CHAPTER IXHERO WORSHIP AND FOLKLORE
The history of every people, of all time, and of every religion of which we have any record, reveals a similar origin, course, and destiny.
We of the present day have the advantage of these records upon which to institute comparisons, ascertain relations, and draw conclusions.
True, the partisans and postulants of all these religions at the present day will claim exception in favor of their own cult, and regard as sacrilegious and profane any attempt to institute comparisons and draw general conclusions.
Any attempt to persuade them of their error would be useless.
The essentials of their religion will not be called in question, but on the other hand, they will find that it is impossible to escape from the habitual and universal tendencies in which they are involved.
However veritable may have been the original revelations, the tendencies and habits of weaving around them the traditions and superstitions of folklore seem to have been inevitable and universal.
It is the province of Science to ascertain the facts in any given case, to institute comparisons, and to draw deductions and generalizations dispassionately and relentlessly.
It is thus that every tradition, superstition, creed, dogma, and revelation comes under review, and is placed on trial.
True science has no preconceived notion, no foregone conclusion. Each subject examined must tell its own story and in its own way, and stand or fall measured by intrinsic evidence and revealed fact.
To this tribunal every episode in the life of man and the history of the human race must at last come.
What are thefacts? What do they reveal and signify?
To most religionists this method and aim of science seem as relentless and dogmatic as their own creed or dogmas.
It is a sifting and discriminative process, that, while relentless, is in the end eminently Just, and in the end will be found to be the revealer of all that is essential and true in religion itself.
In itself, science is not and never can be a religion.
It is amethodonly, which, like a search-light, reveals all religions in all their essentials, and places them in their true light.
Religionper seis an essential element in the nature and life of man and of the human race.
Science is a method, a way of procedure in the intelligent mind of man in its search for truth.
Religion is vital, essential, basic. It is born of the relation which inheres in the kinship of the individual intelligence to the Universal Spirit of Nature and of all life.
Science is the intelligent and rational use of the mental powers of man.
Religion is intuitional, spiritual perception, involving the heart, the affections. Man aspires, worships, adores, and by the light of Faith or intuitive conviction, recognizes that which he cannot explain and cannot get rid of if he tries.
Science is the just weight and measure of things seen, and of the natural causes of phenomena.
Religion—the evidence of things unseen. Religion, as afact, can never be explained away by Science.
The so-called science that assumes or undertakes to do that, is materialism and nescience.
Superstition is the false interpretation of religion, and folklore and tradition are the accretions that gather around the foundations and original revelations of religion, and lead at last to obscuration and the need of a new revelation.
Each genuine new “revelation” is but the rehabilitation of the primeval religion in which accretions, false interpretations, and dogmatic assertions are cast aside.
Religion represents man’s endeavor to apprehend and interpret the unseen; that “something more” and “something beyond” the visible, the sensuous, and the tangible.
It is this consciousawarenessof something more and something beyond the visible and the tangible, that furnishes man with a conception of God and of the human soul. This is a natural intuition,inseparable from theawarenessof self. It lies at the foundation like man’s self-conscious identity, and can neither be explained nor explained away.
Here lies the root of all religions. The imagery of man’s imagination, in his effort to apprehend the unseen, and to formulate the unknown, gives rise to myths, allegory, tradition, folklore, and in the end, to superstition, creed, and dogma.
Then come priestcraft, oppression, persecution. The death of religion, the deification of the revealer orAvatar, and the substitution of the priesthood as of divine authority, in place of therevealeror the revelation.
Jove, Orpheus, Jehovah, and at last Jesus, are enthroned beyond the clouds, and priest or church assume the earthly prerogative, speak in their place, assume dogmatic authority, promise heaven and happiness for obedience, and dire penalties for disobedience, and resort to persecution to maintain their authority.
The traditions, mythologies, and folklore of all the past have thus arisen. The creeds and dogmas of the present constitute the effort of man to assume exclusive dominion, and to exercise divine authority over the masses of mankind. It is only another form of the ambition of individuals for wealth, fame or power, lifting them to a “class” above the toiling, suffering, and sorrowing masses.
There are exceptional individuals all along the way, who conceive, hold, and exercise the spirit of the Master, and sink self in the service of man, andbut for these the organized priesthood would be execrated by mankind long before.
The organized church deifies, where the true disciple humanizes and helps mankind in the name and in the spirit of the Master.
This is the spirit, the origin, the genius and the history of every Avatar, of Christna, and all the Buddhas, the Saviors and Redeemers of history.
