“Why the necessity of this judgment?” I asked.
“Because the church is corrupt and dead; the priests are drunk with the wine of false doctrine; the people blind and without a shepherd. Therefore iniquity abounds. The flood-gates of hell are opened. The world of spirits is crowded with evil ones, who prevent the good from ascending to heaven, and infuse the most direful evils and falsities into men on earth. The prophets are dumb. The magician and the sorcerer are in the ascendant.
“Let me tell you something,” he added in a solemn and subdued tone, “which, if you comprehend its full meaning, would make you tremble with fear. The order of the universe has been so far broken that demons have issued from hell; and there is a general insurrection of the evil spheres against heaven itself. Unless these hells are subdued and these evil ones cast out from the world of spirits, the people on earth will be obsessed, [pg 191]soul and body, by wicked spirits, human society will be destroyed, and universal chaos reign.”
“You appall me by your prediction. But my wonder is, how such dangers can be impending, and the human race know nothing about it.”
“Because they know nothing of spiritual things—nothing of this world of spirits in which are the cause and origin of all things. Because they look downward, and not upward. Because they have eyes and see not; ears and hear not. Because they have perverted and nullified the Word of God by a sensuous interpretation of its meaning.”
“Alas! then,” said I, “how can the lost order be restored and the world saved?”
“By one arm alone; that of the Creator, the Supreme Being, the Lord.”
“Oh,” said I, “this Being of supreme power created man in his supreme wisdom, gave him angelic attendants, a written Law, an established Church—and behold the result! What new influences can He bring to bear upon his fallen and doomed creatures?”
“Listen. He has clothed Himself with clouds and come down to us—to men on the earth. As the sun clothes his consuming rays with an atmosphere of vapor, which moderates them and accommodates them to the states of man and beast, so has God clothed himself in a finite human form and thus come down to his creatures. He is now engaged in spiritual combats with all these evil spheres. He is casting these lions of wickedness into their dens and shutting their mouths. He will purge and purify the world of spirits, deliver heaven from the [pg 192]assaults of the wicked, lift the great shadow of chaos from the world, restore man to his free agency and make him hereafter capable of a higher and more spiritual life. God is, henceforth, in the eyes of his children, not an invisible Spirit, but a Divine Man.”
“These are mysteries and dreams to my understanding. I cannot comprehend how the Supreme Being, infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent, can assume a human body and live like one of us.”