Creeds
THERE is a passage in the Scriptures which says, What doth it profit though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? Later on is written that faith without works is dead.The question naturally arises: faith in what or whom? Faith in the existence of God, perhaps? Or faith in some particular brand of religion?
Though the Church will emphasise that faith without works is a perilous situation for any man to be in, yet it would unhesitatingly declare that works without faith is altogether fatal. That means not only faith in the existence of God, but a belief in all the doctrines as set forth in the various clauses of the creeds.
Earlier in these present writings I spoke to you a little on the subject of faith, but here we have faith of another kind.
The Christian faith consists of a body of beliefs set down in a succession of clauses under the title of a creed. A creed would be described as a number of beliefs held by a society to which all must subscribe who wish to become and remain members of that society. In our present case, the society is a religious one, namely, the Church.
The Church's creeds are claimed to be compiled from the Scriptures, with particular reference to some of the sayings or teachings of Jesus.
Some of the creeds are vastly more complex than others, but all of them contain statements which are incapable of explanation. Indeed, when theologians attempt to explain in detail anyone of the creeds, their explication is but 'an exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance.' The Church has invented bizarre beliefs, supposedly based upon the Scriptures, and precipitated itself into insurmountable difficulties in its attempted enucleation of them.
In most of the Church's official writings the greatest possible stress is ever laid upon faith, with additional emphasis upon the faith. Without it man is practically doomed. Orthodoxy deals in faith as in a commodity. Faith is a passport to heaven.
What does each man think himself of the faith as codified in the creeds? What is his attitude towards them? That is for each individual to say for himself. Many will contend that man must have something in which to believe, in which to place his hope and trust. He must have something 'to cling to'. With that we are in full sympathy, but why cannot man put his hope and trust in facts, and cling to the truth? That is far more substantial than the most sublime beliefs.
How many men can understand the various clauses of the creeds? If they are truly honest with themselves they will admit that they do not really understand one fraction of them, and the official explanations leave them no wiser. Yet they are prepared to believe in something which they cannot comprehend, whose meaning might be anything for all they know.
At least one of the creeds has been incorporated into the general services of the Church, of which it forms an important part. It is recited regularly by great numbers of people all over the earth world. In every sense it is but lip-service. The 'faithful' have got into a state of spiritual somnolence. The prayer-book is merely a means of reminding them of certain words to be said in a certain order. They are usually gabbled or mumbled. As for the creed, it matters not whether it is hurried through or not, for the words mean nothing in the minds of most folk, though they iterate the words 'I believe'.
What of the spiritual significance of the creeds, the evaluation which spiritual truths place upon them? Faith of the kind we are now discussing is wholly ineffectual. All the faith in the earth world, codified into a hundred or more clauses, making whatever claims the compilers of them might see fit to make, and recited by a milliard of earnest, sincere folk, is powerless to effect one scintilla of difference to the eternal truths of the spirit world, and cannot produce one fraction of a degree of spiritual progression or intellectual advancement in any person. There is no law in the spirit world that can be altered, qualified or modified by any faith that is held by any person upon earth—nor in the spirit world itself! Faith cannot alter facts.
People will believe, or so they will claim, that according to the terms of the creed known as the Apostles' creed, Jesus descended into hell and rose again upon the third day. Have those folk ever paused to analyse their belief? Would they believe those two statements in the same way as they believe that the sun will rise upon the morrow? They have no evidence that Jesus descended into hell. But they will say that the probability of the sun's rising tomorrow is so overpowering that it can be considered in all respects as an absolute certainty. Could the same conviction be applied to the descent of Jesus into hell?
Theological opinions are divided as to what is the fate of a man who has no faith, using the word in its religious sense. Some say that he will suffer eternal death.
It is difficult to know just exactly what is eternal death. As far as man's life itself is concerned there is no such thing as eternal death. The physical body is the only part of man that can undergo death. In this sense only can the term have any meaning. Once the physical body is dead, it is eternally dead, for no power on earth, or in the spirit realms either, can bring life back to it.
Of course, the Church does not so interpret the words. If it did, it would have the credit for making a profound statement of the truth—a very great rarity! No, it is not to the physical body that theologians are referring, but to the soul of man, the immortal soul. Thus, the soul is immortal on the one hand, and can suffer eternal death upon the other!