The orthodox Christian of to-day, whether Catholic or Protestant, will be likely to admit the foregoing outline except as it applies to his own religion. Whereas it is abundantly proven to-day regarding his own religion as nowhere else in history.
The histories of former religions are vague, distant, and so covered over by tradition, myth, and folklore, as to be difficult to trace.
The beginnings, history, and progress of the Christian religion are comparatively nearer at hand, and the process above outlined readily demonstrable.
Not only so, but the recognition of the facts and processes is everywhere in evidence.
This fact, however, by no means ends the controversy.
Traditions, creeds, and dogmas die hard, and fight to the last extremity. Nothing else known to man fights so desperately and dies so hard as an organized priesthood, and beyond this, they are upheld by the ignorance, superstition, the fear, and the faith of the masses.
Their adherents often believe and assume thatthey have discovered final truths, essential and unalterable verities. They undertake to support and to maintain these by dogmatic authority, a holy book, a “thus sayeth the Lord.”
“There it is, down in black and white.” No further evidence is required.
To question such authority is to be damned. To believe, accept, and to conform, is to besaved.
Difference of opinion and of interpretation inevitably arise, even among those who dare not question the ultimate authority and genuineness of the original revelation. Hence arise sects, schisms, and theological warfare.
Notwithstanding all this, the original revelation becomes a matter of thorough investigation and of criticism.
The so-called “higher criticism” had already discovered errors in translation, and contradictions in interpretation, resulting in a “revised edition” of the sacred books, while under the name “Pragmatism,” certain metaphysical writers and accredited teachers have undertaken to determine essential meanings and interpretations, and to submit religious revelations, creeds, dogmas, and theologies to critical analysis.
How far this analysis has gone, and how little of the original interpretation actually remains, only they are aware who keep abreast of current thought, and who with open mind care more for the simple truth than for custom, tradition, theologies, and the folklore of the past.
Dogmatic theological authority is completely undermined, and its days are numbered.[1]
With the masses there is the habitual unrest, the feeling of uncertainty, the social upheaval, with the inevitable tendency to confusion and anarchy. A new religion is already in the formative stage, a new Avatar inevitable.
It is to be less a repudiation than a revision and rehabilitation of the old religion.
People everywhere are looking for the new revelation, for the coming ofChristos, for the new Avatar, and few are aware that he is already here.
It should be borne strictly in mind that in every instance in the past, the advent of the Avatar has been unattended by signs and wonders, has come upon the stage of human action in the most commonplace way, and that myth, miracle, and folklore have followed as time went on.
To the people of his time Jesus was the “son of the carpenter,” whose family was obscure. He came “eating with publicans and sinners.”
Jesus, the demigod of to-day, was unknown and undreamed of in Galilee. Philo Judæus seems never to have heard of him.
What and who Jesus was, and what he did, is separated from what the church and theologians have made of him by a gulf that seems almost impassable, and yet this gulf has already been bridged and passed.
The new Avatar has for its mission the rehabilitation of Jesus as he actually existed, divested of all myth and miracle, while the mission for which he came, and the doctrines for which he lived and died are to be completely restored to mankind in their purity.
The old Hindoos would call this transformation a “reincarnation of Vishnu,” a “new Avatar.”
It will mean Jesus the divine Man, the master,Christos, restored to the heart of Humanity from the mysticism and miracle of monks and theologies, from the superstitions and folklore of the multitude.
This means a reconstruction and a restatement of the religion of Jesus.
Jesus remaining what he actually was and is, it will be the province of Natural Science to explain and to demonstrate by natural and spiritual law, how, without mystery or miracle, Jesus became the MasterChristosand so remains to-day.
Natural Science is not the invention of man, more than is the law of gravitation, the law of equilibrium, or the binomial theorem. Man may discover these laws from the phenomena of Nature, and demonstrate their existence and mode of operation like any others.
It is a question of dispassionate and intelligent apprehension and demonstration.
All actual progress of man up to the present time lies along these lines. Beyond this all is conjecture and guess-work. Natural Science, however,is far more than modern physical science so-called. It includes physical, mental, moral, and spiritual science.
Itsmethodseverywhere and at all times are the same.
It may theorize, but never dogmatize, and it mustdemonstrateat every step. Facts must not only support the theorem, but demonstrate the conclusions as inevitable, and the basis of all such actual demonstration must be a verifiable individual experience, with formulated laws and processes for its repetition, just as in physical science, in chemistry, and mathematics. Nothing less than this on any plane or in any department of investigation can enable the individual to declare “I Know.”
