are perpetrated. And it is because I perceive that, while its
absurdities have now culminated so that, though they continue for a short space
to repeat themselves, they cannot possibly reach a higher pitch, that I have
reckoned the present condition of science among the most hopeful of the signs of
the times. We English are, in our accustomed intellectual non-receptivity, apt
to let a stench or other nuisance get to a great height before we send notice
thereof to the sanitary inspector. The poisonous effluvium of scientific
orthodoxy has now got to that pitch that, if the officials do not very soon send
the dust-cart, they will have to send the dead-cart also, so seriously menaced
is the moral health of the nation.
The consciousness that I am,
Sisyphus-like, rolling uphill a mighty stone which the
(p. 398)
orthodoxies will be too ready to hurl back on
me, induces me to welcome every worthy ally who will come to the help of the
Ideal against the Sensual. There is no antidote to false knowledge so potent as
true feeling. Hence I trust that I shall not be regarded as quitting my banks
and overflowing too discursively, if I express the satisfaction with which I
have learnt that one of our most genuine singers has in this crisis proved
faithful to his intuition, and hostile to the orthodoxies. He is one of whose
genius I have long been watching the development, in full confidence that if
only he could see his way to “living the life,” he would almost at one bound
spring from the depths of that lower Pantheism of which he has been so exquisite
a bard, to that higher Pantheism where, in visions of a real ideal far
surpassing his wildest imaginings, he would lose his outer and false self, only
to find his inner and true self, in turn to lose and find this in the universal
self of all existence. If an Epicurus could, as sings the sweetest of Latin
minstrels, on returning from beyond the flaming bounds of space, tell us all the
mysteries of the existence which mortals share with the – no, not gods – neither
he nor Epicurus believed in them: the old Orthodoxist made his journey for
nought: we will not quote him. But let a Swinburne
(p. 399)
light the torch of his muse at the central
sun itself of the universe, and the world will be witched with a music of which
it has not yet heard the like. No “Earthly Paradise,” then, will men deem that
wherein the “Love is enough” that is but of the lower senses.
The air has long been full of
unrecognised prophecies; not the least notable of these is to be found in a book
which appeared some five years ago, only to be vilified. That poor Win-woode
Reade was a true seer in spite of many obstructions, will yet be recognised when
his “Martyrdom of Man” shall find audience sufficiently vitalised to be capable
of appreciating its many excellent points.
We had a poet, not so many years
ago, who was in his day a herald in advance of the approaching Woman’s Year. Is
no lay forthcoming from him who so sweetly sang “The Angel in the House,” to
celebrate the advent of the Angel in the Race? Methinks he was one who, if still
living and growing, might discern some new hope for man in the breaking light of
the East, whence always cometh wisdom.
Among books announced is one whose
title would seem to indicate that ray discovery of the reality and personality
of the National Soul of England had found a sharer. Can it be that the
(p.400)
reverend author of “Asylum Christi” has also
discovered in
Today word comes telling of a new
prosepoem, entitled “The Shadow of the Sword.” Something whispers to me that the
real significance of the book is rather “The Shadow of the Cross.” True, it may
be by the sword that the Cross is to work its due Nemesis on Moslemdom; yet the
sword shall, from being a sword, soon be peace. For in the coming regeneration
the old rule will be reversed; and the pall of blood being with-drawn, Christ
and Mahomet will find that they are no longer enemies, but cousins and brethren.
And so shall the shadow of Cross and of sword blend and combine, and be to the
nations of the East, including those afflicted ones by whose cruel wrongs the
camel’s back has at length been broken, as the shadow neither of hostile sword
nor bloody Cross, but of “a great rock in a weary land.” For of the coming
trouble we may surely predicate that the issue will be that – “The wolf and the lamb shall
feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock; and dust shall be
the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain,
saith the Lord.”
(p. 401)
In view of the nature of the dogma
of which the Regeneration will be the practical promulgation, it is interesting
to note the change that has come over the appointments by which of late
(p. 402)
with the vitality that will enable it to live
unless it be the offspring of both elements of the Divine Existence, – child of
the heart as well as of the head.
Some seven years ago I published a
tale called “Higher Law,” which, being designed to promote the restoration of
that true marriage of inward affinity which alone will displace the existing
adulteries of outward convenience, was duly execrated by the organs of the
orthodox atheisms. In this tale I described in relation to the lower planes of
the earth’s consciousness, a phenomenon which seems to me to be now in process
of reproduction on the higher. The scene was a tropical forest. “The forest,” my
hero was described as having learnt, “always woke before the dawn. And now he
could catch the sound as of birds turning in their feathery beds on the branches
above him, and of unseen insects beginning to tune betimes their shrill little
whistles; even the leaves stirred as they had not stirred all the night; and
soon a sound as of a general but subdued rustle pervaded the air, showing that
creation felt the coming of its lord, the Sun, and was stirred in its sleep,
even before his approach revealed itself to the senses of the watcher.”
(p. 403)
While the two elements of the
Divine Existence so ruthlessly separated by the dragon of orthodoxy, are thus
manifesting by indubitable signs that the marriage indicated by their
affinities, but so long deferred of its full consummation, is approaching, how
is it with those who are the sworn enemies of the union of knowledge and love?
One indication, small in stature but vast in significance, has just come to me –
and again it is the woman, the still unredeemed and hysterical Magdalen, that is
the aggressor. After making a show of generosity in admitting women to
professional honours in her schools – a concession which by me has always been
interpreted as granted to vanity and contempt rather than to justice or chivalry
–
(p. 404)
when the cruel harpies of a vivisecting
orthodoxy thus “in their little nests agree.” Surely the very lowest stratum of
the house of Satan at last is divided against itself!