Theologians declare that man is capable of 'losing his soul', as though it were a possession of which man could be deprived because of misbehaviour, or because he had disobeyed one of the Church's peculiar laws, or because he had proved himself unfit to have one.
The soul of man cannot undergo death, eternal or otherwise, for the soul of man is imperishable.
It may be asked, 'What is a man's soul'? We need not trouble ourselves with theological definitions—speculations would be a better word—but here I will use the word to signify all those qualities or attributes which collectively go to form what one sees manifested in a man's personality. The soul of a man might be described as the sum of his experiences as indelibly recorded upon the tablets of his mind. Your soul, my friend, is just you, as you know yourself, with all your particular ways and predilections, all your fancies, your likes and dislikes, with all your inmost thoughts and beliefs, your virtues.
That is the untechnical use which I here make of the word soul, and I do so for present purposes only. Difficulties are otherwise bound to arise in trying to explain certain things to you in earthly terms that come within the range of your understanding—and of my own. For if I cannot yet understand certain things myself, how can I explain them to you with any hope of your comprehending them?
The physical body is the only part of man that is perishable. All the rest of him is imperishable. However low he may sink spiritually, yet he cannot perish. He may remain in his low estate for aeons of time, yet still he lives. There is no power, ecclesiastical or otherwise, that can remove life from any single person. However many horrific laws the Church may introduce, the violation of any one of which can, in the minds of the doctors of the Church, bring everlasting death to the soul, those ecclesiastical laws cannot make one particle of difference. It is true some theologians refer to the soul as being immortal, but that merely reveals the confusion that exists upon the part of the theologians because, lacking the truth, they make rash speculations.
The Church has claimed certain rights over the soul. It has framed laws, purely upon its own authority, by which the spiritual state, even the spiritual locality, of a person after death is pre-assigned. 'If you die in a state of mortal sin', says one Church with an extreme of dogmatism, 'you will perish in hell for all eternity'. The pontifical thunders of the Church—of this one in particular—make no difference whatever to the facts of spirit life. We still pursue our task of helping folk who arrive here in their vast numbers and so many of them in a state of 'mortal sin'.
They seem none the worse for being in that supposed terrible condition! If this particular declaration were other than the trivial rubbish that it is, the lower regions of the spirit world—by which, of course, I mean the dark regions—would by now be crammed with good folk whose only 'sin' was disobedience to some petty ecclesiastical law or ruling. It is a pity the Church has made itself appear so foolish in the eyes of us here.
What does a lack of faith involve in the light of spiritual truth? Just this: nothing. Faith of the theological brand has no significance at all in any part of these lands, from the very highest and most perfect to the very lowest and most imperfect, from the realms of pure light to the realms of pure darkness.
The writers in the New Testament place an unwarranted and unwarrantable stress upon faith. That, strictly speaking, is not the fault of those writers. It is the work of various people in later times who have introduced so many interpolations into the Scriptures that the original text has become grossly distorted in some passages, wildly untrue in others.
Faith makes no difference to a man's abode in this world of the spirit, nor does the lack of it.
Many centuries past certain of the eastern races upon earth regarded the sun as the visible embodiment of the Father, a representative of Him on earth. The sun beneficently bathed the earth with light and warmth, and enabled them to grow food with which to sustain in part their physical bodies. The sun helped them to keep alive on earth. They did not worship the sun, as so many of them are reputed to have done, but solely regarded the sun as symbolising God. They have been, and are still, called sun worshippers, and are looked upon as pagans and idolaters of the worst kind. They had no faith, as theologians now use the word, yet when they arrived in these lands they were not one whit the worse for it spiritually.
One Church asserts that all that is necessary for 'salvation' is contained within the Scriptures. In fact, according to the same Church's teachings, the whole of man's life in the 'hereafter' is dependant upon 'salvation'.
But those ancient people of the east lived upon earth hundreds of years before either the Scriptures were ever written or salvation ever heard of. Why should salvation become necessary for mankind upon earth only two thousand years ago? Why was it not necessary ages before that time? Later, we will see the Church's ridiculous answer to these questions.