Demonstration is the sign manual of knowledge; Dogmatism the arrogance of ignorance.
It is impossible to make these radical distinctions too clear and specific.
When this method of Natural Science is applied to the investigation of religions, tradition is separated from fact, dogma from demonstration, miracle from natural law, mythology and folklore are found to be the fabric woven by the imagination of mankind around the receding revelations, deifying their authors, and mingling fact with fable, till the originals become unrecognizable.
Romance and superstition become substitutes for simple Faith, moral law, and social Justice.
To question or to repudiate the dogmas of superstition becomes a “mortal sin,” even whenthe most plain and specific moral or ethical obligations are entirely subverted or reversed by dogmatic authority.
It is thus that the original revelation is subverted and at last overthrown.
From first to last, the whole fabric is claimed to be “sacred and divine,” and to question it, “sacrilege” and “profanation of holy things.” Thus, that which seemed originally as wings to the toiling, sorrowing children of men, becomes at last a “millstone about the neck,” a “burden grievous to be borne.”
Then comes protest, repudiation, reform, and usually a new revelation, embodying the primitive faith, and adapting it to modern times and conditions.
This is, in brief, the history of the Avatars of Ancient India, the Buddhas and the Zoroasters of later centuries; of the Greek Orpheus; of the legends and folklore clustering around many of the sages of Israel, and though in a less miraculous fashion, of Confucius and Laotse. But most patent of all does this principle apply to the founder of the Christian religion, because less ancient and more readily verifiable.
Though no new Avatar is yet recognized, thespiritofmodern sciencedoes not hesitate to repudiate myth, miracle, and superstition, and to insist on fact and natural law.
[1]See President Eliot’s latest utterances.
See President Eliot’s latest utterances.
CHAPTER XCORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE
The devout and conscientious believers in the Christian Religion of to-day often view with sorrow and alarm the encroachments of modern science.
Unable to prevent these encroachments, they stubbornly resent them. Once admitted, it seems to them that nothing sacred or worthy the name of Religion would remain. To shift to other and more ancient faiths can never be considered at all, for the “higher criticism” and “pragmatism” have left them all in even a worse plight.
It seems to these devout souls like the death of religion itself, and its elimination from the life of man.
The intuitive basis and the intrinsic necessity of religion in some form have already been considered.
This point is often overlooked or ignored by the Iconoclasts.
Their position would seem to be, “Unravel the superstition, disprove the possibility of miracle, and let the deluge come if it must.”
Neither pragmatism nor higher criticism has been in any large sense constructive, but more largely destructive. The really spiritual element in allreligions, already referred to, is generally lost sight of.
Modern psychology is no nearer a science of the soul, than are folklore and superstition to true religion. It should be recognized and granted once for all that psychology, as a department of modern physical science, has no substitute whatever to offer in the place of Religion.
It is gathering facts, classifying, and labeling psychic phenomena.
Here and there an advanced scientist, like Sir Oliver Lodge, ignores tradition, repudiates orthodox scientific restraints, and steps over the border of actual or implied nihilism.
This smug nihilism with its superior air of scientific wisdom, is often only the opposite pole of the dogmatic certitude of the churchman. Actual knowledge of the human soul is quite as far removed from the one as from the other. Credulity and Incredulity simply annul each other; often make faces at each other; while Progress stalks alone in the middle of the road, a “tramp” or a “vagabond,” like Paracelsus, “reading the leaves of the book of Nature,” laughing at poverty, fleeing from persecution, yetknowing, and “becoming a light to man forever.”
The consensus of opinion among the presidents and professors in the leading colleges and universities of this country, their unhesitating and unqualified denial or repudiation of the claims set up by the church regarding revelation and the basicdogmas of the Christian Religion, and which his “Holiness” of the Vatican designates as “Modernism,” reveal, not only the “signs of the times,” but show indisputably that modern education has shaken itself free from the superstitions of the past, and repudiated the old restraints to free thought and modern progress.
Orthodoxy in religious matters has often nothing to do in determining college curriculums, in the selection of presidents, or in filling the chairs.
Bright young men and women, the advanced students of the schools of to-day, who are to become the leaders of thought and the teachers of to-morrow, find little restraint and no formative element in the creeds and dogmas that in the past have been so much in evidence, and so constraining. Intensity of feeling has given place to breadth and inclusiveness, and under the name of “Comparative Religions,” ancient faiths and modern, are classified, and studied like fossils in the different ages of the past.
