Volume 4 — CHAPTER XXIII. CONTROVERSY ON IMPORTANT POINTS.

"Brother," said Annie, "I begin to perceive that it is of necessity that philosophy divides itself into two branches, the exoteric and esoteric. The human mind evidently needs considerable preparation to be able t comprehend the higher ideas that lie hidden under first teachings. It is not so much the teachings that are separate as that the mind must pass through a given process to arrive at the meaning. Every form of matter seems a metaphor, involving a spiritual idea, and many minds seem powerless to penetrate to this; they necessarily remain content with the material explanation."

"And yet you blame religion for presenting defined dogmas, practical methods, and real precepts to her children, forgetting that this is the necessary preparation to higher truth, and that every mind must begin at the beginning?"

"I blame only trivial and childish practices; I reject only untenable doctrines."

"As for example?"

"The idea that a good God will plunge us into hell!"

"Have you ever reflected on what God is, Annie?"

"No! how should we know aught of such a being?"

"Chiefly by revelation, but also somewhat by observation."

"Give me your idea on the subject, Eugene."

"God is light, power, and love. He created intelligent beings, that he might impart to them a degree of these attributes, and in their degree call upon them to participate in the joys they impart. The unvarying law impressed on material agencies, whether endowed with vitality or not, did not (in all reverence be it spoken) content the love of God; the enforced obedience of the material world to the attractions acting upon it, and the instincts animating the various races of the verified matter, though beautiful, though glorious evidence of power, wisdom, and benevolence, did not call forth a consciousness of creatureship, could not render to the creator a free-will offering of warm, outpouring, grateful love. This the Creator desired. It is his pleasure to desire to be loved; and he created the human soul for the satisfying of this desire; he rendered it free, and endowed it with the faculty of loving, that it may freely offer the purest love to himself."

"Go on; how do you reconcile this with hell?"

"God is pure, holy, incapable of defilement, change, or division. His essential being penetrates all space, comes in contact, literally, with all material and spiritual existence. Now, God created the human soul like unto himself, with affinities to himself, and in proportion as that likeness continues or is restored, light, love, and power exist in that soul. The absence of these constitutes disease, which will result in spiritual death. They are absent in the wicked, and the divine rays entering that soul cause pain, even as the rays of the sun cause pain when they enter the eye of the body after it has become diseased."

"But eternally?"

"The soul preserves its identity and consciousness eternally, though it undergoes spiritual death. If by an act of volition it has lost light, love, and power, it has not lost immortality, and the divine rays, penetrating this wreck of life, necessarily fill it with terror and dismay when all affinity for purity and holiness are destroyed. The spirit of love, culturing the spirit of hate, must produce pain, discord, rage; and as the strife is now unequal and hate is impotent, it creates despair also. We see this on a minor scale on earth. The French revolution {617} brought prominently before us men whose spiritual faculties seemed already dead—men given up to a reprobate sense, who appeared utterly beyond conversion, and who were styled by the vulgar incarnate demons; yet these are immortal beings who will carry their dispositions beyond the grave. Should you like hereafter to come in contact with such?"

Annie shuddered. She thought of Alfred Brookbank, whose mere entrance into the room had often caused her blood to curdle.

Eugene continued: "Remember, sister, that evil means cutting ourselves off voluntarily from God, and thereby subjecting ourselves to become the prey of our own passions, of our own selfishness, which when once loosed may lead to every kind of excess. Good, on the contrary, is living in God, adoring his will, admiring his perfections, loving his law. While on earth the choice of good and evil is before us; and what repugnances to perfect action or to perfect dispositions we find difficult to overcome in this our fallen state will be overcome for us if we pray in a sincere, in a co-operative spirit, or rather we shall receive power to overcome all evil and to accomplish all good if only in simplicity of heart we turn to him who is faithful to fulfil all promises; for he has said, 'Ask and you shell receive' all graces necessary to form in you the true spiritual life. If we choose to neglect this means appointed by God, we have no right to complain of the result."

"I will pray," whispered Annie.

"I, too," said Mrs. Godfrey, who was for the most part a silent listener in these discussions. "Strange it is, Eugene, that you should be teaching the principles which I ought to have instilled into you from youth upward."

"Why, you were not a Catholic, mother!" said Eugene.

"No! but I had many opportunities of becoming instructed, had I been willing; but I was worldly; I cared for none of these things; I did not think the time would come when I should consider sorrow and sickness a blessing: without that fearful malady and these paralyzed limbs I might have died in ignorance of all that it most concerns me to know. I have lived without God; dare I hope, Eugene, he will accept my tardy return to him now?"

