Clearing away the Fog.
An esteemed correspondent writes, “For several years I have been a reader of some of the treatises you have published in the interest of progressive thought, and have found much to admire and reread; yet an occasional paragraph containing the formula of orthodox theology, with its dogma of God and Jesus, interwoven into your sequences of argument, mystifies and perplexes my reason and judgment, and I indulge in much speculation regarding your exact position,—whether Christianity is to be vitalized and conserved by the discoverer of modern science, or the Bible dogmas and traditions reinterpreted to coincide with scientific method.”
I am not aware of having ever written anything that could make my position at all doubtful, nor do I see how doubts could arise in any one who attends carefully to my language, and does not indulge in drawing inferences therefrom which my language does not warrant. Upon this very question I have expressed myself fully in published lectures. I have never manifested any sympathy with the theology of the churches, have never failed to speak of it in terms of absolute denunciation, and see no reason why any one should suspect me of leaning in that direction.
As to the recognition of God to which my correspondent objects, I think science, as I understand it, sanctions the idea that the basic power of the universe is spiritual and not material; that spirit may evolve, create, and modify matter, but matter never originates spirit, though they have a continual interaction, which it is the function of scientists to investigate, in which investigation, anthropology, especially in its department of sarcognomy, is a long step of progress. My investigations have given me some additional evidence as to the Divine existence beyond what has been recorded, but do not sanction the personal anthropological conceptions of Deity, which bring the Divine within the conceptions of narrow and superstitious minds.
Having discarded the whole scheme of Christian theology, there is no reason why I should reject the fundamental principles of religion, which are at the basis of all religions, and which are sanctioned by the study of man’s religious nature. The spirit of the Christian religion as it appeared among the founders of Christianity appears to me a more perfect expression of religion than I find in any other of the world’s religions, more spiritual, devoted, loving, and heroic, more in accordance with the true religion which belongs to man’s noblest faculties.
As for Jesus, I think the general opinion of historians and scholars as to his historic existence is correct, but whether the historic accounts are reliable or not I am entirely certain of his existence to-day as one of the most exalted beings in the spirit world,—the spirit of the Teacher who appeared in Palestine, whose principles and purposes are the same advocated by myself, and who like all the other exalted and ancient spirits is profoundly interested in human welfare and in the progress of spiritual science, and reformation of the so-called Christian Church. I have had sufficient psychometric perception at times to realize the present character of such beings as Jesus, Moses, St. John, John the Baptist, St. Peter, Confucius, Joan of Arc, and Gen. Washington, as well as many other admirable beings whose influence falls like dews upon many sympathetic souls.
I realize most profoundly and sadly the absence from all the high places of society of those nobler qualities which I recognize in the higher world, but I labor in the hope that when mankind have advanced into the light of anthropological science they shall become enlightened enough to sympathize with the supernal life in reverent love, and to organize a social condition here which will bring even the lowest classes into so satisfactory a condition that philosophizers will no longer have to wrestle with the problem of evil and explain the great mystery that a universe so full of the marks of a grandly benevolent purpose should still be marred and dishonored by human misery and degradation. It would be an unsolvable problem to-day did we not perceive through spiritual science the immense preponderance of good in the glorious plan of life of which this world shows only the beginning.
As an anthropologist, I cannot but esteem and cherish the religious element of human nature. Sincere worship is simply the most exalted love, and fills human life with nobility and benevolence; let those who can, worship the divine; let those who shrink from the thought of the Infinite, worship the most exalted beings they may conceive, and let those who cannot quite reach the exalted beings of the spirit world, worship their parents or children, or conjugal companions,—for worship is but unlimited love,—and they who recoil from humanity may perhaps find something to adore in the beauty and grandeur of nature on this globe, which every summer arrays in beauty, and in the grandeur of stellar worlds. From love and adoration come obedience,—which is the perfect life, for it is not slavery, but harmony and delight.
Profound science does not take away religion, as superficial or false science does, but develops a far nobler, holier, and more beneficent religion than any churches comprehend. It corresponds to that ideal religion which belongs to the higher realms of the spirit world, and which has sometimes appeared on earth in inspired mortals, and most often in women whose souls were devoted to love. That this religious sentiment appeared in the time of Jesus among inspired men, I believe, and their lives and sentiments have been to me an inspiration, enabling me to believe in the practicability of that which philosophy teaches concerning the religious life, which without those illustrious examples might have seemed an unattainable excellence in the present conditions of society.