Christian Spiritualism also ostentatiously proclaims that it has nothing in the world to do with “Woman’s Rights,” “Vaccination,” or any such merely human interests. It would seek to create an interest in another life, whilst ignoring the vital interests of this. But that is to sign its own death-warrant and to seal its own speedy doom. This is to repeat the mistake and follow the failure of the Christian system of saving souls for another life whilst allowing them to be damned in this. At the same time, it would drag Spiritualism into the bankrupt business of Historic Christianity and bind up a third testament to save the other two, as a sort of Trinity in Unity. But as a system of thought, of religion, or morals and a mode of interpreting nature, Historic Christianity is moribund and cannot be saved, or resuscitated by transfusion of new blood into it; not if you bled Spiritualism to death in trying to give it a little new life. They try in vain to make our phenomena guarantee the miracles of mythology as spiritual realities. They try in vain to tether the other world in this and make it draw for the fraudulent old faith. They keep on jumping up and down to persuade themselves and others that they are free. But it is only a question of length of chain, for those who are still fettered fast at foot upon the ancient standing-ground.
I have not answered the writer in the paper quoted by Light, and approved by Dr. Wyld, for the reason that his acquaintance with my data was too limited to make discussion profitable or useful. Those data are already presented in accessible books and pamphlets, and there is no need for me to repeat them in reply to him. Those who undertake to write on so perplexing a subject ought to be able to illuminate it and enlighten their opponents. The problems are not to be solved by any amount of personal simplicity. I am always ready to meet any competent and well-informed defender of the faith upon the platform or in the press. I should prefer it to be a bishop, who is also an Egyptologist. But beggars are not allowed to be choosers. I am prepared at any time to demonstrate the entirely mythical and mystical origin of the Christ, and the non-spiritual, non-historical beginnings of the vast complex called Christianity.
Gerald Massey.
[Any “Bishop Egyptologist,” or even Assyriologist, of whom we have heard there are not a few in England, is cordially invited to defend his position in the pages of Lucifer. The “Son of the Morning” is the Light-Bearer, and welcomes light from every quarter of the globe.—Ed.]
[Note.—As Lucifer cannot concur in the exclusively exoteric view, taken by Mr. Massey, of this allegorical, though none the less philosophical, scripture, the next number will contain an article dealing with the esoteric meaning of the New Testament.—Ed.]
TO THE AUTHOR OF “LIGHT ON THE PATH.”
There is a sentence in your “Comments” which has haunted me with a sense of irritation: “To obtain knowledge by experiment is too tedious a method for those who aspire to do real work,” &c. Have we any knowledge, of whatever sort, that has been of use in the world, which has been obtained otherwise than experimentally? By patient and persistent toil of sifting and testing, we have obtained the little knowledge that is of service to us. Is there such a thing as “certain intuition”? Has intuitive knowledge, if such there be, been accepted as positive knowledge until it has been submitted to the test of experiment? Would it be right that it should be? Your illustration of the “determined workman” brings the question down (as I think the question should be brought) to the plane of practice. Is there any workman who can know his tools until he has tried them? Is not the history of knowledge the history of intuitions put to the test of practice? Intuitions, or what we call such, seem to me quite as apt and likely to deceive us as anything in the world; we only know them for good when we have tried them.
Interrogator.