[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the spirit s life and progress.)
So it is with regard to heaven. You have unlearned much that previous ages have fancied about heaven.
And none save the most ignorant would now imagine that a material body could find a home in heaven,
as once men thought it could. The time of material heavens, into which mysterious beings who had been
133
SECTION XXIII
deified on earth were translated bodily into the society of an anthropomorphic God, is past. You do not
imagine God as an omnipotent, omnipresent man, living in a place where His throne is surrounded by a
throng who do naught else but worship and adore, as men would worship were they to see God
amongst them on earth. Such a heaven is but a baseless dream. Into spirit-life spirit alone can enter. You
know that you have outgrown the fable of the bodily translation of a material frame somewhere into the
skies, there to live as it had lived on earth, in the society of a God who was human in all respects save
that He was superhuman, in a heaven which was borrowed from the images of a vision which typified
under a symbol spiritual truth to John the Seer. You know that no such God exists. A translation will
await each good and true man, but not of his human flesh and bones. His glorified spirit shall rise from
the dead and worn-out shroud of flesh that has served its purpose, to a brighter life than man has
pictured, in a brighter heaven than human seer has ever imaged.
No doubt there are a number of legends which come in the end to be accepted as truth. The
difficulty is to know truth from legend, and the danger, to uproot the tares with the wheat. And
even a myth may have a very discernible meaning, and embody truth.
It is so. The legends of which your sacred records are full are in very many cases superstitious beliefs
that have centred round great names. There is a nucleus of truth enveloped in a surrounding of myth. We
have frequently told you that man has erred greatly in his conceptions of us and of our influence and
work. Some causes which have produced this result are beyond his control, others he can govern. He
cannot in the childhood of his intellect grasp knowledge which his mind has not the power to
comprehend.
That is unavoidable. He cannot picture correctly a condition of life which is utterly different from the state
in which he has lived, and with which alone he is acquainted. He must be naught by illustration and
analogy. That too is unavoidable. But he heaps together words and ideas which were intended to be
figurative, and constructs from them a notion which is incoherent and absurd. Each step of knowledge
will lead you to see this more clearly.
Moreover, man has fancied that each revelation of God enshrines permanent truth of universal
application, of literal and exact accuracy. He did not see that man is taught by us as man teaches his own
children; and accurate definitions of abstract truth do not suit the comprehension of a child. With all the
literalness of a child he accepts the very words of revelation as mathematically and logically accurate,
and builds upon them a number of theories, absurd in their nature, and conflicting among themselves. The
child accepts the parent s word unhesitatingly, and quotes it as law. It is only later that he learns that he
was being taught in parables. Man has dealt with Revelation in the same way. He has assumed literal
exactness where there is only Oriental imagery, and mathematical accuracy where he has only a very
fallible and frequently legendary record. So he has perpetuated ignorant ideas about a jealous God, and
a fiery hell, and a heaven in the skies where the elect are gathered, and a physical resurrection, and a
universal assize, and such notions, which belong to the age of childhood and are outgrown by the
developed man. The man should put aside the notions of the child, and soar to higher knowledge.
But in place of that legendary belief, primitive superstitions, ignorant fancies, are perpetuated. The
hyperbolical visions of an imaginative people are taken for hard fact; and a medley of fancy, folly, and
truth is jumbled together, which no reflecting mind on an advanced plane of knowledge can continue to
134
SECTION XXIII
accept as matter of belief. Faith is the cord that has bound together this incoherent mass. We cut that
cord, and bid you use your reason to try that which has been received and held by faith alone. You will
find much in the mass that is of human invention, dating from the infancy of man s mind. You will reject
much that is both cumbersome and profitless. But you will find a residue that commends itself to reason,
is attested by your own experience, and is derived from God. You will gather hints of what the good
God destines for his creatures. You cannot get more in your present state. Sufficient that you enter on a
new phase of being free from the blunders and misconceptions too rife in the present. You will see by
degrees that the past is valuable principally for the light which it sheds on the present, and the glimpses
which it gives you of the future.
This, as you should know by this, is the purpose of our present work to lead to purer and less
dishonouring views of God, of life, and of progress, than have hitherto obtained among you. To this end
we must first point out the errors in your creed, the human figments that have passed current for Divine [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl freetocraft.keep.pl
the spirit s life and progress.)