"The grace that is working in your heart to make you wish that return is an evidence of his love for yon, dear mother; only continue to respond to it, and all will be well."

. . . . .

"Brother," said Annie, on another occasion, "the accounts that we have of the ancients soon after the deluge seem to denote that they were a race of wondrous power. The mere history we have of the building of the city of Babylon, its wondrous walls, its bricks so well cemented by bitumen that they seemed imperishable; its six hundred and seventy-six squares, so planned that they preserved the ventilation of the city in perfect order; its provision for water; its hanging gardens and palaces—to read of such cities as this and Nineveh and many others, one imagines a fairy tale in hand instead of realities. Then, I presume, the raising of those immense blocks of stone which go to form the Pyramids would puzzle our modern engineers, as would many things in that land of wonders, Egypt. Conceive a modern traveller losing his way among the ruins of ancient temples that strew the site where Thebes once stood, passing the night in the rude hut of a Bedouin or Copt erected amid these ruins, and in the morning seated upon a fallen pillar, making his meditation on 'Progression.' All ancient, very ancient history, is instinct with power. What does this mean?"

"That probably the knowledge that Adam imparted to his descendants was greater than that which we now possess, or the intellectual faculties may have been stronger before passion and egotism again corrupted the race."

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"You think the earlier men really possessed higher intellectual facilities than we have now?"

"I think their works would warrant the assumption. Beside, it is reasonable to suppose that Adam was created perfect according to his nature, that it was endowed with the highest spiritual and intellectual faculties, capable not only of understanding the material creation in its laws of attraction, in the relationships of matter to matter, but also of comprehending the type enfolded in each material manifestation; the spiritual co-relationship existing between such manifestation and the idea it represents. This spiritual faculty was overborne by sin, impurity deluged the world, and a material deluge destroyed the race. But to Noah, doubtless, the mental organization as well as the spiritual power descended; hence immediately after the deluge we see mighty works which betoken that high creative intellect which inspire modern imitators with mute wonder."

"Then you think sin was absolutely a destroying power?"

"I do, even from the first. The intellectual faculties, when used as the mere servant of the selfish passions, shrink and cannot receive their full expansion, cannot perceive spiritual relationships, cannot perceive man's moral relationships, each one to his fellow. Indulgence of the passions, inordinately pursued, of itself cripples the intellect and takes away the desire of intellectual culture; selfishness, on the other hand, shuts up the fountains of knowledge, in order to retain the material power that knowledge gives for selfish purposes. Both these causes were in operation to cause that inequality of fortune which finally wrought the 'castes' among mankind. The knowing ones kept the knowledge transmitted from Noah downward in their own exclusive possession, which the majority submitted to at first in order more freely to indulge their passions, and afterward because they could not help themselves, having (under the influence of passion) fallen out of the intellectual sphere. Laws compelling by force certain restraints became necessary, and soon labor was performed by force also, and most of the laborers became slaves. These laws, in their action, usually touched only the governed, that is, those who had let the intellectual power slip from them. The governors had, almost universally, power to trample on the common law when applied to themselves; it was only when they came in contact with each other, and intruded on each other's privileges, that they were called to account. I speak not of the theory, but of the practice; there was one law for the rich, another for the poor, throughout all ages. What was called civilization, before the coming of Christ, did not touch the poor, the enslaved; the down-trodden slaves had little chance of justice or of mercy. What was meant by liberty applied only to the freemen; the want of remembering this leads many two mistakes in comparing the civilization of ancient and modern times. The gospel preached to the poor taught them to repress the empire of the passions, thus slowly but surely causing that rise of intellect in the masses which has swept slavery from Europe, and from all countries where the laborer has followed even imperfectly this first requisite, the doing which has enabled him to cultivate his intellect sufficiently to compete with those in possession of power. A people enslaved my passion easily succumb to external force, as a virtuous people, however poor, have an innate power of preserving external freedom. The external depends on the internal. One is a manifestation of the other; almost a consequence."

"Then," said Annie, "if I have understood you aright, man was originally in direct communication with his Creator. Sin not only destroyed this communication, which was the source of all knowledge and happiness, it impaired the faculties through which that communication is held."

"Yes," said Eugene.