Is there no sign from the “land of
saints,” dear Old Ireland, whose sons are so vivacious, and whose daughters are
so bewitching and tender? Woman of women, most feminine of the feminine Celts,
truest of all the worshippers of the Woman, whose prototype is really the
Madonna, and by no means the Magdalen, even repentant; – has Ireland no sign
whereby we may know that she scents the coming regeneration of which the mark
will be the exaltation of her own sex to an equal place with man? Let us look.
She has just welcomed a new Viceroy, a descendant of the famous Duke and the
notable Sarah. A good, conscientious man, as men go. But I should like to be
assured that his object in going to
(p. 405)
the time was at least new to me. It was this:
– If the world had been absolutely perfect, men might have given it credit for
being self-existent, and so have denied God. It was from the very imperfection
of the work that we were to infer the perfection of the Worker. The interval has
shown that if such were the purpose of the world’s defects, that purpose has
defeated itself. It is because men find the world so bad that, so far from
acknowledging God therefore, they have come to deny Him altogether. Well, that
at least is a tribute to the character of God.
The remark, however, revealed a
tendency to thought, and in so far was a revolt against orthodoxy. It implied
moreover an appreciation of the truth which our American cousins are at length
finding themselves compelled to recognise. This is the truth that no machine
whatever, whether of a world or of a State, however perfect its construction,
can work itself. It must have a living spirit infused into it. Let us look
elsewhere for
(p. 406)
ceased to practise vivisection. Yes, while
masculine, slow, cold-blooded, Protestant, Calvinist Scotland can produce some
of the cruellest specimens of the torturer to be found anywhere, and heap insult
on women who seek admission to her schools, – feminine, warm-hearted, impulsive,
Catholic, Madonna-worshipping Ireland, fair noon to England’s sun, banishes the
new Inquisition in disguise, and recognises the claim of woman to an equal place
beside her lord be the throne at once of humanity and Deity.
One more welcome sign, by no means
to be omitted, of what may be expected from woman when she enters on the full
enjoyment at once of her rights and her duties. There is, of recent
establishment, in
(p. 407)
what Orthodoxy meant when it renounced the
most ancient andessential of the world’s trinities, that of the man, the woman,
and the child; and recognising that which represented the man only in his
threefold function of father, son, and husband, practically relegated to
oblivion and contempt the woman in her equally indispensable triune function of
mother, daughter, and spouse? And while the whole feminine trinity of the Divine
Existence, the one whose culture is absolutely essential to the welfare of
humanity, is left out of recognition, the Eastern and Anglican orthodoxies are
absorbed in a contention over a single microscopic item in the nature of the
trinity of the male only!
It is still with our leader in the
Regeneration that we are concerned. For the man who is to lead us thither must
first be our pilot through the intervening storm. I have said that circumstances
point to Mr. Gladstone as the Paul of the New Dispensation. I say now that he
will be both its Paul and its Moses, and shall be more than either Paul or
Moses.
(p. 408)
regeneration was to be found. But they knew
not in what direction that land lay, Hence it is that they have wandered so many
years in “the wilderness of Sin.” Hence it is that they have constantly been
setting up tents and pulling them down again, as knowing that they had no
abiding city where they were; and always casting wistful eyes in what they
fancied to be the direction of the promised good, even the real ideal which they
sought in vain to translate into phenomenal fact. Surely the forty years of
(p. 409)
Why was it that Moses might not
enter into the full enjoyment of the promised inheritance? It was because he was
for once unfaithful to the intuition by his faithfulness to which he had
accomplished all his mighty works. In a moment of impatience and distrust he
lost his faith in the power of the Word, and had recourse to force. The people
were perishing for lack of the waters of life; and Moses was commanded to speak
to the rock in the heart of which those waters were sealed up. In his impatience
at the popular importunity he disobeyed the Divine command, and instead of
speaking to the rock, he twice with violence struck it. True, the waters gushed
out all the same, and the people were saved; but the leader, who had been
unfaithful to his intuition – in that he had distrusted the efficacy of the free
word – forfeited thereby the full fruition of his labours, and died on Pisgah,
in full gaze of the promised land.
Let us now endeavour to fathom the
spiritual significance of the parallel. Moses is described in our version as
“the meekest of men.” Does the description strike us as characteristic either of
him who struck the rock in the desert? or of
(p. 410)
him who breathed out threatenings and
slaughter against the early Christians? or of him who in words has surpassed the
violence of both in his denunciations of Pope and Turk, and in deeds has been
the ruthless feller of some of the oldest and noblest trees of the garden of
England; and who, if not timely arrested, will yet fell trees that are still
nobler and more essential to the perfection of the national organism of
England’s national soul? Meek is not the term intended to express the qualities
indicated i n such acts. What was meant by the meekness of Moses was precisely
that quality by virtue of which he, and Paul, and Mr. Gladstone have done all
the good they have ever done. It meant their enduring faithfulness to their own
intuition, and contempt for mere worldly reason and expediency. They were “meek”
in that they were faithful to the Divine vision of the ideal, and the still
small voice of conscience in their own souls, so far as that vision and that
voice could make themselves manifest through the encumbering organism. No doubt,
if we could see the details of the life of Muses, we should find that he had
been led into his impatience through the violation of some one of his own
sanitary regulations; probably by partaking
(p. 411)
of the flesh of animals, and perhaps of some
stimulant afterwards; for it is only to an indigestible and unsuitable diet that
drunkenness is due, as we shall all be taught in the Regeneration, when our
prophets shall prophesy truly.