Orthodoxy has made a monstrous and fantastic mystery of the spiritual part of man's life upon earth and, after his dissolution, in the spirit world. It has imposed conditions upon him which it has no right to do. The old cry was heard, and still is heard in some quarters: no salvation outside the Church, but it involved too many difficulties, too many problems to which a solution could not be found. Men used their reasoning powers, and could perceive no logical reason why there should be no salvation outside the Church.
The Christian religion has given itself charge over men's spiritual welfare, laid down a multiplicity of rules, invented innumerable beliefs, as revealed in the creeds, and so circumscribed man's spiritual life on earth that his chances of anything but 'hell' for his post-mortem portion are exceedingly remote.
As with the extracts I gave you from the burial service, so will I treat of the creeds, that is, with extracts taken passim. It makes no difference to which of them one refers—they are all equally ineffectual.
ButI would ask you to remember that to be a Christian means, strictly speaking, to subscribe to the terms of the simplest of these creeds and that the Christian religion regards itself as possessing exclusive rights in the promotion and care of man's spiritual well-being. The Christian religion is looked upon by Christians as the criterion of all religions, and that only through it can salvation be gained.
The first article or clause of the creeds opens with the words, 'I believe in God the Father almighty.'
Here a question at once presents itself, 'What becomes, in the spirit world, of an individual who feels that, for one reason or another, he cannot believe in the existence of God?' There are scores of good folk who, when disaster of some kind has descended upon them, are unable to believe that God would permit such terrible things to happen, because God must be a God of good.
They argue, therefore, that there is no God. No one, they say in effect, could exist 'up there', knowing that there is so much appalling misery 'down here'. One only needs to point to the ghastly travail through which the earth has passed for copious examples of personal tragedies. Whether their disbelief in the Father becomes gradually softened, as it were, and they eventually think differently, it makes no difference to that person individually if, when he arrives here in the spirit world, he still has that disbelief upon him. Who is to condemn him? There is no one. The Father Himself will not do so. He condemns no one, nor does He allow anyone else to perform that office. That is a statement that I have made to you before, but it cannot be reiterated too often.
The Church has a fearful fate in store for the atheist—hell for all eternity.
It is not what a man believes during his earthly life that counts: it is his actions and their motives upon which the great assessment takes place. If he does spiritually well, and yet does not believe in God, it is his spiritual performance that counts—and always will count.
Those who find cause to disagree with my writings will hasten to conclude perhaps that I advocate or countenance a disbelief in God, or that I attach little importance to belief in the Father. I hasten to affirm emphatically that that is not so.
The facts are simply these: Orthodoxy condemns to perdition the man who professes his disbelief in the Father. The spirit world, the land of truth, does no such thing. The Church divides the spirit world into two regions: heaven, where all is bright and beautiful, and hell, where all is dark and dreadful. Unless a man is 'saved', he will go to hell. Heaven is reserved for the Christian, and the Christian, of course, believes in God. The inference is obvious, theologically speaking. Spiritually speaking, the inference is all wrong, because the whole belief is false from start to finish. Every man is his own saviour. Salvation is by personal effort alone. I am using the word salvation, not in its theological sense, but in the sense that a person must carve out his own spiritual destiny, though he will always be under the care and guidance of wiser spiritual beings.
When the atheist arrives in the spirit world he receives a shock, but his shock is, in many respects and upon many occasions, no worse, frequently less, than that experienced by many a cleric, for, from the spiritual standpoint, to believe in no God is no worse than to believe in the strange God of Orthodoxy.
When the atheist finds himself in these lands, he discovers also that he has made a tremendous and vital mistake. The existence of the Father needs no proof in these realms. The fact is evident upon every hand in an immense variety of ways. The atheist does not require convincing. No lengthy or profound argument, no deep delving into hermeneutics, are necessary. He convinces himself, and most frequently in the shortest space of time, that there exists not only a God, but that same God is the Father of us all.
The mind of the atheist is not lumbered up with a multitude of complex beliefs. Therefore, he reaches a true estimation of the Father with greater facility. The non-believer will say that he does not believe in the existence of God because he has had no proof of His existence. Given the proof, he will say in effect, and he will be convinced. He gets it. Not by our giving it to him, but by the exercise of an intelligence free from an accumulation of false religious conceptions.