The “crusader impulse” has rather settled down in each individual breast, as the master passion, to do, to dare, and to become something more and better than the individual, or than the past has hitherto known. Such a general period of intellectual activity, with so few restraints, history nowhere else records, and the world has never before known.
Here lie the elements, the impulses, and the formative stage of the new Avatar.
At this stage of our discussion it is of exceeding interest and importance to bear in mind one great fact. The average intelligent student of to-day may take this fact tentatively, reserving final judgment till accumulative evidence becomes satisfactory and conclusive.
No one who is dominated by shallow incredulity, and who attempts to close this door contemptuously, will ever arrive at the real truth. The judgment of such individuals is simply worthless, notwithstanding the smug conceit of their own opinions.
The important fact referred to, is the demonstrated existence, all through the ages, of the so-calledMysteries.
Their existence is beyond all question. What they concealed and taught is sometimes difficult to determine.
There were also the genuine and the spurious Mysteries, and a fair appreciation of their origin, purpose, methods, and genius, as illustrated by Plato, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and nearly every great sage of antiquity, leaves no possible doubt that in these “Secret Orders” were preserved the loftiest and the most profound mental and spiritual achievements of all previous human history.
If there were no other evidence in existence at the present day except the traditions, landmarks, ritual, and Genius of Freemasonry, a careful and intelligent study of that Ancient Order would be sufficient.
Whether one Mason in a thousand to-day apprehends and realizes this fact, has nothing whatever to do with the real question. The evidence is there, and the indifference or superficial intelligence of numbers cannot alter it.
CHAPTER XICONCEPTIONS AND PORTENTS OF AN AVATAR
The conflict between Science and Religion has been thoroughly thrashed out during the last half century, and the “reign of law,” and orderly, and progressive evolution, have made for themselves a habitation and a name that nothing is likely to overthrow.
It is recognized that every effect has a sufficient and a commensurate cause, noten bloc, but in matter, energy, mind, and spirit. Action and reaction are definite mathematical processes. The parallelogram of force tends everywhere to equilibrium and secures further action and new processes under universal law.
The “special creation” theory—everything made out of nothing by a personal God—is no longer regarded as tenable by intelligent individuals, though miracle and special providence are often included in accounting for the vicissitudes of life, just as the so-called scientist superficially and flippantly uses the word “coincidence,” as though it really explained anything.
“The rational order that pervades the universe,” as Prof. Huxley defined the concept and aim of scientific discovery, has steadily gained ascendancy,until it dominates and measures individual intelligence.
The criticism is still occasionally made that this means Pantheism, overlooking the fact that in all mythologies and cosmologies, an ideal and pure theism was recognized as lying back of and beyond the pantheons of the gods and the deification of the powers of Nature.
This was true in the Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and Hindoo mythologies. Back of the many, and beyond the transient and contending divinities, was theOne, postulated, but unknown and changeless.
Every religion known to man, with the advancing civilization of a people, copied, modified, adopted, and adapted the mythology and folklore of some pre-existing religion and people. This is readily demonstrable with the Hebrew, Greek, and later Christian dispensations, notwithstanding the most strenuous and persistent determination to deny, disprove, and destroy the ancient records.
It is embodied in the etymology of the very names of heroes, gods, and demigods. A new language arising with any peoplede novocan nowhere be found.
Phonetics and picturegraphs, the various alphabets and glyphs, are mixed and modified, but never invented nor altogether changed.
Complicated as they may be, it is thus that philology, ethnology, theology, and anthropologyconstitute a consistent whole, the mythology and folklore of mankind. This reveals the practical unity and solidarity of the human race.
The tradition and prophecy among the ancient Hebrews of the coming of the Messiah, the portents that heralded, and the signs and wonders that preceded or accompanied his appearance, are merely translations or adaptations from previous eras, Buddhas, or Avatars.
Whether Christian or non-Christian, the object of the advent is always identical.
The light of the spirit having become enfeebled or obscured, the people are left in darkness and given over to sin and wickedness. Moral ruin seems inevitable unless there is a divine influx, a new Avatar, or Buddha, or Advent of the God-man.
God incarnates himself as the son of Mary, and Jesus says, “I am come a light into the world that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness.”