The prohibition of blood by Moses
was no other than an absolute prohibition of all animal food. The Jew of the Law
could no more take his “pound of flesh” without the fatal drop of blood, than
could the Jew of Venice. Paul, as we know, was a confirmed invalid. And there
are few of us who have not ample experiences of our own which may show us in
what consisted “the thorn in the flesh,” by which he so severely suffered. In
which of all the people we know do we observe the greatest amount of obstinacy,
selfish-ness, and indifference to the welfare of those with whom they are
associated? the greatest inaccessibility to those softer and finer influences of
the spirit, from the exercise of which springs all that is most exquisitely
delicious in life? And who are they who realise for us with most startling
distinctness the description which Paul gives of himself, as one in whom two
wills seem to be constantly striving against each other for the mastery, so that
he was compelled to make the humiliating confession – “l know that in me
(p. 412)
– that is, in my flesh – dwelleth no good
thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I
find not. For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not,
that I do”? It is impossible for one who had had practical experience in the
matter to read the whole of that passage with ou t seeing, with absolute
certainty, that Paul was simply a martyr to a chronic indigestion in body and
mind, through the use of a diet unsuited to his structure. He could “delight in
the Law of God after the inward man.” His intuitions thus far were sound and
true. But they could not penetrate and vitalise his whole being, because he had
failed to follow them sufficiently far, and this in respect of the strictest
injunctions of his two lawgivers, Moses and Christ. For, blind to the practical
meaning of their whole teaching in word and spirit, he had accepted the doctrine
of vicarious atonement, and also fed upon the flesh of his brethren the animals
who, like himself, were vitalised by the national soul of
(p. 413)
soul was he free from the fatal drop of
blood. He was so far spiritually vitalised as to be able to take a leading part
in the extension of the Christian edifice; but he could not rise to the highest
conception of perfection, either in his own person or in his work. And so he
himself remained an invalid, and deficient in physical vitality to the end of
his days; and his Christianity, in consequence, remained but an imperfect
expression of the soul that had found its full expression of being in Christ,
and sought to find its full expression of doing in Paul. For that soul was not
an exclusively male or female soul. It was a human soul; and only in virtue of
its being a human soul was it a soul wholly divine. For, as we have seen,
duality is as necessary to a perfect existence as unity and trinity. And hence
it came that through the defective mode of life, and consequently the defective
constitution and vitalisation of him who was to be the chief agent in
accomplishing the extension and consolidation of the edifice of Christianity,
only the male half of the soul of its Founder found expression; and Christendom,
following the halting utterances of Paul in regard to the function of woman,
remained what it has been to this day, – the worship of a man and a ministry of
blood,
(p. 414)
instead of that of the spirit and a ministry
of life. Its religion thus really represented the suppression of that element in
the Divine Existence, which in humanity is represented by woman. so that instead
of at once accomplishing the whole idea of Christ, and inaugurating the equal
reign upon earth of the perfect humanity and perfect Deity, by according an
equal place to the masculine and feminine integrations into which the universe
reveals the Divine Absolute as differentiating itself, the Soul of Israel and of
Humanity – which had found in Christ a perfect medium for the full expression of
itself – failed to find such a medium in its chief exponent to the Gentile
world.
Thus fatal were the results of
that rupture between Paul and the other Apostles that led him to keep himself
aloof from intercourse with them, and to trust entirely – he an invalid, and at
times an hypochondriac – to his own intuition. Neither the duality, nor its
necessary sequence, the trinity of the perfect humanity, had been concealed from
them. The two sides of the Divine Existence had exhibited itself in the two
chief Apostles, Peter and John, who represented respectively energy and love. And in the association with
these at the transfiguration, of James
(p. 415)
as the representative of conduct, the whole idea of the Trinity was
shadowed forth. For energy, love, and conduct, united in humanity as in Deity,
are no other than the three Persons in one God, whom under their names Truth,
Beauty, and Goodness, we were wont to adore in the days when we were able to
recognise those divinities. It was through an acceptance of the Christianity of
Paul only and of Peter, and not that also of John and James; it was through an
acceptance of the Man in it, and not of the Woman and Child; of the force, but
not the love and Works, that we failed to accept Christ wholly, and so have
“made shipwreck of our salvation.” And hence comes that it has been left for us
to accomplish in our day that which Christ did and was wholly, but which Paul
did and was only in part. Paul saw that there was a hitch somewhere, but he
could not put his finger on it. He thought it was in the Jewish nature, when it
was in himself, in his own mode of living, that the fault lay. It was this
thought that prompted his exclamation, “Lo! we turn to the Gentiles.” He had
given
(p. 416)
law. The law had inculcated purity, and had
recognised the intuitions of woman. For Miriam was to the physical Israel what
Mary was to the spiritual, – the Mother of God in the Man. Reference to the
narrative of the finding of Moses will disclose to the intelligent the
significance of the function assigned to her. She was the “bitter sea” of the
infancy of
The turning of Paul to the
Gentiles was the shifting of the national soul of
(p. 417)
intending to express his recognition of the
dualism of Christ’s character, but wholly insensible to the humorous aspect of
his own words, say that he was sure “Christ must have been a middle-sex man.” To
any reader who may deem it necessary to take exception to this anecdote, I would
say, Be not so captious. The Church that is filled with hope, faith, and charity
may have its grotesque gurgoyle on the wall outside. Perfect love casteth out
fear; even playful banter is at once a token and minister of affection. I once
heard a poor wife, whose domestic relations were inconsistent with vivacity,
exclaim, when witnessing a violent altercation between another couple, “Oh, how
I envy them! How well they must love each other when they can afford to quarrel
so!”
