THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

II.

In the preceding article we spoke of consecrating our lives to God and to the Holy Ones, the Brotherhood of all the ages. Herein we have opened the door for great evil to come in, and, in fact, one of the greatest evils which now afflict the planet has come in at this door. Spiritualism might have been a divine revelation of spiritual truths, but, as in all the ages of the past man has always tried to bring down every divine truth to his own level, and, as we read, "Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually," so, in the imagination of man's heart the divinest principles are always perverted and transformed to suit the imaginations of his heart. If man were left purely to his own imagination, not aided by revelation, his imaginings would not be so evil in their results, because no falsehood has power save in so far as it is based on or associated with truth.

We have no doubt that in the early ages of our world the Masters, the Brotherhood of the order of Melchizedek, walked our earth with men, as we are told in the accounts of the visitations by the angels of God to our early fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and the knowledge that the Masters brought to the world relative to Elohim, the Gods who created the world, was perverted by the imagination of men, so that the so-called heathen nations invented many gods, and to these, as will be seen by reading the mythology of the ancients, were given attributes and characteristics according to the desires, habits, and inclinations of the race. And in our time, when the race has developed to where the soul consciousness begins to awaken to a realization of

there being spiritual entities on the other side of life, the inclination of the people being sensuous, they at once required of these spirit visitants gratification of their own desires and confirmation of the correctness of their own imaginations, appetites, and passions. This repelled the angels of God and invited in the elementals or nature spirits, which became subject to their desires. Thus has spiritualism been led down in many cases to a plane below that of the normal state of the race, and the influencing spirits or intelligences have become, in the estimation of many, "those of my departed family, my loved ones," and those that gratify their personal pleasures, passions, and desires. This plane of spiritualism has caused the secret desires and passions of men and women to be met and perverted by what the Hindus call "elementals," and what many mystics claim to be acquainted with as vicious nature spirits, which are ever seeking to mislead and destroy those of the human family who have a desire to cross the boundary line between the consciousness of the material world and the spirit world. Mystics have called the combined power of these elementals the "monster of the threshold," for it is the design of the Creator that none but the strong, they that are able to overcome, shall enter into the knowledge and powers of the spirit world.

Jesus made the announcement, "I am the door." Again, he said, "He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." This is purely because it is necessary that the soul of man should be developed and unfolded to where it is capable of knowing God and feeding from the substance of Spirit; for, as the Christ said again, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

In pursuance of this thought we will quote an article intended for the manuscript of a book now in preparation:

In regard to the God of this system, before referred to, let us

examine the evidence given by revelation as to the existence and order of this body. We find in Genesis i. 1, these words, "In the beginning Elohim created the heaven and the earth," and throughout the whole of the first chapter this name "Elohim" is repeated. All authorities give the word "Elohim" as plural, and even were it not given as plural, the context demands the acceptance of a plurality, for, in the twenty-sixth verse we read, "And God said, let us make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness.' Here the declaration is clearly made that there were more than one, for no man who was about to do anything of himself would say, let us do so and so, but if there were a company of men who were going to make an effort to accomplish a definite purpose and they were working together as equals, they would say, "Let us do so and so." On the other hand the effort made by theologians to say that it referred to the different attributes of God, and of others, that it referred to the different instrumentalities that God used to accomplish his purpose, are evidently erroneous, because, if it referred to servants of God who were obedient to his behests, he would not say to them, "let us do so and so," because, as Jesus said, "for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth;" but it is only in the case of equals working together according to a mutual understanding that such a word formation would be reasonable. So then when the Gods said, "Let us make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness," they expressed first, a mutual understanding of a body or a number of coequals deciding upon a definite course of action and this definite course of action was expressed in this verse, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Here it is clearly expressed that a plurality of Gods, a number of Gods, consulted together and decided to bring into existence, through the laws which they had made, (the account of which is given.

in the first part of this chapter), a body of men, not one man, but a body of men, not only like them, but also bearing their image. The early fathers, before the fullness of the light of the twentieth century dawned upon the minds of the people, were agreed that the image was the form of a man, having hands, feet, eyes, and all the various functions of the body of the individual, and from this hypothesis they argued that God must be, not only a great man seated in the heavens ruling the earth and the universe, but that he must be possessed of all the attributes and qualities that man possesses, only transcendently beyond, being, as he is, capable of creating man in his own likeness and image. This thought is strengthened and confirmed in the minds of the people by the first and great commandment, for when Jesus was asked what the first and great commandment was he said, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord,” and "Thou shalt have none other gods before me." Again, it has been held out before the world that the distinguishing feature between the Christian religion and the heathen religions was that the Christian religion had but one God, and does this, the first chapter of Genesis, teach a plurality of Gods? Yes, and no. In making the declaration that both are true we are forced into a consideration afore noticed that Yahveh, the God of the universe, the one Spirit interpervading all space, the fullness that filleth all things, the life that animates all organisms, that is omnipresent and omnipotent, is not an organized individuality, neither can be, but, as we have seen, the work of all worlds, of all motion, of all manifest potentiality, is to take of the fountain of God, the infinite, limitless life, and gather it, ensphere it, bind it, into an organism so that that organism may express the embodied Infinite, the thinker, the formulator of thoughts made out of the substance of the infinite, all-pervading Spirit.

Now then, if all things are made from the one substance (but in that one substance exist all qualities manifested, not only in this, but in all worlds), then it follows that when man has, in the

fullness of time, developed, grown, unfolded, and been purified from his thought of separateness, to a consciousness of unity (oneness) with that one Spirit, he will realize what the apostle meant when he spoke the words recorded in I. Cor. xii. 4 to 27. (Please read these verses as an essential part of this article.) Herein you will see that the apostle has taken occasion to emphasize by illustration and comparison, and in every way that language could avail, to make it plain that those who have reached oneness with Christ, have received the anointing, the Spirit of God, have become one body, a body composed of many members, yet all these members are one body. Herein is manifest the image of Elohim, for you can readily see that if there was a body of one hundred and forty-four thousand men and women who had developed and been refined and sensitized to a degree that in their association they were one with the other, feeling the feelings of each the other, knowing the thoughts of each other, and having one purpose, namely, to be the expression of the mind and will of the Father, that there could be no real difference between such an organism and the organism of the individual body as we know it, because the body is connected by the same life. Therefore every member of the body, as the apostle so well argues, works for the benefit of every other member, and if one member suffers, all the members feel the suffering, and if one member rejoices, all the members rejoice. Such is the oneness of the body of the Christ, or the body that the Christ, in pursuance of the declared purpose, “Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness," is to bring into existence and mature upon the earth.

The first manifestation of that body was what might be denominated the spirit of the body, which was shown to John as recorded in the first chapter of Revelation, where he saw one like unto the Son of man. The embodiment of that spirit, the body that was prepared for that spirit ("A body hast thou prepared me") was brought to light in the seventh chapter where