Christna says, “Though I am unborn, and my nature is eternal, and I am the Lord also of all creatures, yet taking control of my nature-form, I am born by my illusive power. For whenever piety decays, O son of Bharata, and impiety is in the ascendant, then I produce myself. For the protection of good men, for the destruction of evildoers, for the re-establishment of piety, I am born from age to age.” (Bhagavadgita.)
The historical Buddha taught that he was onlyone of a long series of Buddhas, who appear at intervals in the world, and who all teach the same system. After the death of each Buddha his religion flourishes for a time and then decays, till at last it is completely forgotten and wickedness and violence rule the earth. The names of twenty-four of these Buddhas who appeared previous to Gautama have been handed down to us, just as the “second coming of Christ” is believed in and referred to among the Christians.
Even the Mohammedan Koran refers to this succession of prophets and messengers of Allah. The same is true of the Parsis.
“I have said that I first of all chose Abad, and after him I sent thirteen prophets in succession, all called Abad. By these fourteen prophets the world enjoyed prosperity.”
“Tradition informs us that when these auspicious prophets and their successors behold evil to prevail among mankind, they invariably withdraw from among them—as they could not endure to behold or hear wickedness.”
This is precisely what happened to Egypt after the ambitious priesthood had gained the ascendency. The Master Builders retired.
Bonwick says (“Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought”): “What is commonly called theChrist ideaof humanity, thus appears to have been the hope and consolation of the ancient Egyptians so many thousand years ago.”
That which thus appears and disappears, diesout and is born again, is the spiritual light in the soul of man.
The diversity of man’s intellectual activities exercise, elaborate, and deepen his mental perceptions, and these largely concern the things of sense and time, his appetites, passions, desires, and ambitions.
Back of and beyond all these lie the things of the spirit. On the physical plane of life the former obscure and crowd out the latter, which are thus continually in need of renewal.
In adapting the new revelation to the conditions of life on the physical plane, it is intellectualized and theologized. Pundits and theologians undertake toexplainwhat it all means and how it happened to be. Hence arise wrangles, disputes, and finally creeds, dogmas, and persecution.
“Men fight like devils for the love of God.” This is the ultimate history of every religion known to man.
Meantime, the soul of man, a spiritual being dwelling in a material body on the physical plane, is seeking real knowledge of spiritual things.
This real knowledge is an experience of the soul. It concerns, and is comprised in, theliving of a life. It is more than mind or intellect. It isknowledgegained by experience. “This only I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.”
“Whether in the body or out of the body, I know not, but I saw things impossible to utter.”
Gradually man’sideaof God and his conception of Nature have changed and enlarged.
Man, as a spiritual being, is part of a spiritual universe. He has been able to harmonize his concept of God and Nature progressively as he has gained larger views and deeper insight of both. He is no longer a puppet of infinite caprice, nor a somewhat “improved animal.”
The idea of man as a “fallen god” with the capacity to regain his heavenly estate, is far nearer the truth.
As man advances in knowledge through the combined experiences of his spiritual nature and his physical embodiment, his beliefs change, his horizon enlarges, and his concepts become elevated and purified. The past is apprehended and utilized and the future intelligently anticipated. He begins to understand.
This means the recognition of law and order, permanency,Foundation, and stability.
The birth stories, the portents, signs and wonders that announce, accompany, or follow the birth of a Messiah or Avatar, are almost identical. A common instinct seems to have led all scripture-compilers to infer a simultaneous stimulus of nature and man upon the appearance of what the Hindoo calls an Avatar.
Men, too, seem prepared to expect such an advent as its necessary time approaches. It is an instinct which tells them that “the darkest hour precedes the dawn.”
In the Christian scriptures the premonitions and birth stories are found largely in the Apocryphalbooks. Doubtless the copying and substitution from the lives of Christna and Buddha were too plain.
At the death of Jesus the seismic, astral, and cosmic disturbances are graphically described, as befitting the death of a god. “The veil of the temple was rent in twain,” etc.
The simple fact is that mankind feels instinctively in the soul the far-reaching influences at work. The spiritual nature is stirred to its depths, and when he tries to describe what he sees and feels, his emotions, fears, or aspirations being at white heat, his imagination draws from the folklore of other times, races, and religions, to express what he so powerfully, but vaguely senses.
But beyond all this, the time of great religious revivals and social upheavals is likely to coincide with seismic disturbance, tidal waves and the like, owing to the conjunction of planets under the general law of cycles. Man is completely involved with and evolved from the bosom of Nature. His freedom is determined by knowledge and obedience to Law.