A true Christ and no sense of
humour! It is true that orthodox commentators tell us He never laughed. But we
are not bound to believe them against our own intuitions. For this we do know:
the man who knows not how to laugh with others knows not how to weep for others,
To say that Christ never laughed is to say He never sympathised. We have to get
rid of all these notions now that we know He was God by virtue of his being
wholly man. We have to
(p. 418)
recover the true life . Those we possess have
been shorn and distorted for ends other than those of truth.
The time is now ripe for the idea
of Christ to find its full expression in the heart and mind and life of
Now at length appears the full
significance of the contest that is now raging as it never before raged. Now
does it appear that that contest is a war to the knife between the soul and the
body of England, as represented respectively on the one side by its “screaming
women” and “imbecile men” – to use the phrase of – no, I will leave him a place
for repentance, and keep his
(p. 419)
name to myself – and on the other side, by
its dominant orthodoxies. It is between those who have had an intuition of the
national soul as constituting an actual living entity, vitalising the national
soil, and infusing into every particle of that soil the life which has taken
form, upon it, in its many children of whatever grade of development; and those
who have denied the soul, denied it even while preaching about it to all intents
and appearances with sincerity in the pulpits of our national churches. It is
the contest between a living energising God, and a world made m his own image,
on one side; arid on the other, the powers of the darkness of absolute negation.
“Behold,” once more, “how great a matter a little fire kindleth.” The conflict
which commenced in the physiological laboratory over the souls of our animal s,
and in the political arena, over the suffrage of our women, and in the hospital,
over their admission as medical students, and a score of other instances, has
grown into the contest on which we are now entering with
(p. 420)
and Satan, for the possession of man. In this
present crisis, the mode which now looms so appallingly before us,
And inasmuch as “By their fruits
shall ye know them;” and “A man is known by his friends;” and “Birds of a
feather flock together;” and “Where the carcass is there will the vultures be
gathered together;” so by their crowding to the side of Russia and Satan do the
orthodoxies of England manifest their true parentage.
My readers may be thinking it
would be well to cut up this section of my book into several, instead of putting
so much in one. They who can think thus have not yet comprehended the meaning of
the number thirteen; have not remembered that, when redeemed, it
is the perfect number, comprising all perfection possible in the universe of
phenomenal existence. Why then seek to curtail the section that not only bears
its name, but actually constitutes its qualitative and quantitative
representation? No; we are entering on the true Christian year, the largest and
fullest of the cycles of man’s spiritual creation, and
(p. 421)
we need not fear making it too long or too
full here.
For the great conflict before her
Is it quite certain that we
understand the meaning of the Reformation which we are only now about to
complete? It is absolutely necessary that we should understand it; for the
experiences we gained therein are of vital importance to us now. For what did we
engage in the “Reformation? Was it for the sake of pure religion and space for
free spiritual development? We call it these, but there was a more carnal
element in it that won the principal share of our homage. The Gods of whom the
Reformation represented the worship were not the great Gods, proceeding
immediately from the Supreme himself, of Love and Knowledge. They were the Gods
of Liberty and Justice, – offspring, it is true, of the others, but of a second
generation. And it was they with whose worship we were so well content that we
never
(p. 422)
thought of rising from the altars we had
reared to them in the national temples of our free Legislature, and of our
courts of true justice; but there we remained and worshipped with our whole
souls, suffering no man to come between us and these Gods to keep us from them,
but all the while leaving the service of the greater Gods, Knowledge and Love,
to the care of the very crew of orthodox sacerdotalists who had already
emasculated Christ and his Gospel even as they had emasculated themselves; and
who, in the interests of their order, were determined to do the same by us. And
so it came that instead of the Reformation being a true union of love and
knowledge on the spiritual and highest plane of our national consciousness, and
by their wise and sympathetic co-operation producing the fruits of the pure
spirit of our parent Christ, it represented the divorce and expulsion of this
perfect humanity from the Garden of Eden, our true National Church; and the
production, as theirs, of that supposititious and far from winning child, which
we know under that most odious of the names of all the Isms, because it
represents not a marriage but a divorce, and is therefore, while odious, a true
symbol, – Nonconformism.
For just as the
Reformation represented the
(p. 423)
general divestment by us of the encumbrances
which we found operating to our disadvantage in the assertion of our freedom
against Rome, so did Non-conformism represent a further similar divestment by
the most highly vitalised portion of us of yet other encumbrances which they
found a hindrance to them in the assertion of their freedom from much that, as a
people, we had retained from Rome. Both movements alike represented a stripping
for a fight or for a race. And the qualities they called into play were those
only of the gladiator and the athlete. Had the movements possessed any
sufficient elements of permanency, the contest would have found its conclusion,
and the winners would have dressed themselves in their best for the banquet of
triumph and joy to follow. But as it was, neither won, for the fight was never
finished, and neither could afford to put his armour off and settle himself down
to the work of construction on new lines. And so it has come that Protestantism
and Nonconformism are still fighting men, and their work is purely
male work, in which the sweetness and
light of the womanly element in existence, and therefore in Christ, has found no
place.
Both, of course, achieved a great
and necessary task. But partly through not knowing quite
(p. 424)
what it was for which they ought to be
contending, and partly through their getting, when once warm, too fond of
fighting for fighting sake, they have thought all was done when they rendered
practical homage to the Gods, Freedom and Justice; and have never given a
thought to the greater Gods, Knowledge and Love, the proper presiding deities of
the chief national temple. And as always happens when we fail to fix our eyes on
the very highest that we can discern, the neglect of the greater Gods vitiated
our worship of the lesser, until it has come that we have lost our sense both of
freedom and of justice, simply because we left it to priests to do our
worship-ping of love and knowledge for us, and left it therefore’ to be done in
such a worse than slovenly, a treacherous, fashion, that the Gods in disgust
have taken their flight in a body from us, and left us at the mercy of the
powers of darkness, who, at the express invitation of our own orthodoxies, are
now fast approaching to overwhelm us.
