< Rosicrucianism (continued from page 3-239) >
conditional of limitation in time and space, and the All is illimitable, or, as the English metaphysician has phrased it unconditioned. Likewise, with die minor integers of the All ; —of them neither create nor uncreate can be predicated. Their experiences are from chaos unto their re-association with the Divine. Until, therefore, the solemn moment of apotheosistic concomitance, the passage of the soul through the ever-changing vale of circumstance goes on. So that the Rosicrucian may exclaim, in the words of the stern Roman general,
“ Through what variety of untried being, |
To the mage, each leaf rustling in the breeze, each blossom perfuming the sunlight, each fish swimming beneath the wave, each reptile crawling in the marsh, each animal in the forest, each bird in the air, share with us the pulsations of the Unknown, which men call Life, and is with us the microcosm emanating from the macrocosm.
This sacred truth led the Nilotic Rosicrucians to express the emanations and the spheres in. the sacred tree, bird, bull and serpent, and to create a hieroglyphic geometry, whose grandeur and meaning have baffled all time, appearing and reappearing in Etruscan jewelry, Greek architecture, Roman astrology, Gothic and Saracen art, Mediaeval witchcraft, and modern Free-Masonry.
O ! preachers and teachers of Christianity, who rail at Egypt, and call their colossal doctrines animal-worship ; who pass imbecile jokes upon the Buddhist and Brahman sages ; who laugh to scorn the Assyrian and Chaldean philosophers,—know ye not that your own little learning was proclaimed by us when you, sunk in obscene barbarism, were torturing and slaying our own elect?—that your own semi-Semitic faith was one-half taken from the Nilotic universities by many men, whom ye ignorantly condense into one being, Moses, and the other half a poetic repetition of the principles of the Rosy Cross, the growth of fifty centuries ?
To the novice and adept, alike, one principle applies. “The Rosicrucian becomes and is not made.” The lesson of the Rosy Cross is not to be learned by the ignorant or lustful, the grasping or the ambitious. “To him who seeks the truth, the truth will come.”
The possession of truth is not knowledge, but wisdom, and wisdom is neither bought nor sold, nor gained by instruction nor lost by time. The lesson of the Rosy Cross may contain facts, and these facts may be learned in the school-room or the midnight-study; but these facts are no more Rosicrucianism, than are so many bricks and stones the facade of a mighty cathedral. The scholar must glean from history and literature, and, above all, from the sciences, the truths, one by one, which, together, will make him an elect. Therefore it was that, unlike any sector institution the world has ever seen, the brethren of the Rosy Cross neither made nor attempted to make any converts. Contented that their lore must remain a sealed book until distant generations, when ignorance and pride, bigotry and lust should become evanescent and disappear ; satisfied that the individual must become, and not be guided into, the real man ; knowing that their mysteries, if divulged, would produce mere confusion and death ; and seeing, above all, that,
“God is still God. |
— they toiled on in their labors, and left the world alone, to ripen on in nature’s lengthy course toward the happy age.
But, to re-assure the yearning and wistful seeker after truth, they chiseled in everlasting rock the symbolisms of their faith, and left, for coming years to wonder at and study, the monoliths of Stonehenge, the giant-pillars of France and the Mediterranean, the fire-towers of Assyria, and highest of all, the pyramids of Egypt. These they bequeathed to all the future, not alone as pregnant with wisdom, but more as tokens of truth and love for the unborn children of man.