From the mystic Hymns of Orpheus, with the legends of Gods, demigods, and heroes, and the personification of the varied powers of man and nature, arose the Greek Pantheon, which, in poetic concept, romantic and dramatic embodiment and expression, as a concise and complete whole, has probably never been equaled by man.
True, every essential element, under a differentname and detail, may be found elsewhere, but never equaled in concise and constructive folklore and mythology.
But running underneath all this, like a vein of gold under the mountain, was the philosophy of Plato. Grasping theOnefrom the many, Unity from the fantastic diversity, he came to the individual experience of the human soul and its conscious mastership over the body and the things of sense and time.
Civic pride, patriotism, and heroism, walked side by side with dialectics, and the pantheon of the gods and the achievements of warriors rivaled each other on the stage, as themes for the poetic philosopher and dramatist.
Mythology and folklore here furnished a background from which the philosophy of the mysteries and the real science of life gained a hearing.
Plato and Pythagoras generalized, and with many reservations represented that which they had been taught in the mysteries of Egypt.
Greece, with its triumphs in literature, in the drama and in art, and all its magnificent civilization, knew no Avatar.
Jacolliot, in his “Bible in India,” has shown conclusively that not only the whole Greek pantheon, its folklore and mythology, and even its civil code were adopted from the Laws of Manu and the far older Aryan civilization, including even the names of heroes.
The fame of Greece rests upon itsGenius forConstructionin Art and Architecture and the Drama, and upon the open door it gave to Philosophy. There was no dominant priesthood to close the door of progress.
It utilized all the past and built and beautified the present.
It bequeathed no creed nor dogma to the future, and yet its civilization was transcendent and is immortal.
It had its canons of Art and of Architecture. These it demonstrated by constructive work. It illustrated, explained and exemplified, but it did not argue nor dogmatize.
The world for two thousand years has been “going back to Greece” and trying to explain how it all happened, just as we have been trying to explain Goethe’s “Faust.”
Genius is transcendent and immortal.
With the decline of Greece there arose the Genius of the Tiber, Imperial Rome, and the Cæsars.
Rome created anAvatarout of the “Babe of Bethlehem.” Having enthroned Jehovah, it proceeded to deify Jesus, and then by substitution to take the place of both.
Imperial Rome, the “Scarlet Mother of the Tiber,” assumed the government and dictatorship of the world. Imperial, dogmatic, relentless, the arbiter of the fate of humanity on earth and beyond.
Here was arbitrary, relentlesspowerat any cost, to be maintained on any terms. “The end always justified the means.”
In the civilization of Greece, the Individual, the citizen was first, and association and co-operation built the State.
With Rome the Individual is nothing but a pawn, an accessory to the Church. It was and is the Church first, last, and all the time. The Individual can claim no right nor prerogative except as a concession from the Church.
The contrast is extreme and absolute between the Genius of Greece and that of Rome.
As the Genius of Greece was adapted from the older Aryan, so also was that of Rome, from the Brahmans, through Egypt.
Among the various Avatars of old India designated as “Incarnations of Vishnu,” Siva “the destroyer,” was often in evidence.
Rome proceeded to adopt the Hindoo Trinity—Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva—(the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer), and to so shape its creed and dogmas as to secure and maintain the power of Mother Church, simply with a change of names—“Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
It has enslaved nations and slaughtered millions in order to maintain its power. For more than fifteen hundred years it has maintained its relentless warfare against the inalienable rights of the Individual, and the inevitable progress of humanity.
It has escaped the execration of the world only by its priestly trick of deifying Jesus and sophisticating every doctrine that he taught. Supporting its pretensions by Mariolatry, the AuricularConfession, and its army of spies and inquisitors, it has dominated mankind, impoverished whole nations, devastated provinces and murdered all who opposed its progress wherever and whenever it has gained civil power.
Rome is to-day the literal and visible reincarnation ofSiva, theAvatar of Destruction. She has originated nothing. Her mass and all her ritualistic mummeries are adopted from paganism at its worst stage and in its most degenerate form, and she awaits the fate that befell Egypt and all her predecessors, “Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain.”
Protestantism has hitherto “protested” only in part. Refusing Mariolatry and auricular confession, Protestantism, by accepting the miraculous conception, the deification of Jesus and the vicarious atonement, has kept Rome in countenance.
When these are swept away, and their doom is already declared by the leaders of thought in nearly all our institutions of higher learning, the RomanAvatarwill stand revealed in all its nakedness and villainy to the execration of mankind. It is this “Modernism” that “His Holiness” so much fears and is trying to arrest. It is too late, unless civilization and the march of time move backward.