Thereupon he also sees his mistake, and is deeply regretful. He sees something of what he has missed while upon his earthly journey. But nevertheless, great is his happiness, for in finding the Father he has found himself. His enjoyment of his new life is thereby enhanced. It is the beginning of a new life for him in every respect. So much for the non-believer.
What of the cleric, especially one of pronounced narrow views? So strong is his 'belief' in the God of his own fashioning, or that of his particular Church, that oft-times he makes his advent into these lands full of religious confidence. He feels himself secure by virtue not only of his religious calling, but through the protection which he thinks his beliefs will gain for him. The teachings of Orthodoxy are filling his mind. He is prepared for his 'judgement', and prepared, too, if necessary, to seek mercy according to the terms of his religion.
The conception of God that Orthodoxy has manufactured is the only conception he has. His notions of heaven are the usual ones, hazy, vague, and undefined. He is prepared for something; he scarcely knows what. So often have we witnessed spiritual arrogance in such cases. The clergyman on so many occasions has demanded as his right that all that he believed and taught his misguided flock should be fulfilled.
He will boldly assert that he has always done his duty by the Church; that he has worshipped God in the manner laid down in the prayer book; that he has taught the Scriptures as he was in those very Scriptures told so to do; that always he upheld the rights and dignities of the church; that he kept the Sabbath holy, and, in every respect where it was humanly possible, did all that could have been reasonably asked of him. But most of all, he trusted in the merciful forgiveness of God, and where all else might be overlooked or cast aside, that at least he could claim as his privilege in being a Christian.
This is not a hypothetical case which I am placing before you, but one which so frequently presents itself during the course of our work here. I have not 'drawn the long bow', to use an old expression.
Now the cleric takes a deal of shaking in his old and peculiar beliefs. Those notions have been with him for perhaps the major part of his earthly life. They are part of him. His shock is all the greater, therefore, when we have to explain to him gently that his views must undergo a thorough reconstruction. His faith is fantastic in the light of spiritual truth; it has no substance.
He sees his cherished beliefs tumbling away one after another as he meets the truth for the first time. The awful God of his Church he finds to be an awful travesty. 'Merciful forgiveness' he discovers to be a pure fiction. The punctiliousness with which he performed the services of his Church he sees has availed him precious little. The only credit that he can perceive in the latter is that he 'did his duty' as an honest man.
Where he was so proud and confident, he begins to feel less proud and less confident. But we strive to give him confidence of another and better kind. We can assure him that all is very far from lost. He inclines to think that it is. But our assiduous efforts will eventually bring peace to his troubled mind, and so, at length, he will be the happiest man one could wish to see.
As a very pleasant reward for our endeavours we have another good friend and colleague to join us in work. He knows just what he went through himself. His own experiences stand him in good stead. He enjoys membership in our great organisation of 'late' clergymen, among whom we number ministers of every former religious denomination under the sun, and of ecclesiastical rank from the highest to the lowest.
Our society achieves something that cannot be done on earth among the ministers of any of the religions—it achieves complete unity.
The second part of the first article of the Apostles' creed is an abstruse one. It affirms belief in God as the creator of heaven and earth. That is how the simplest of the creeds states it. Another version is: maker of all things visible and invisible.
The whole subject of creation, as that term is used by theologians, is not merely difficult. That is a mild word with which to express it. It is incomprehensible.
Let us look at the matter from the point of view of pure inquiry. The creeds state the belief that God created the earth. Science has affirmed that the earth by some means broke away from another and larger body unknown. What of that other body from which the earth world separated? It would seem to the ordinary mind one suggestion leads back to another, so to speak, but never reaches a source.
The Church teaches that the universe was created by the Father by an effort of will. The Church is therefore stating something which it cannot possibly know, because millions of us even in these lands do not know. The answer to many problems of like nature remain undiscovered and undiscoverable on earth. Those answers are to be found in the spirit world.
But it does not follow that they are open and accessible to all who seek. It is conceivable, you might suggest, that I could consult one of the great halls of learning, and there, by diligent research find the solution to the problem of the creation of the universe and all that is living therein. In many instances that would be perfectly true, but in so doing I should first have to possess some knowledge of the subject, or else I might be setting down for you matters regarding which I should not have the remotest idea as to whether I was making a correct statement or an incorrect one, a wise one or a foolish one.