Robert Dale Owen
Mr. Robert Dale Owen's many friends in this city are aware that he went a few weeks ago to a water-cure called the Home on the Hillside, at DanSville, in Western New York, where he put himself under the charge of the superintendent, Dr. James C. Jackson, for purely physical ailments, which had been troubling him for two or three years past, and manifested themselves chiefly by indigestion. They will be startled by a letter which appeared in the Rochester Express last evening, and announces that he has been taken to his home in Indiana as insane. We are reluctant to believe that the inferences of the writer are correct as to the cause of Mr. Owen’s mental disturbance, if the allegations of insanity are indeed well founded. We have conversed with him personally, within a few weeks, concerning the “ Katy King business,” and the imposture which was practised on him with regard to it, and no one possibly could have talked with greater simplicity and candor of the error of another than he of his own deficient observation in his experiments in Philadelphia, and of his earnest desire to correct the impression of the authenticity of the “ Katy King ” manifestation, so far as he had been the cause of its acceptance by anybody. But at the same time he earnestly avowed that his faith in the doctrines of Spiritualism was not impaired by his own error. Nor was his self-depreciation excessive. It was frank, but moderate and reasonable and was consistent with the devout tenor of his character. With these few words we print the letter, which bears date at Dansville, Juue 30 :
“ For some time Dansville has been the stopping place of a distinguished visitor, Robert Dale Owen, the well-known writer and Spiritualist. He came here hoping by freedom from care and trouble to recuperate and repair his shattered energies, and to enable him to continue his literary labors. Occupying his time mainly with recreation, for a time nothing unusual was observed in his conduct, and he was pointed out as a rather eccentric old gentleman. An upholder of Spiritualism and a writer of acknowledged merit, his society was sought after, and his conversations were coherent and instructive. Invitations to lecture were occasionally accepted, and some of your readers will, no doubt, remember the lecture on ‘ Spiritualism,’ delivered by him not long since in your city. If any one at that time considered him insane, they failed to give others the benefit of their judgment. During the past week, however, his eccentricities increased to such an alarming extent that it became painfully evident to those that knew him that the great mind of Robert Dale Owen had lost its reason. His wild, excited actions on Friday last at the grounds of the Dansville Driving Park Association were clearly those of an insane person. Driving furiously among a crowd of carriages, accosting strangers and gesticulating violently, he was a source of annoyance to his friends and a surprise to strangers. His son was telegraphed for immediately. He reached here Sunday night, and on Tuesday morning started for his home in Indiana with Mr. Owen.
“ Mr. Owen is a man over seventy years of age, apparently strong and healthy, being especially active for a man of his years. As to the immediate cause of his insanity we can only conjecture. His life has been one of toil, ana any one who read his chapters of autobiography published from time to time in the Atlantic Monthly, though they are remarkably free from offensive individuality and egotism, will plainly see that his life has not been void of results. On him as a supporter of Spiritualism the severest strictures have been placed, and there seems something of plausibility in the report now current that the loss of faith in his religion consequent upon the Katie King ‘expose’ was the immediate cause of his insanity, and this theory is supported by facts from his life. Prior to his embracing spiritualistic doctrines, he was an atheist, and, as every atheist must, became dissatisfied with himself and his position. As a relief from this unfortunate condition, he fell into a belief in Spiritualism, and in its doctrines his whole mind and soul became engrossed. Together with Judge Edmonds, he has for years been pointed out as the great decider of Spiritualism in this country. Though his position was often assailed, yet he defended his cause nobly, and to the time of Katie King had answered every objection in a manner satisfactory to himself, if not to the great mass of the reading public; and his success may be judged of by the rapid increase of Spiritualism in this coun try. But his unfortunate statements were not so easily ex plained, and it was perfectly apparent that his own explanations never satisfied himself; he tried in vain, and could see no way out of his difficulty. Robert Dale Owen was a man who believed in reasoning, and what he could explain to his own satisfaction by reasoning, that he believed in implicitly; and it is fair to suppose that it was a great blow which caused him to lose faith in the belief which he had so long and faithfully advocated and defended’ and was thereby chiefly instrumental in dethroning reason in his great mind: but however that may be, and whatever may have been his religious belief, the world will lose in him a strong mind, an able reasoner, and the purest writer of the English language which she has seen for years ”
Editor's notes
- ↑ Robert Dale Owen by unknown author, Spiritual Scientist, v. 2, No. 18, July 8, 1875, p. 214. From New York Evening Post
Sources
Spiritual Scientist, v. 2, No. 18, July 8, 1875, p. 214