The most amazing thing about it all is, how the world, with its present intelligence and culture, can be so indifferent to this most aggressive, cruel, and relentless Avatar of all the ages, instead of repelling it with contempt and execration.
Thirty-seven Italian Cardinals,[2]proud and arrogant, rule the Church, elect the Pope, and assume dictatorship of the earth, as also arbiters of human destiny, here and hereafter. America, the corn-bin of this modern Egypt, by courtesy hasone cardinal, just to keep her in countenance.
The effrontery is cyclopean, but our supineness and indifference are deplorable and inexcusable.
Shipping her impoverished, degraded, criminal, and priest-ridden hordes to America by the million every year, Rome is massing her army for the overthrow of our government and all our present civilization. With her dogma of obedience, her army nowvotesand will, by and by,fightunder the dictatorship of the Cardinals at Rome. Already undermining our Public Free Schools, boycotting the public press, with their army of Jesuit spies and secret assassins of every liberty prized by man, the “merry war” goes on right under our eyes, and we sleep and dream and blindly assume that “there is no danger.”
Read the history of the Crusaders, of the Protestant Reformation and of the “Holy Inquisition,” and if further enlightenment is needed, study the origin, history, and denouement of all the Avatars of the past, the fate of Egypt, the cities of the plain, where paganism and a degenerate priesthood usurped the place of pure and undefiled religion, and literally wiped from the map of theworld the civilizations of the past.Nemesisis written in letters of flame across the starry heavens, as an atonement for the blood of nations and the degeneracy and diabolism of an ambitious, cruel, relentless, and unrestrained priesthood. And it is all being literally repeated to-day without the novelty of a new idea, or method, or device, or motive. It isThe Reincarnation of the Avatar of Siva, the Destroyer.
[2]At the death of Pope Leo there were 65 Cardinals, 39 of whom were Italians.
At the death of Pope Leo there were 65 Cardinals, 39 of whom were Italians.
CHAPTER XIIPORTENTS OF THE PRESENT TIME
There is no disguising nor denying the fact that during the past half century institutional religion in the West has steadily lost its hold upon the great mass of the people. Creeds and dogmas are denied and repudiated.
The “higher criticism” represents the reluctant yielding of theologians to the existing conditions. In order to maintain any hold whatever upon the people and retain a semblance of the old faith, they have revised and modified beliefs and interpretations, and relaxed completely the former demand for the confession of faith and acceptance of the old creeds. Mere general verbal assent admitting of many mental reservations is now often deemed sufficient.
In the meantime, the living of the life and the doing of the work demanded by Jesus have come more and more into demand and general recognition.
The “Emmanuel Movement,” now gaining such recognition and making such rapid progress, is sufficient evidence at this point.
With the Church of Rome no such change is manifest. By keeping its people in ignorance, bycondemning all change or any improvement under the name of “Modernism,” and by insisting upon the dogma of infallibility and blind obedience, Rome thus far has resisted all change and refused all compromise.
The change in Protestantism represents the growth of intelligence, the recognition of the rights of conscience, and individual and intellectual freedom.
The stability so apparent in Romanism relies solely on Ignorance, Superstition, and Fear, enforced by the dogma of “Infallibility,” and reinforced by the power of “Excommunication” and the penalty of “Anathema.”
The unity and stability of the Roman Church, thus secured by force, will presently be found to be apparent only. It could only work and hold in the dark ages. Internal division and dissension, now known to exist, await only some fresh act of oppression, or some new abomination, or abuse of political power, to disrupt its solidarity.
In the meantime physical science has steadily advanced, opening new avenues of wealth, industry, and opportunity, and so developing the resources of this Western world.
But more important and far-reaching still have been the discoveries regarding the finer forces of nature.
The wonderful development and application of discoveries in Electricity have not only opened a new world previously unknown and unsuspected,but have seemed to endow these subtle forces almost with an intelligence of their own. Crass materialism is dead and space practically annihilated.
If a single wire or a vibrating disc cannot originate intelligent speech, it can retain, repeat, and transmit the qualities, tones and inflections of the human voice in a way that seems miraculous and uncanny. It is thus that our concepts of nature have been enlarged, refined, and actually spiritualized. “Brutal” and “dead” matter are no longer in evidence nor even mentioned.