I must perforce know what I am talking about before I pass on my information with any hope of your understanding it. I must be able to understand it myself. But not all information is thus thrown open to us in the halls of learning. Volumes upon some subjects are conspicuously missing. Among those must be numbered such as contain secrets which are not for men to know yet. The creation of the universe, or how it came into being, is one of them. All life itself is included in that category. The most we can do in the meanwhile is to make our own observations, and draw whatever conclusions we deem sound. We are at liberty to think and discuss to our heart's content. Provided our theories do not clash with some natural law, we shall be secure enough.
The second part of the first article of the creed is an easy statement to make, and assuming that the Father created the earth world, he also created 'heaven' or all things invisible. But what real evidence have the Churches that an invisible world exists at all? Literally, they have none.
Theologians and churchmen, generally, will refer you to the Scriptures and tell you that all information upon spiritual matters, as revealed by God, is contained within the covers of that book. Such a statement contains two major errors. The book does not contain all information upon spiritual matters, and what it does contain was not revealed by God. That book is hundreds of years old. Has not the Church something—anything—more up-to-date? It has not. Has it any means by which information could be gathered? It has not.
Although there are means and opportunities of communication between the 'unseen' world and the earth world, has the Church received or accepted any communication from us in these lands officially? It has not. One religious denomination at least does not concern itself with whatever its individual members may practice and preach.
To the Church the spirit world might be, to all intents and purposes, a dead world. At least, it is a world of the dead! You will recall the old saying that 'dead men tell no tales'. So-called dead men cannot tell the Church anything because it does not believe that we can speak. It refuses to accept any knowledge upon the subject.
The Churches will complaisantly accept the few, the extraordinarily few, words that Jesus is reputed to have said upon the 'afterlife', without entertaining the variest suspicion as to why so little was said upon a subject of such vital importance to all men. The truth is not that Jesus said so little, but that so much has been expunged from the Scriptures by deliberate tampering. Not one fraction of what Jesus spoke upon the subject of life in the spirit world has been allowed to stand in the Scriptures. The result is that the Church has been hoisted with its own petard.
The original information contained in the Scriptures having been removed, the Church now possesses none, and has no source whence it could derive any of that lost information. The Church, in short, cannot prove anything, and consequently is thrown back upon guesses—mostly of the wildest nature.
The Church is dolefully and dismally centuries behind the times, to use a familiar phrase. It might be objected that spiritual truths cannot become obsolete. No, of course, they cannot, but spiritual truth is just the one very thing which the Churches do not possess. They have a peculiar substitute for it, but it bears no resemblance to the original, either in form or content. The Church is in possession of no facts, but relies upon beliefs such as the creeds set forth.
The belief that the Father created all things visible and invisible is at once open to objection, and very serious objection.
First, of things visible. What of the hideous things and hideous places upon earth? What of those blots upon the face of the earth, for example, the hovels known as slum dwellings? Are they made by the Father? Yet the creed says all things visible.
The answer is an obvious one, as doubtless many will at once retort. Such disgraces are the work of man, and of man alone. Precisely. That is why the creed says that the Father is maker of all things visible. It is, in fact, but another example of the tortuous ways of Orthodoxy, namely, to state one thing, but to mean at the same time diametrically the opposite.
You will perhaps recall the observation which I once made to you upon that particular sentence of the Lord's prayer Lead us not into temptation. The Church (I then observed) would remark that no one in his sane senses would ever believe that God could lead any person into temptation. Then why state one thing and mean precisely the opposite? Social and other affairs would end in chaos if such methods were to be adopted in ordinary earthly intercourse.
The handiwork of man is spread throughout the surface of the earth, and is obviously of human design and origin, and equally obviously not of God's making.
What, then, of all things invisible? Here, you will say, I am on ground upon which the Church does not tread. What of creation in the spirit world? In this I give you of my experiences, but as they are also the experiences of millions upon millions of other folk here, then you will perceive that I am stating facts.
They are facts, and not just beliefs. For you may bethink you that vast numbers of people on earth can believe in some one thing or another, but that it still remains a belief only, because the mere force of numbers supporting a belief does not transmogrify that belief into a fact.
Consider the matter in this way. As I stand, shall we say, looking at the glorious prospect from one of the upper windows of my house, I see around me other houses, and gardens; in the distance there is the city with its superb buildings. Whence have all these come? These are the things invisible of the creed—invisible to you on earth, but not to us here. They are the handiwork of man.
