RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE.
We know so little of the mysteries of occult, divine law, and yet taking thought of the entire history of the human race, such as we have, and our own personal experience and observation, we must recognize that there are certain fixed principles, certain laws, indicating the undying value of right living. To understand and apply these laws to the all around conduct of life, to the practical affairs of human effort, is in its highest, its spiritual sense the real business of earthly existence. Those religious teachers who have had a degree of spiritual enlightenment have wrapped up their perceptions of moral law, and disguised them with creeds and dogmas, and have used them to further their personal ambitions, and to hold their power over such people as they have been able to hypnotize into believing in them as the vice-gerents of the Most High. All this has been going on for long, and has been handed down through unnumbered generations until it has crystallized into forms and ceremonies, and unmoral conventionalities which stultify the race. "Dead loads" of good people believe they are doing God's service in trying to live up to these, never knowing how much they are the result of fanaticism and ignorance, and the concentrated intention of every sort of priests to keep their power over unthinking minds. Here and there, scattered along throughout the realms of intelligent being, there have always been noble and true men and women who have brought a sufficient comprehension of the out-working of the eternal principles of unswerving moral law to make their conduct of life here wise and dependable, and to give to them the assurance of a successful continuance of individual life in other spheres of being, beyond earthly limitations. Those untrammelled souls who thus unfold grow up into an at-one-ment with the divine, all-pervading principle we call God. They have been, and are light bringers, and saviors of humanity.
The perfection of individual character can only be achieved by determined effort, by unshrinking, concentrated labor. This simply means an acceptance of all the inevitable experiences incident to this life, coupled with a brave determination to wring from each and every one of them, good, or seemingly bad and unfortunate, all the lessons it can teach, and all the truth it can possibly reveal. This evolution of the soul is from the innermost sacred precincts of the personality, and it is often unrecognized by those who have the most inclusive development of the attributes and innate resources of their own souls.
Those people who are thus intent upon their souls' growth do not flaunt themselves in forms and ceremonies. Life is too short. The chief, the most important moral law is the law of justice, absolute unerring justice. This law is the very least comprehended of men, because its majesty, its even-handedness has been so misinterpreted, so travestied by various kinds of religious teachers, rulers, and self-appointed judges. Man-made laws which everywhere prevail tend always to segregate people into classes, producing results devoid of equity, favoring the materially superior. It is quite common for people who know nothing whatever of the operations of occult and spiritual law to ignore all responsibility for their unhappy earthly experiences, and "blame it all" on God. A child dies, the mother accuses God of making her the special subject of his unkindness in taking away from her the object of her love. Everywhere, among all classes of people this is not at all an unusual experience. The fact is, the prevailing ignorance of natural law--moral, spiritual law--is alone the cause of nearly all the misery of humanity. God has nothing whatever to do with it. There is this about it: there are the "eternal verities," the laws which speak ever to the consciousness of man, and whether they are broken in ignorance or willfully set aside, the results are nearly the same; the penalties exacted by beneficent justice are unalterable; only in one case, there must finally be regrets for ignorance; in the other, great remorse for wickedness and ill-doing. But these results are not eternal, though the dreadfully cruel teachings of religion have made people believe so. The faintest stirrings of desire to be better, the least aspiration toward the higher life is sure of a response from loving, compassionate beings in angelic ministrations.
The priests of different religions who have been most valiant and positive in preaching hell fire and eternal damnation have entirely lost sight of this fact. Not the most strenuous of the whole lot has ever been able to follow one miserable wretch into the spirit world to find out whether his prognostications anent his hypnotized victims, have "come true." "_Au contraire_," great numbers of reputed sinners have come back in their real personality to report to their friends that there is no such fate for anyone, that it is one great lie. But it must not be supposed that there are no sure enough hells. There have to be places for the hellish to stay till they come of a better mind. Nature provides for them other opportunities for their gradual redemption through re-embodiments in the flesh on this earth. There is besides a constant outpouring from the dark abodes of estrayed and benighted souls, for the all-embracing love of our Father-Mother reaches even the horribly suffering lunatics, made so by their selfish, vicious lives here on earth. There is, indeed, the greatest possible difference between an intended eternal punishment of sin, such as has been preached for ages for the purpose of scaring people out of their wits, and a recognized, just retribution for broken law. Punishments such as have been believed in suggest a punisher, and our Father in heaven has been blasphemously represented as "angry with the wicked every day" and glad to have a chance to pour out his "bottles of wrath"
on their elected heads.
The torturing remorse of the slowly awakening consciousness of those who have lived selfishly and viciously is far beyond the pains of the burning, material fires. Every human being that has in it a living germ of spirit shall be liberated and helped toward the light, not by any so-called personal redeemer--that is not possible--but by the power of its own aspiring soul, and even moderately decent folk shall come to enjoy all that they have imagined and longed for, and all great souls shall find the peace they have dreamed of. All souls everywhere in the spirit world will have all they have truly earned in their earthly lives.
While we stay here we are hardly protected from the envious thoughts and deeds of evilly disposed and vengeful people. Once safely landed in that superior and satisfactory realm no such invasions can reach us ever.
THE SOUL.
The soul is the vehicle of the spirit. It passes from the earthly life along with physical death, its uses ended. Developed by earthly experiences, it grows and has the power to detach itself and represent the personality of the individual to which it belongs, but only while on earth; it is not employed thus after the spirit leaves the body. It is the "similacrum" of the body, and is often mistaken for the immortal part, the enfranchised spirit. But the spirit is generally unawakened and can only grow with the pabulum of spiritual influence, in harmony with spiritual law. It is this that complicates this life and retards the at-one-ment of the greatest of all trinities; body, soul and spirit, the natural three in one. The soul element is the bequest of the parents--especially of the mother--to their progeny. If the conditions are at all in harmony with divine law, the mother pours out all her soul's influence upon the forming body of her child in the divinest love ever manifested on earth. Its birth and manifestation are of the immortal spirit, and create in her offspring some consciousness of, some desire for immortality. Of all earthly phenomena this of motherhood is the most marvelous, and naturally the least understood, and the most slightingly regarded. Its universality reduces it to the commonplace.
The conventionalities are not intended to keep people apart who really "belong" together and who ought to meet, but to protect those who wish to live good lives from the invasions of envious curiosity.
WOMAN.
Woman is the constructive, the upbuilding force. With what patient endurance she awaits the slow growth of the bodies she shelters beneath her heart that are to hold souls here and give them human instruments with which to do their work on the material plane of life. In this sphere, the destructive jealousy of man of the power of woman does not avail, her kingdom is everlasting. Crushed and enslaved she is, and always has been, but only to gather to herself greater power. She is the natural lawgiver, the supreme ruler. Man, the intimate holder of the material forces, dreads the power of woman, and fears her invasions of his long-established rights in his chosen domain.
Unwilling motherhood has filled the world with vice and crime.
When men, women and children began to return to earth after physical death and give their recognized testimony to the fact of their spiritual resurrection, and of their continued real life with all its personal endowments exactly as they were here, the crude ideas of ignorant minds were forever set aside by millions who can now testify to the absolute truth of spirit return, instead of being buried in the earth waiting for an impossible time of reckoning and judgment. Do you call all this blasphemous? Open your eyes. Look! Listen!
Discriminate! Know where is the real, high blasphemy. "God bless us every one."
ADIEU.