Is it any wonder that the soul of
(p. 425)
not a prophet in all the land to play the
part of a true Cassandra, save only one who, dimly perceiving the danger, can
but indicate it in “enigmas” to which he can by no means supply the answer?
Both the Christianity of
Christendom and that of the Reformation failed to achieve their full perfection
through the failure of their initiators to sink self and prejudice. Paul and the
Reformers alike failed through their retention of the sanguinary doctrines of
sacerdotalism. The religion they sought to establish was dual, and that which
they did establish was single. The religion of Christ exalted the feminine to an
equal place with the masculine qualities of existence; and Paul and the
Reformation exalted the masculine only. The religion of Christ was a religion of
the intuitions and of salvation by a. life of love. The religion of Paul and the
Reformation was a religion of tradition and authority, and of salvation by the
death of another. Each alike constituted a repudiation of the Divine dualism;
each was in so far but a mode of that blasphemy against every sound principle of
existence which, as we have seen, has ever been the animating principle of
orthodoxy since
(p. 426)
on, that fatal divorce between the two halves
of the Divine nature in which the combination was essential to the due
manifestation of that nature, first in the plenitude of its own trinity, and
secondly, as humanity. The serpent of orthodoxy must have laughed aloud at the
spectacle of a Christendom adoring the Trinity from which the previous stage of
the duality had been omitted. It was nothing else than to seek to exalt the
family with the wife, mother, and daughter left out. The worship of existence in
the Divine nature, and the attempt to reproduce the true image of God in man,
from being a solemnity of the profoundest import was converted into a farce. The
Trinity itself was made an impossibility. It is through this acquiescence in the
limitations of Paul and the Reformation in respect of the sacerdotal principle
of salvation by blood, whether for soul or body, and the repudiation of the
feminine element, that Mr. Gladstone is at present disqualified for the task
that the soul of England requires of him.
Yet who can read the piteous
complaints of Paul without perceiving that it was nothing but a limitation of
perception, physical as well as spiritual, that withheld him from completing his
development? so little did he comprehend the
(p. 427)
perfection of God’s physical creation, that
he was ever dealing reproaches against what he was forced to acknowledge was
intended to be a temple of the Holy Spirit, on the ground of his own ill-health.
Hence the extraordinary inconsistency which at one moment would lead him to
expatiate on the beauty of the conception of man as constituting a “building
fitly framed together,” and growing into a “holy temple in the Lord;” and at
another to grant full licence in eating and drinking, and to .bid his disciples
to let no man judge them in meat or in drink. Sustaining his soul arid body
alike by the blood and sufferings of his fellows, under the belief that they
constituted a sacrifice acceptable to God, and nourishing himself literally upon
corpses, it is no wonder that we find him continually haunted by the
consciousness that he carried about with him a “body of death,” or “dead body,”
from which he could by no manner of means escape, so long as he retained either
his doctrine or his practice. Despising the body because he knew it only through
the medium of an organism thus sustained, and thus morbid, Paul knew not that
the Christ whom he had so wonderfully come to know and to love, came to redeem
the body as well as the soul of man.
(p. 428)
Despising his own physical self, he despised
woman also, and excluded her, body and soul, from the benefits of Christ’s
redemption. Far short, indeed, did he thus come of the full perfection of his
Master. Fancy a Paul redeeming a Magdalen by sheer dint of outloving her! Fancy
his exhibiting the Divine tenderness and patience which could go on enduring and
loving without stint, while the frantic hysterical woman was rent by one devil
after another of the seven which possessed her! Tormented and fretful himself,
the Alexander Pope of the Apostolate, save for his unfeigned
enthusiasm, so far from the feverish hand of Paul soothing the excitement of
those inflamed nervous centres – as we may conceive was done by the sympathetic
magnetism of the touch of Jesus – it would have but aggravated the symptoms,
until, instead of peace and salvation, despair and madness had supervened. Paul
might boast of his ability to be all things to all men. Christ could be all
things to all men, and to all women also.
Everything that Paul tells us
about himself confirms the accuracy of such a diagnosis. Sustaining himself upon
a diet for which the human structure is not adapted, if the individual cares to
attain his full development in any one of
(p. 429)
the planes of his consciousness, more
especially of the higher, Paul was liable to seizures which disqualified him for
the time for being as it were the “hollow tube” through which the Divine
influence could find free passage and utterance. And so it came that,
magnificently as be could hold forth about “throwing off every encumbrance,” and
“pressing forward towards the prize of his high calling,” he could not discern
in what his own encumbrance mainly consisted, or exhibit in himself the full
significance of the Christ whom he so truly loved. Hence also it has come that
the Christianity of Christendom has been a religion of knowledge without a
religion of love; a religion of the head without the religion of the heart; a
dogma without faith; a life without hope; a ministry without charity; a doctrine
of blood; and an orthodoxy without intuition. The woman rigidly excluded, what
could the man become but the bard, stern, forceful Will of the Calvinist and the
Pessimist whose might is right?