My own house was built by the wholehearted help of a number of friends. It was not created by the Father in 'the twinkling of an eye', by the effort of His will. Why should the Father do what a man, or several men together, can do perfectly well themselves? In doing what they did, those good folk earned for themselves a splendid reward for spiritual service, though, of course, that was not their motive. One forgets such things here.
The Father could have created my house—and all the other houses in these realms—of His own will. But we have ample evidence that He does not work in that way. My friends experienced immense joy in the service they rendered me. Would the Father deliberately rob them of that joy just because the Church says He is the maker of all things invisible? Most certainly not.
What applies to my own little house, applies equally to all else here that can be fashioned and fabricated by the skill and labour and devoted care of man. Perhaps it will be said that without God's permission my house could not go up. He did not give His permission. By virtue of a natural law, I became qualified to own a house for my personal use. No one could, or can, deny me that right; even the Father Himself would not do that.
I had earned the right to possess it; it was mine, and would remain mine always unless I committed some act that was an infraction of any spiritual law, done deliberately and heedlessly.
Where exactly does God enter in, then, you will ask? Precisely in this manner: it is He who supplies the force, the power, with which to build, no matter what it may be, whether house or mansion, or some trifle measuring but an inch or two. But however skilled one may be, whatever abilities one may exhibit, there is one thing which we cannot do, and that is create life. Whence comes that, it is not for us yet to know. The illustrious beings in the highest realms will have that knowledge.
For all that we know to the contrary, they may themselves, through some co-operative means or another, or some process of co-ordination of vital elements, be able to create life. It really matters nothing to us upon the lower—very much lower—scale of spirit life. We are content to take things as they are, abide by the sum of knowledge which we already possess, refrain from idle and stupid and profitless speculation, and await that day whereon we too shall be admitted into those sedulously guarded secrets. But we can contradict, where we are aware that misstatements exist, since one misstatement may lead to many more blunders, and so help to found what at length grows to be a large deposit of untruth.
In the minds of many people, the unseen world, as they call the spirit world wherein I live, is a shadowy and decidedly unsubstantial region, very religious in general tone, highly spiritualised, and altogether not completely human.
My friends who have followed my writings so far will know something of these realms. They will know that all that we have here is more substantial than anything which can be found upon the earth plane. They will recall, too, my brief narration of watching the erection of an annexe to one of the halls of learning in these realms.
Now that was an act of creation, and in no wise to be compared with the erection of a building upon earth. On earth, men will assemble certain materials, and with them fashion bricks or other components. The process is subject to a formula, but it is without life. But the master-builders and masons here do not first have to collect their manufactured materials before they can commence operations. Indeed, when they assemble for the purpose of erecting a new building, there is no sign, before, after, or during, their work of the evidences which are so familiar a sight upon earth. The substance which our men use for building is thought.
The building which they put up is the direct result of concentrated thought. But the thought must have something upon which to function in order to bring permanence, and no man in these lands can do such work without direct help from the high realms. All that we have here is instinct with life, and life can only come from those exalted realms.
The power descends and is utilised by those who have requested its dissension. In the building operations which I described to you, the power, you may recall, appeared in the form of shafts of light. What would have happened if the builders had merely stood still and done nothing, merely leaving the beams of light to continue pouring down? Would a building have grown before our eyes? Most certainly not; nothing whatever would have happened. But if that force came from the highest realms, or even from the Father Himself, then surely He could have created that building by His own will?
Here we are getting into the realm of speculation. I cannot tell you what might or might not happen; I can only tell you from actual experience what will and will not happen in this case. No building, so I am told, has been erected in these, or other realms contiguous with these realms, of or by itself. I certainly have never seen it happen. Every edifice is the work of some persons whose identity is easily ascertainable. They do not rise up in the 'twinkling of an eye', though doubtless the pious-minded fondly like to imagine they do—if they imagine that we have buildings at all!
Then what of the flowers and all such growing things? Exactly the same applies. The expert horticulturists—and they have to be expert—can form many gorgeous and heavenly specimens of botanical beauty, but they cannot give them form and shape without power similar to that given to the builders, nor can they give their creations animation.