With the advent of modern spiritualism came another group of phenomena. Making the largest allowance for fraud, self-deception, and all the vagaries of the imagination, no intelligent individual, familiar with the phenomena, will attempt to deny the extension of man’s psychic world of consciousness and the manifestation of intelligence in ways and under conditions previously unknown. The identification of these intelligences, always difficult, and generally problematical, need not here be discussed at all. The facts and the phenomena are all that we are here concerned with.
The most important consideration regarding all these phenomena is that they do notdevelop, but on the contrarydominatethe individual. They are, in fact, altogether subjective. The medium may put himself in the negative or passive condition to be controlled, but he cannotcommandnorcontrolthe influence nor the “entity” that influences him,and eventually he loses the power to resist it, and likewise the power of self-control.
Science demandsfacts, and here are facts in abundance. These facts supplement the discoveries in electricity and nature’s finer forces, and pass from physics to metaphysics, from physiology to psychology, and push back the veil of the unseen, and hitherto unknown, many degrees.
The trend of all this progress, and of these discoveries, is exceedingly plain.
Our concepts of Nature, of Life, and of Man have been almost immeasurably enlarged, refined, and elevated.
Expectancy is in the air. “What next is going to happen?” is the question everywhere asked. The conditions and portents, in a general way, are those that herald a new Avatar; an Avatar now, of science rather than of religion; of knowledge rather than of faith, and this knowledge is to be of spiritual things, the foundations of which are already in evidence.
This science is not to be time-serving, but man-serving; not so much a renewal of faith as a revelation of knowledge; less anxious for the glory of God than for the elevation of man, which is the more direct and certain way of honoring Divinity.
This does not mean the decay nor the repudiation of religion, but arealizationoftruereligion, such as heretofore prophets have foretold, revelation has forecast, and toward which humanity has toiled and journeyed in sorrow and pain; the very religion that Jesus lived and taught. “A clean life,an open mind, an unveiled spiritual perception, a brotherliness for all, and human life a journeying upward toward the realms of eternal day, ‘with no night there, and no sorrow.’”
And why not?If man can conceive it, why may he notrealizeit? The “Old Adam” as an excuse is exploded. The “New Adam” is indeed “a quickening spirit.”
Nothing is plainer nor more demonstrable at the present day than the fact that mankind is slowly but surely shaking off the traditions and the superstitions that have bound it in the past, rising above the myths and the folklore of every age and clime, and awaking as if from slumber, to behold a new day and a new world.
This awakening is even more in evidence and remarkable in the case of woman than of man. Progress here during the last decade has been such as the world has never before seen on any such scale, and it means more to the elevation of humanity than anyone has hitherto been able to forecast or to measure.
In the meantime social and economic conditions with the great masses of the people are very far from what they should be.
Unrest and confusion are strongly in evidence. On the whole, there is far less suffering and destitution than ever before. Oppression and abominations meet with quick and powerful protest from all classes, when exposed, and at least temporary relief is quick to follow.
The blame is confined to no one class, rich or poor. The equitable distribution of wealth, resources, and opportunity that have developed beyond all precedent during the last half century, requires time. Justice and equity are not dead, but everywhere in evidence, dominating mankind at large. Public sentiment was never more keen and never nearer right than to-day. There is general confusion, however, as to methods and ways and means. The cunning shark and the selfish brute resort to concealment, cunning and subterfuge, to deceive the people and often succeed for a time, only to meet with condemnation and execration later. Injustice is often in evidence, but it is neither rampant nor dominant. It stands in fear of public sentiment.
These, in brief and in outline, are the conditions, the portents, to-day, everywhere in evidence:
1. The decay of creeds and dogmas.
2. Great progress in Science, Art, and the Crafts.
3. Immense discoveries regarding Nature’s finer forces and the psychical powers latent in man.
4. Great expectancy as to new revelations.
5. Unprecedented increase in wealth and the development of natural resources.
6. Enfranchisement of woman, and immense progress as to her rights and opportunities.
7. Economic Justice recognized and aimed at, and fortified by public sentiment, with strong efforts to secure and maintain it.
The present age or epoch is not one of darkness,but of light; not of discouragement, but of hope. It is neither retrograde nor stagnant, but progressive to a degree never before witnessed in the history of man on so large a scale and involving all classes and so many people at one time.
Organized or institutional religion alone is on the wane. Evidence and utility are everywhere demanded. Nothing is sacred simply because it is old; nor true merely because it is dogmatically asserted so to be.
Holy books, holy men, and holy days are matters of evidence, and not of blind credence.
What will the new religion—the new revelation—be? and whence will it come?