It is because Mr. Gladstone has
still preserved his “first love” for his intuition, and is still full of the
vitality which, in common with the rest of his countrymen, he has received from
the national soul; and also because it is impossible that he should, after
starting back as he has done
(p. 430)
from the brink of the terrible precipice to
which his sacerdotal associates have led him, fail to see what manner of spirit
they are of, that we may confidently look forward to his severing utterly the
connexion which has proved so disastrous for himself and for
Should Mr. Gladstone find grace to
undergo the complete abnegation of himself which is indispensable to his full
suffusion with the national soul, he will find that it is to no mere phrase or
fancy that he is subordinating his own will; for
(p. 431)
he will find that, short of God himself, the
soul of a people is the most tremendous fact in the universe. Let him but live
the life that conduces to the purging of the mind and body from the gross
unvitalised substances, spiritual or material, with which the believers in
salvation by the blood of others are wont to sustain themselves; and let him at
the same time betake himself apart to that earnest intense meditation which
constitutes the truest prayer – meditation which consists of that intense
concentration of the whole will and wish upon the desired object, in which lies
the secret of the magnetist’s miracle-working power; and unless he be something
very different from my reading of him, he will ere long find the soul of England
pouring itself into him, and filling his veins with a new influence; shaking him
as a strong man might shake a child, thrilling through his every fibre; and even
uttering through him great sobs of joy, crying, “At last! at last I have found a
man through whom I can act!” And he will know that it is not himself but another
who is thus energising in him, even his true, hitherto unsuspected, self.
Would a man, an Englishman, is it
asked, be less a Christian for thus subordinating his own soul to the soul of
(p. 432)
meaning of all I have said ere indulging in
such a faithless thought. What became of the soul of
The Gods who haunt
The
lucid interspace of world and world,
Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind,
Nor
ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor
ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
Their sacred everlasting calm?
Can you think that the soul of Israel could
become a devitalised being of this kind that it could ever subside into this j
or that the Divine Existence itself is not the most passionately living and
energising entity of entities, then not only have I said all I have said in
vain, but you your-self have either thus far lived in vain, or you have not yet
known at all what living means.
The prevailing negative view of
life comes of the belief that the soul is but a mere sentiment. Those who really
live and feel, and let joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, bear their due flower
and fruit in
(p. 433)
the development of the soul, so far from
regarding it as a sentiment, know that it is the living energising source of the
sentiments; and that it is because the sentiments we find in the soul are
inherited by it directly from the infinite source of the whole universe of
existence, that an appeal to the sentiments of men in whom the faculties are not
devitalised by impure living, is the sole miracle-worker the world knows.
Here is the fact of facts which
henceforth men must accept in all the plenitude of its fullest significance, if
they are to find this world worth the living in. The spiritual world is real;
and the faculty whereby man holds intercourse with it is a natural faculty,
which fails only through morbid, or at least abnormal, insensibility of the
cerebral centres. The source of all evil in mortal existence is the limitation of the
spiritual vision. The cause of that limitation is unsuitable diet, physical or
mental. Neither mind nor matter is inherently other than “very good,” even as
they were when first created, and “God saw that they were good.” Physical and
spiritual health are interchangeable terms. The enemy of both is the same,
namely, the blood that the orthodoxies force upon us at every turn of our lives;
on every plane of our consciousness; and in every sphere of
(p. 434)
our activity. To be well, means to be in the
possession of a faculty of spiritual perception as different from and as far
surpassing any reason, as sight differs from and surpasses touch.
I must supplement what I said in
the early part of this book respecting the nature of “Revelation.” Revelation is
the result of a perception in which the truth revealed is passive and the
individual is active. It is as if an intervening veil were withdrawn. For
perfect vision the female, no less than the male, faculty of the mind must
co-operate. Blending these in a perfect marriage, the mind, which is dual,
reflects as well as perceives. In perfect health – that is, when unruffled by a
breeze from the world of sense – the mind is as a sea which reflects perfectly
the heaven of the real ideal which lies spread above it. Of the perfect marriage
of the two differentiations of the mental dualism is born the divine child,
Truth. Truth is also the focusing of God upon the soul of man. It is an
immaculate conception wherein He stamps on humanity the true image of Himself. A
sound intuition is the perception of the God thus impressed. God being one and
the mind one, truth also and the perception of truth is one, AU error is but
limitation of truth through defective management of
(p. 435)
the instrument. It is necessary to the
discernment of truth that the envelope of the mind be scrupulously kept clean.
Differences of what men call opinion are differences in the amount of dirt upon
the spectacles of their minds. When all are alike clean all will see alike. It
is through despair of being able to clean their mental glasses that the world
has renounced the use of the intuitions for the reason. Now reason, as I have
before said, represents the attempt, in default of sight, to grope one’s way by
means of touch. Such is the rationale of “Revelation.”
“Inspiration,” on the other hand,
consists in a communication in which the recipient is passive and the
communicator is active. It may occur when the mind is bent in a direction wholly
averse to the subject of the communication. It may consist of an idea shot
forcibly into the mind, as if it were a luminous barb on an arrow of light; or
it may be a distinct picture of the fact intended to be conveyed. The m ode will
depend very much upon the character of the individual mind. For one person it is
a diffused spiritual influence; for another, it is a distinct idea; for a third,
it is a picture. For those in whom the dramatic faculty predominates, the last
is the usual form of what is called an
(p. 436)
“inspiration.” Dreams are a frequent medium
for communications of this kind. Whether the dream be a troubled or a peaceful
one – whether the inspiration be a true or a false one – depends mainly upon the
health of the dreamer. The great requisite is, that his will be subordinated to
the Divine will. Any determination to “quench the spirit” by resistance, is sure
to be followed either by the withdrawal of the “ spirit, “ or by results of a
positively distressing kind.
