CHAPTER I.

THE SOUL'S RELATION TO INFINITE SOUL.

Each great religion of the human race was founded at a time when certain mortals became especially susceptible to influences coming from above. Buddha, Moses, Confucius, Jesus, Mohammed, Luther, and men of our own age, were sensitive to the impressions of high intelligences, had spiritual aspirations, and became the mouthpiece of the higher powers to men of their day and generation. Each has had a large following; and, making allowance for difference in race and environment, it would seem that the most spiritual religions have deteriorated more rapidly than those whose founders were on a lower plane of development.

Christianity, founded by one more truly spiritual to the candid mind than any other son of man, has departed far from the teachings and the example of Jesus. He was unworldly and indifferent to fame and money. The Christian church loves both, has grasped for worldly power, and still longs for more. He was tender and kind, being severe only to hypocrites, and those greedy for ecclesiastical power. His church has won its way to temporal rule by intolerance, torture, and blood; and has opposed every human reform that the progress of the race has brought to the front, being in this decade

10

PRACTICAL DOCTRINES OF

the advocate of monopoly and of the money power. We speak not of individual exceptions, but of the general drift of ecclesiastical rule. He taught the purest morality, while the immoral doctrines of the church that morality is but "filthy rags," and that we are saved by believing and not by doing have developed a social system, where hypocrisy, greed for money, drunkenness, and sexual impurity are everywhere prevalent, and one which awakens the disgust of Japanese and Mohammedans who are brought in contact with it.

Mohammedanism, on the other hand, whose founder was a practical, moral, but not highly spiritual man, has not deteriorated specially, and holds its vast number of disciples to temperance, chastity, and mutual confidence.

Confucius, though he had little thought of the celestial world, taught reverence, truth, honesty, and other practical virtues, and has gained a controlling influence over many more millions than any other teacher that the world has known. If the 400,000,000 of Chinese are judged in the length and breadth of their own land, and not by the few off-scourings that visit our Pacific coast, we find them an honest, industrious, and a reasonably moral people. A Chinese merchant who deals with Europeans is astonished by their dishonesty. His simple word in business dealings suffices for a Chinese; but the Christian traders have to be held by written bonds, which they will shirk if possible.

That those who have claimed to follow the religion that was most spiritual in its inception have degenerated so much merely shows that humanity was not yet advanced enough for the teachings of Jesus. Profess

MOHAMMED AND CONFUCIUS.

11 ing to follow what the heart rejected developed hypocrisy. For instance: Jesus said, we ought to do to others what we want them to do to us. Human nature in general has not reached that point, though it will do so by and by. There is not a single precept of the Nazarene, impractical as it may seem to the American business man, that will not be the every-day rule of conduct to all the world at a future day.

Confucius, on the other hand, taught precepts that all can practice with attention. Instead of saying, as did the aggressively loving Jesus, that we must do to others what we want them to do to us, he favored the resolve of Tsze-kung, "What I do not wish men to do to us, I also wish not to do to men."

That amount of virtue was practicable, and so the Chinese merchant is honest in his dealings with his fellows.

Mohammed taught his followers to say their prayers, to give alms, to fast at certain times, and to go on pilgrimages; to abstain from intemperance, from gambling, from worshipping idols, from murder, theft, and other crimes, and from apostasy. These had to do with outside acts, and could be followed by resolute, attentive persons. So the religion of Mohammed works good results. But Jesus demanded more than right acts. He demanded a perfect heart; and humanity must develop to a much higher plane before it can really "profess Christ" without hypocrisy.

The main object of this work is to aid seeking souls in attaining spiritual development, which is of course the design for which we were brought into individual conscious existence. And the methods that we inculcate will not prevent our adherence to any form of be

12

CREEDS MUST CHANGE.

lief-Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, or any other-except that the general result of soul development is to make us indifferent to outside forms, while the growth of the soul naturally leads it to outgrow any system of creeds.

All creeds have been useful to certain souls at certain periods of human development, but no creed of a less advanced age will express the consciousness of the human race as it goes on to the ultimatum of development. A creed, to the mind that originated it, or to the mind that adopts it without compulsion, is simply that mind's way of looking at "all things in heaven and earth" from its stand-point at that time. He sees this truth clearly, that one not at all, another truth is distorted by his imperfect vision, and there he sees an error in the place of truth. We are not to blame for our imperfect views of truth, provided we try to clear our vision of it by right living, by high aspirations, and by dissolving our prejudices in it, as impurities disappear in clear, running water.

In entering on the subject of spiritual development, which will bring us into living relations, in the name of infinite soul, with all souls higher than ourselves, we wish first to have a true conception of what we individually are, and of our relations to the physical and spiritual universe of which we find ourselves a part.

Lessing said that if God held in one hand all truth, and in the other the desire for truth, he would choose the desire for it, saying, "Truth, O God, is for Thee alone." While only infinite intelligence can see all truth, yet the candid, aspiring soul can get true glimpses of it. He cannot see all, but what he does see may be

correct, if his mind be receptive, aspiring, and free from prejudice and the deceiving shadows of

"all trivial, fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past."

First, then, what am I? I am an individual soul. We were once taught that man is a sentient being, and has a soul; and we were further taught that the soul might be lost, leaving one to infer that it was an objective possession, a something separate from one's individual self. We rather say, man is a soul, and has a body; and that though he may lose his body, his soul continues to live, unaffected by the material world, by chance, time, or decay. My soul is the only real part of me. My body is an outside form or appearance, by which my soul is able to express itself to other souls, which are also covered up by a like outside appearance. My soul, as pure soul, can come into direct contact only with perfectly formless soul, which we take to be infinite. All finite souls, wrapped in bodies of greater or less materiality, cannot reach my soul directly, because the form in which they may appear is a more or less transparent veil, through which the real entity but partially reveals itself.

What is the most striking thing about my soul, or rather about me? Undoubtedly, its life, its being alive. Quiet on my bed at night, no noise in the house, the sounds of nature all hushed; the curtains closely drawn, no light from candle, moon, or star; alone, no human being near, I look within at the real me. Can I doubt my own existence? That would be absurd. think, therefore I am." Less and less sensible of my body and of all outside conditions, I reach out in an

"I