So it is with regard to heaven. You have unlearned much that previous ages have fancied about heaven.
And none save the most ignorant would now imagine that a material body could find a home in heaven,
as once men thought it could. The time of material heavens, into which mysterious beings who had been
133
SECTION XXIII
deified on earth were translated bodily into the society of an anthropomorphic God, is past. You do not
imagine God as an omnipotent, omnipresent man, living in a place where His throne is surrounded by a
throng who do naught else but worship and adore, as men would worship were they to see God
amongst them on earth. Such a heaven is but a baseless dream. Into spirit-life spirit alone can enter. You
know that you have outgrown the fable of the bodily translation of a material frame somewhere into the
skies, there to live as it had lived on earth, in the society of a God who was human in all respects save
that He was superhuman, in a heaven which was borrowed from the images of a vision which typified
under a symbol spiritual truth to John the Seer. You know that no such God exists. A translation will
await each good and true man, but not of his human flesh and bones. His glorified spirit shall rise from
the dead and worn-out shroud of flesh that has served its purpose, to a brighter life than man has
pictured, in a brighter heaven than human seer has ever imaged.
No doubt there are a number of legends which come in the end to be accepted as truth. The
difficulty is to know truth from legend, and the danger, to uproot the tares with the wheat. And
even a myth may have a very discernible meaning, and embody truth.
It is so. The legends of which your sacred records are full are in very many cases superstitious beliefs
that have centred round great names. There is a nucleus of truth enveloped in a surrounding of myth. We
have frequently told you that man has erred greatly in his conceptions of us and of our influence and
work. Some causes which have produced this result are beyond his control, others he can govern. He
cannot in the childhood of his intellect grasp knowledge which his mind has not the power to
comprehend.
That is unavoidable. He cannot picture correctly a condition of life which is utterly different from the state
in which he has lived, and with which alone he is acquainted. He must be naught by illustration and
analogy. That too is unavoidable. But he heaps together words and ideas which were intended to be
figurative, and constructs from them a notion which is incoherent and absurd. Each step of knowledge
will lead you to see this more clearly.
Moreover, man has fancied that each revelation of God enshrines permanent truth of universal
application, of literal and exact accuracy. He did not see that man is taught by us as man teaches his own
children; and accurate definitions of abstract truth do not suit the comprehension of a child. With all the
literalness of a child he accepts the very words of revelation as mathematically and logically accurate,
and builds upon them a number of theories, absurd in their nature, and conflicting among themselves. The
child accepts the parent s word unhesitatingly, and quotes it as law. It is only later that he learns that he
was being taught in parables. Man has dealt with Revelation in the same way. He has assumed literal
exactness where there is only Oriental imagery, and mathematical accuracy where he has only a very
fallible and frequently legendary record. So he has perpetuated ignorant ideas about a jealous God, and
a fiery hell, and a heaven in the skies where the elect are gathered, and a physical resurrection, and a
universal assize, and such notions, which belong to the age of childhood and are outgrown by the
developed man. The man should put aside the notions of the child, and soar to higher knowledge.
But in place of that legendary belief, primitive superstitions, ignorant fancies, are perpetuated. The
hyperbolical visions of an imaginative people are taken for hard fact; and a medley of fancy, folly, and
truth is jumbled together, which no reflecting mind on an advanced plane of knowledge can continue to
134
SECTION XXIII
accept as matter of belief. Faith is the cord that has bound together this incoherent mass. We cut that
cord, and bid you use your reason to try that which has been received and held by faith alone. You will
find much in the mass that is of human invention, dating from the infancy of man s mind. You will reject
much that is both cumbersome and profitless. But you will find a residue that commends itself to reason,
is attested by your own experience, and is derived from God. You will gather hints of what the good
God destines for his creatures. You cannot get more in your present state. Sufficient that you enter on a
new phase of being free from the blunders and misconceptions too rife in the present. You will see by
degrees that the past is valuable principally for the light which it sheds on the present, and the glimpses
which it gives you of the future.
This, as you should know by this, is the purpose of our present work to lead to purer and less
dishonouring views of God, of life, and of progress, than have hitherto obtained among you. To this end
we must first point out the errors in your creed, the human figments that have passed current for Divine [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]