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"And as temporal happiness is but the reflex of spiritual happiness, the necessary result of order in the spiritual relationship, it follows that the spiritual order must be restored before the natural order can yield the happiness it is calculated to produce. This, then, is the redemption, penance, violence to flesh, and to self will, before the restoration can take place; these being the necessary medicine to heal the soul's diseases. Those who refuse the medicine perish."

"You surprise me, sister," said Eugene; "you are apt at understanding."

"You forget that long since the enigma was propounded to us. I am but just getting my ideas into form. You will tell me if I have drawn correct inferences. Man, by the fall, lost not only actual knowledge and actual means of knowledge, but he lost empire over the animal world, and, worse than all, over himself; he became a slave to his own appetites and passions, and to his own self-will. From this state no effort of his own could rescue him. The Redeemer came to offer him means of rescue, to enable him to re-establish spiritual communication, to bring man again into such actual relationship with God that he shall look up to him, practically as well as theoretically, as the highest metaphysical teacher; as the source of real power and light to the understanding; the restorer of all things to their pristine harmony. Is this so?"

"It is."

"And naturally this restoration must begin by the healing of the disorders of the soul. The first impulses of grace create desire for goodness, purity, and truth; but the old man is still within, and can only be subdued by violence done to ourselves. 'The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' This is why the saints welcome mortification and suffering, looking on them as tools with which to subdue themselves, with which they may be enabled to offer themselves a living sacrifice to God. This is why what men call 'progress' is repugnant to sanctity—progress meaning increased facilities for indulging the passions; facilities which, as we advance in sanctity, we learn to dispense with more and more. This is what Euphrasie meant when she puzzled us at her first coming."

"Indeed, sister, I believe it is."

"And her non-appreciation of human learning must have arisen from the intense pleasure she felt in personal, absolute dependence upon God. She did not want to know the material intermediate sequences; of all things, she preferred feeling they came to her directly from her Father's hand."

"I presume this was the case."

"Then, too, if I understood her aright, the soul, purified by prayer, mortification, and good works, becomes by the grace of God detached from the things of this world; it seeks its rest only in God, and then it begins to regain some of the sublime spiritual privileges it had lost. Even on earth it may hold communication with the glorified spirits in heaven, while these glorified spirits themselves, blessed with the beatific vision, drink in sensations of beauty, harmony, and delight, such as exist only in God, and of which we cannot form the slightest conception."

Eugene could only press his sister's hand in silence. She continued:

"It is this union of spiritual natures with our struggling existence, this interest taken by the saints in glory in the members of the church militant on earth, that you term the 'communion of saints,' is it not, Eugene?"

"Yes, Annie."

"And men have dared to call the recognition of this divine union, of this sacred bond of love, idolatry! It is the true conquest over death! the earnest of our own loving immortality! How absurd to call so beautiful a demonstration of the effect of divine charity 'idolatry'!"

"As absurd," said Eugene, "as to believe that God, in providing means to redeem men from the death of sin, should not watch over those means, and preserve them intact from man's defilement."

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"Yes," interposed Mrs. Godfrey, "it is wonderful that men who believe in revelation should not see, primâ facie, that the same miraculous interposition which produced the revelation would, as if of necessity, watch over and protect that revelation." Then suddenly becoming very earnest, she said: "Eugene, I am drawing near my end, I feel it every day more. You must bring me a priest, if, indeed, one so worthless as I can become a member of the church of Christ. O my God! it scarcely seems possible that a life of worldliness should be followed by an eternity of bliss! But I will hope against my feelings of justice! The blood of Jesus is powerful to save. O my God! accept it; it was shed for me in pity and in mercy."

"And for me, too," said Annie. "I must be a Catholic also."

"But have you considered the cost, Annie? Your husband! your children!"

"I have weighed everything, and am resolved."

"I think feet, O my God!" said the sick woman. "O eternal justice! I offer thee my children's faith, my children's courage, in union with the precious blood of thy Son, to atone for my own shortcomings. Oh! bless these my children—give them grace to persevere!"

There was a solemn pause. Than she added: "Annie, there is suffering in store for you, but you will accept it. Eugene will be to a friend, a protector, a guide. I made my will before this malady came on. I dare not change it now, lest it should be disputed. I left to Eugene all that I have to leave, but he will provide for you, if provision is needed; and you, Annie, will confide in him when you need a friend."

"I will, dear mother," faltered Annie. "Surely, we have always loved each other."

Eugene threw his arm around his sister's waist, and kneeling by his mother's side, solemnly pledged himself self to watch over his sister and care for her.

TO BE CONTINUED.

ORIGINAL.