“Though the servant be wont to commit sin, yet is the Lord wont to be gracious. The Lord of Thebes spends not the whole day wroth. If he be wroth for the space of a moment it endureth not—turns to us in graciousness. Amon turns with his breath.”[36] The cry for mercy rises from the oldest literature of Hinduism. An ancient Vedic hymn has these words, “Without thee, O Varuna, I am not the master even of the twinkling of an eye. Do not deliver us unto death, though we have offended against thy commandments day by day. Accept our sacrifices, forgive our offences. Let us speak together again like old friends.”[37]
A saint of Buddhism, the noble Lama from Tibet, is represented by Rudyard Kipling as a pilgrim seeking for the River which washes away sin.
As buried civilisations gradually yield up their treasures to the explorer, the cry is heard without need of sound or language: “If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.” How is it that Spiritualism cannot hear that De Profundis? Spiritualism is without a message for the penitent, for it knows nothing of a Divine Redeemer. There is a harshness and shallowness in its conceptions of the future state, except in so far as these are influenced by Christianity. General Drayson said to Sir A. Conan Doyle, “You have not got the fundamental truth into your head. That truth is, that every spirit in the flesh passes over to the next world exactly as it is, with no change whatever. This world is full of weak or foolish people. So is the next.”
Compare such words with the language of the Burial Service. Spirits do not always pass away at their best and truest. Long illness may have clouded the perceptions, infirmities of old age may deface the character, there may come at the last “fightings and fears within, without.” Père Gratry tells us that the young priest, Henri Perreyve, one of the bravest and best of men, cried twice in his dying hour, “J’ai peur” (“I am afraid”), as if he saw the Arch-Fear confronting him in visible form. Deep knowledge of the human heart lies behind the words of the Prayer Book: “Spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, Thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from Thee.” To the latest moment of life and beyond it the soul has no resting-place except in the Rock of Ages. “The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness.” The burden of sin drops away, and the pilgrim, as he passes over, may say, as in the hour of his conversion, “He hath given me rest by His sorrow and life by His death.”
But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thinks that in “conventional Christianity” “too much seemed to be made of Christ’s death.” “The death of Christ, beautiful as it is in the Gospel narrative,” he says again, “has seemed to assume an undue importance, as though it were an isolated phenomenon for a man to die in pursuit of a reform.” “In my opinion,” he goes on, “far too much stress has been laid upon Christ’s death, and far too little upon His life. That was where the true grandeur and the true lesson lay.”… “It was this most wonderful and uncommon life, and not His death, which is the true centre of the Christian religion.”[38]
Spiritualism, in a word, does not wish to face the Cross. The “spirit-guides” talk vaguely of a “Christ-Spirit,” whose special care is the earth. There is nothing in their report of Atonement or Redemption. As Dr. Jowett has pointed out, the “New Revelation” has much to say on our Lord Jesus Christ as a “medium.” It says nothing of Him as Mediator. It offers fellowship with discarnate human personalities, but has no longing for fellowship with the Risen Lord. The ideas of the “spirit-guides” on prayer are set forth by Sir A. Conan Doyle in “The New Revelation.” The “spirits” declare that “no religion upon earth has any advantage over another, but that character and refinement are everything. At the same time, they are also in agreement that all religions which inculcate prayer and an upward glance rather than eyes for ever on the level are good. In this sense, and in no other—as a help to spiritual life—every form may have a purpose for somebody.”[39]
The cardinal doctrines of the faith are rejected by Spiritualists. Man is not regarded in their creed as “a sinner saved by grace.” Many cannot understand, Sir A. Conan Doyle tells us, such expressions as “redemption from sin,” “cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.” But the Christian says from his heart:
“Grace and life eternal
In that Blood I find.
Blest be His compassion,