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vol. title: vol. period: 1881 pages in vol.: 439 |
< Order Above Us, Religion, or Christian Theosophy (continued from page 11-230) >
from spinning metaphysical cobwebs which may only trouble the eyes of others, I am tempted to throw out a few suggestions which may tend, at least, to stimulate thought in speculating on these profoundly momentous subjects.
There appear to be three degrees of mind which beget, respectively, three conceptions of causation, First, the simply sensuous degree, that of the savage and most physicists of the present day; in spite of their spectrum analyses, telephones, and so forth. This answers to fetishism or atheism: it suits either. Secondly, the rational degree, which answers to the more respectable religions—Pagan, Catholic, and Protestant—acknowledging an invisible sphere of existence consisting of spiritual-moral beings. And, thirdly, the spiritual degree of the soul, which answers to a conception of the Divine and our relations thereto, resting on and proceeding from the Christian ideal, either in Christendom or elsewhere, and never sinking below it.
The battle between the flesh and the spirit, or, rather, the subjection of the flesh to the spirit, is the work of humanity: the endeavour to make the ideal the actual, in other words, the embodiment of truth.
Truth is the perception of the right relations of things. These relations are infinitely complex, and depend upon the compound nature of man —his physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual constitution. Man’s proper condition is only attained when he becomes a microcosm in which the several kingdoms are in perfect co-ordination, and, therefore, harmony. This is in religious phraseology termed the “regenerate state.”
The mistake of philosophy has been to suppose that it was possible to arrive at absolute truth— which is unattainable by man—and that, too, by merely logical processes ignoring spiritual causation. The characteristic failure of religions has been to confound spiritual indefinite truths and realities with symbolical representations, to confine universal truths with partial, local and temporary expressions.
The peculiar glory of Christianity lay in the elevation of the moral into the spiritual, and then the endowment of the spiritual in man with a universal divine character. In these respects it contains the germs of infinite progress. But Christianity is imperfect, and is, in most of its forms, a hindrance to the development of man; because of its fantastic embodiments of the unseen worlds and man’s relation thereto, and its depreciation of the intellectual sphere of his being.
Modern Spiritualism affords such an enlargement of our acquaintance with the realms of physical, mental and moral causation, as amounts to a new world of truth, the conquest of which will probably be attended hereafter with far-reaching results on which it is vain to speculate.
Darmstadt, August, 1881.
<Untitled> (Mrs. Guppy-Volckman...)
Mrs. Guppy-Volckman desires ua to announce that she has received on behalf of Mrs. Mary Marshall's Testimonial: Mr. A. Dobson, 2s. 6d, Mrs. Mary Allen, 10s.
The Adeptship of Jesus Christ
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<... continues on page 11-232 >
Editor's notes
Sources
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Medium and Daybreak, v. 12, No. 596, September 2, 1881, pp. 553-56
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Medium and Daybreak, v. 12, No. 596, September 2, 1881, p. 547