That comes from those high realms. In a word, our people can create, but they cannot animate. Creation is left in the hands of the people in these and in all the other realms of light.
You will recollect that I mentioned, a moment ago, of the hideous things upon earth in connection with the article of the creed that affirms that God created all things visible. Now it may be that that statement will be quoted against me, as it were, by reminding me that I have given you some account of, as well as mentioned from time to time, the dreadful dark regions of the spirit world.
What of them, you will say? The same answer precisely can be made. They are the work of man, and of man alone. I could throw back the words to you—in most friendly fashion, of course—by adding that they are the work of men who have all of them come from the earth.
The obnoxious features of those regions are the result of the obnoxious denizens who dwell in them, just as all the natural beauties of the realms of light reflect the minds and thoughts of those who live in them. In the dark realms there are no trees, no flowers, and as their designation speaks truly, there is no light even.
The pestilent odours which befoul the very air are but a further indication of the quality of its inhabitants. That is their creation, in so far as they are capable of it. Creator of all things invisible. There are theological minds on earth, both past and present, who believed, or yet believe, that the Father would be responsible for the filthy stenching pools that are to be found in the realms of darkness, together with the many more unnameable horrors that abide there.
Why does He not sweep them away, and be done with them for ever? It is not for the Father to undertake this work, but just so soon as the spiritual condition of man upon earth improves and still more improves, just so soon will these regions discontinue to be peopled from the earth.
If from today, for ever onwards no single soul were to enter those spheres to take up his abode, then in time those, whose work it is, would be able gradually to clear them of their inhabitants. With their passage into higher realms, the lower realms of darkness would pass away too. That is but the working of a natural law and such laws will always work thus. The Father does not step in to perform miraculous tricks such as the Church fondly believes He does. If man were to improve his spiritual condition upon earth before he came to the spirit world, his own disgusting earthly hovels of dwelling houses would be the first to disappear.
The word supernatural is utterly devoid of meaning either in your world or ours. The Father Himself does not act above or beyond what is natural. Natural laws are paramount, and the Father is the great exemplar of them.
Perhaps my friends will wonder why I am using so many words upon this particular aspect of our subject, namely, creation? My reason is a simple one, yet it is extremely important. The opening words of the creeds set, as it were, the key for the whole composition. They purport to set forth the claims which the Church makes upon God's behalf, and from that series of clauses the whole grand misconception of the Father arises.
Lest someone should say 'Surely God does not need you to defend Him'? I would reply, 'Of course He does not'. That is not what I should have the presumption to do. One of my great desires is to help to wipe away the misconceptions which abound concerning the Father of us all because once that is done a vast deal else will assume its rightful place and proportions.
When I tell you—as any other person in these realms could and would tell you—that the Father of the universe is a real Father, whose will is that all people shall be happy upon earth and ever afterwards in the spirit world, who is not, who never has been, and who never will be a judge to judge mankind, and who has not relegated, nor ever will relegate that function to any other single person or persons, when I just mention these facts to you from a multitude of others, as facts and not beliefs, then you will begin to perceive some of the verbal enormities which Orthodoxy has committed in daring to make such a wicked travesty of the Father as it has done.
The majority of people are frightened of God, and that is a most terrible state of affairs. They are frightened of the death of their physical bodies and of the awful Judgement by God which is alleged by the Churches to follow that process. It is fear and fear and fear, with the Father as the greatest inspirer of the greatest fear.
That is why, my friends, I seize upon the veriest fragment of untruth concerning the Father which is in any way liable to turn men's minds in the wrong direction in their relationship with Him. I am but the spokesman of a great organisation of friends with the nature of whose work you are already conversant. I speak for them as for myself.
Do you not realize that Orthodoxy is based upon a series of dreadful misconceptions and erroneous deductions? You would if you were to reside here. The day will come when you will shed your physical body, and come to join us here. It would be splendid if you were to do so completely unafraid, with no fear of the present or the future, but with the thrilling prospect at last of viewing and living in the 'unseen' world, as it now is to you, in all its glory, the visible and tangible manifestation of God's supreme will that all men shall be happy.
How far removed from the grisly, dismal prospect which the Churches offer you. After a life of toil on earth you are promised—Judgment. That is one of the most offensive lies of which the church is capable.