I could not have written what I
have just said before I began this book. I did not then know and believe enough
to be able to do so. I had all my life been an inquirer into the meaning of
existence, even, as Schopenhauer would have said, to the serious hazard of the
means of existence. But the problem fascinated me; and I had a strong
instinctive perception of the reality and essential harmony of the world, Hence
I followed without stint or fear whatever track bid fair to lead to the desired
solution, taking care only to hold judgment in abeyance until reason and
intuition should, by perfectly coinciding, finally attain that true focus in
which alone truth becomes manifest.
Anxious as I am to see this book
in the hands of those whom it most concerns, I feel myself
(p. 437)
powerless to send it from me as finished
until I shall have reached the conviction that I have put into it every
imaginable argument and plea likely to exert influence in the direction I
desire, – upon the minds of my countrymen at large, and of Mr. Gladstone in
particular. It is because I recognise in the national soul of England, as
incarnated in the national body of England, a true son of the Universal
Existence at once of humanity and of Deity, and one who, by reason of that very
universality, requires the appeal on its behalf to be by every mode and form in
which thought and feeling manifest themselves among us, – that I omit no single
argument that may by any possibility find an opening in the armour of that
almost impenetrable self-conceit in which we have encased ourselves against any
appeal from the soul national or other. It seems to me as if, in this supreme
crisis of our destiny, it has been given to me to wrestle with Mr. Gladstone,
and through him with England’s gross body, on behalf of England’s great soul;
and that though, like Jacob’s angel, I shall have to wrestle through the night,
even to the breaking of the day, yet shall I prevail.
As if expressly to stimulate me to
fresh endeavour, there comes to me, as I am writing, the
(p. 438)
following account of a dream which was dreamt
at the very hour at which I was noting down for elaboration in the morning the
substance of what I have just written on the various kinds of Revelation. The
dream is that of one who, knowing the general tendency of my work, has feared
that it may prove more harmful to myself than beneficial to others. I may add,
that it is not the first time during the growth of this book that I have
received a like confirmatory supplement to my own thought, which had been
dictated at a distance to one who as unacquainted with that thought, at the very
moment when my thought had entirely deserted me, and I had been left unable to
complete its expression.
“Last night I was visited by a dream of
so vivid and strange a description, that I feel myself impelled to communicate
it to you, not only to relieve my own mind of the oppression which the
recollection of it causes me, but to give you an opportunity of finding the
meaning, which I am still far too much shaken and terrified to seek for myself.
“It seemed to me that you and I
were two of a vast company of men and women upon all of whom – with the
exception of myself, for
(p. 439)
I was there voluntarily – sentence of death
had been passed. I was sensible of a knowledge, I knew not how obtained, that
this terrible doom had been pronounced by the official agents of some new Reign
of Terror. Certain I was that none of the party had been guilty of any real
crime deserving death; but that it had been inherited or incurred through their
connexion with some regime, political, religious, or social, which was doomed to
utter destruction. It became known among us that the sentence was to be carried
out on a colossal scale; but we remained in absolute ignorance as to the method
or place of the intended death. My dream thus far gave no intimation of the
horrible scene which next burst on me, and which strained to their utmost
tension every sense of sight, hearing, and touch, in a manner unprecedented in
any dream I have previously had. It was night, dark and starless, and I found
myself, with the whole company of doomed men and women, who knew they were to
die, but not when or how, together in a train hurrying through the darkness to
some unknown destination. I sat in a carriage quite at the end of the train, in
a corner seat, and leaned out of the open window, peering out into the night.
Suddenly a Voice, which seemed to
(p. 440)
speak out of the air, said to me in low
distinct tones, the mere recollection of which makes me shudder – ‘The sentence
is being carried out even now. You are all of you lost. Ahead of the train is a
frightful precipice of monstrous height, and at its base beats a fathomless sea.
The railway ends only with the abyss; over that will the train hurl itself into
annihilation. There is no one on the engine!’ I sprang from my seat in horror,
and looked round at the faces of the persons in the carriage with me. Not one of
them had spoken or heard those awful words. The lamplight from the dome of the
carriage flickered on the forms about me. I looked from one to the other, but
saw no sign of alarm given by any one. Again the Voice out of the air spoke to
me, – ‘There is but one way to be saved. You must leap out of the train.’ In
frantic haste I pushed open the carriage door, and stepped out on the footboard.
The train was going at a frightful pace, swaying to and fro as with the passion
of its speed; and the mighty wind of its passage beat my hair about my face and
tore at my garments. Until this moment I had not thought of you, or even seemed
conscious of your presence in the train. Holding tightly on to the rail by the
carriage door, I
(p. 441)
began to creep along the footboard toward the
engine, hoping to find a chance of dropping safely down on the line. Hand over
hand I passed along in this way from one carriage to another, and saw by the
light within each carriage that the passengers had no idea of the fate upon
which they were being hurried. At length, in one of the compartments, I saw you. ‘Come out’ I cried; ‘come out!
Save yourself! In another minute we shall be dashed to pieces!’. You rose
instantly, wrenched the door open, and stood beside me outside on the footboard.
The rapidity at which we were now going was more fearful than ever; the train
rocked as it fled onwards; the wind shrieked as we were carried through it.
‘Leap down,’ I cried to you, ‘save yourself! It is certain death to stay here.
Before us is an abyss, and there is no one on the engine!’ At this you turned
your face full upon me with a look of intense earnestness, and said, e ‘No; we
will not leap down, we will stop the train.’ With these words you, left me, and
crept along the footboard towards the end of the train. I followed, full of
half-angry anxiety for the consequences of what seemed to me a Quixotic act. In
one of the carriages we passed I saw my mother and brother; unconscious as the
(p. 442)
rest. Presently we reached the last carriage,
and I saw by the lurid light of the engine smoke that the Voice had spoken
truly, and that there was no one on the engine. You continued to move towards
it. ‘Impossible! impossible!’ I cried; ‘it cannot be done! Oh, pray come away!’
Then you knelt upon the footboard, and said, ‘You are right, it cannot be done
in that way; but we can save the train. Help me to get these irons asunder.’ The
engine was connected with the train by two great iron hooks and staples. By a
tremendous effort, in making which I almost lost my balance, we unhooked the
irons and detached the train, when, with a mighty leap as of some mad
supernatural monster, the engine sped on its way alone, and was lost in the
darkness, shooting back as it went a great flaming trail of sparks. We stood
together on the footboard, watching in silence the gradual slackening of the
speed. When it had come to a standstill, we cried to the passengers, ‘Saved!
saved!’ And then, amid the confusion of opening the doors and descending and
eager talking, my dream ended, leaving me shattered and palpitating with the
horror of it.”
This dream, I said, when I had
read the foregoing, has a significance for more than myself.
(p. 443)
It describes exactly the situation in which
(p. 444)
Science can render no account, beyond
bestowing a flat denial upon their existence. A fairly accomplished conjuror
myself, I was in a position to judge whether the phenomena I had witnessed could
be referred to intentional trickery. Though detecting imposture in numerous
instances, and repeatedly quitting the investigation with disgust, I still found
something in it that gave me the impression that I had not fathomed it, and that
nothing short of a crucial test would justify me in setting aside the universal
consent of man-kind throughout history, saving only a generation of specialists,
whose judgment and method alike I distrusted. It was the manifest want both of
candour and of reason on the part of scientists, that first disposed me to treat
the practice as worthy of heed, and led me to enlarge for myself my system of
thought, so that it might be capable of holding any facts whatever that might
appear to me to be facts, instead of imitating “Science” in narrowing my theory,
in order to exclude such facts as would not coincide with my foregone
conclusions. In the meantime, I had so rigidly cultivated that habit of
skepticism which is necessary to one who values truth above all things, as to
have become impressed with the conviction that I had lost the very faculty of
(p. 445)
credence, no matter how strong the evidence
might be; and certainly I was incapable of believing either in the explanation
or in the phenomena of “spiritualism,” except in the event of their occurring to
myself under circumstances which should render deception absolutely impossible.
Quitting phenomena as inadequate
for my satisfaction, I set to work in another direction to complete my system of
thought respecting the meaning of existence, as regards both man and that from
which he is derived. I felt that I could not believe in the reality of the
spiritualist hypothesis on the evidence of the senses alone. I must first
ascertain that it is possible to form in idea an harmonious and consistent
conception of the spiritual world, before I can allow myself even to surmise its
existence on the strength of physical phenomena, of which the genuineness is at
best doubtful.
As this is not the time to do more
than indicate roughly the nature of the process I followed, I shall say further
only that since I began this book I have, while sitting alone at my work in
perfect and most serious calmness, intent only on doing my very best, received
the most irrefragable demonstrations of the accuracy of the theory I had by dint
of the purest reason
(p. 446)
constructed respecting the spiritual basis of
the universe. And just as one by one the doctrines of the current orthodoxies
had given way under the stress of the facts in man’s history and my own, so one
by one they were replaced by proofs of the substantial truth of the doctrine
known as “spiritualism.” And just in the degree in which I became convinced
theoretically, did I receive in confirmation thereof practical demonstrations
even surpassing in their absolute satisfactoriness any crucial test of which I
had previously been cognisant. And now that I have no manner of doubt on the
subject, and that my “spiritual eyes” are open, I can, in looking back through
my whole life, distinctly trace the operation of the influences of the reality
of which I have only so recently become assured.
I hoped to have finished this book
without making the avowal which has now escaped me; but I feel that it would be
an act of unfaithful-ness to withhold any item of my thought, at the moment when
the world presents itself to me as standing on the brink of a catastrophe which,
for its threatened magnitude, is comparable only to that of which it is said
that the mass of man-kind “knew not until the flood came and took them all
away.” For me, as for many, but a
(p. 447)
very short time ago a belief in
“spiritualism” was a test criterion of a person’s sanity. After the proofs I
have now received the test works rather the other way.
Not to mention other things in
this relation, it is only by the light of “ spiritualism” that the Book on which
our national religion is based becomes in any degree intelligible or other than
misleading. I have exhibited some of the reasons I have found for regarding
Well, if it indeed be –
as I am absolutely convinced
(p. 448)
it is – true that the spiritual history of
Israel is being enacted once more in England, and that we have now reached
precisely that stage in its progress at which it remains for us to decide
whether that history shall be enacted by us to the last drop of its bitter cup,
or whether we will by a vigorous effort break the spell and escape the doom due
to final unfaithfulness to the intuitions, then it behoves us to look with the
closest scrutiny into the parallel facts of the two histories. It is in this
view that I have pointed out the character of the religion preached by Paul, and
its corresponding defects in that of the Reformation, and have shown in what
respects the course of Mr. Gladstone requires amending if he is to be the Paul
who, by rectifying Paul’s omissions, is to complete the Reformation and
approximate it to the teaching of Christ. I have shown that so far as the
correspondence of the two periods goes, it is not too late for Mr. Gladstone to
escape the limitations of Paul, inasmuch as there is yet time for him to cast
out that unclean thing, sacerdotal orthodoxy, with its presentment of a selfish
and bloody ideal, and “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are before,” to “press toward the mark
(p. 449)
for the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus.”
Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Índice da Obra Atual Anterior: Seção VI Seguitne: Seção VIII