Religion is natural. The religious sentiment is an essential principle of the human soul. Like the true and the beautiful, like moral consciousness, it is in humanity permanent, eternal. Life's emotional stream from the manger in Nazareth to the "rappings" in Rochester, has been bridged with startling, spiritual phenomena. So devious its windings, the patient student of antiquity often wearies in tracing it among the lights and shadows that alternately dance in brightness, or darken into sullen midnight along its shelving shores. The genuine historian living in two worlds-the past and the present is necessarily philosophic and imaginative, painting visible forms, as well as transcribing passing events. Though gathering these, and weighing facts correctlythe hard granitic facts characterizing given epochs-he experiences deeper delights in arranging them in orderly series, and deducing therefrom such great logical conclusions as tally with the mighty march of the ages. During those fearful medieval years, when a cultured paganism and Pauline Christianity, brooded by a chrysalis papacy, were struggling for social and political mastery, there were treasured in costly tomes the records of strange psychologic wonders, inner visions, imperial prophecies, and grand demonstrations of immortality. These, exhumed and analyzed under the meridian sun of this century, stand as phenomenal witnesses of spirit intercourse-echoes from the gods flowing in melodious lights, and flaming with promise along the stately steps of humanity. The nights of those dust-buried centuries had their stars; the angels, their blessed missions; all the old legendary periods, their representative personages. Balanced upon the topmost waves of circling eras, each, in turn, exclaimed: "It is I, be not afraid!" Startling the world, founding new institutions, they disappeared for still greater, to breathe diviner utterances, prophesy of rosier Junes, riper harvests; and bring to a thirsting people fresher draughts from the ever-flowing fountains of inspiration. Among the eminent leaders that arose under Asian skies, was Joshua-Jesus, so called by his friends and fellow-countrymen, signifying savior. The Syrian world expected some remarkable leader. "Coming events cast their shadows before." This thought impregnated the national atmosphere. It was truly a propitious period. There was weeping by Babylon's streams; a suspense of spiritual life; a literal reign of ritualism in Judea. The Pharisees corresponded to New England Puritans, being the most prominent of the Jewish sects. In Hillel, disciple of Shammai, and other grave Rabbins, they had interpreters of the law; but the masses and more advanced thinkers of the times, demanded an exposition of the soul; its forces, sympathies, capacities and infinite possibilities. Demand brings supply. When India, China, Greece, called, there were born to them, saviors-Chrishna, Confucius, Pythagoras. The coming of these religious chieftains, as with Jesus, was foretold in dreams and prophecies; foretold, because the thought concerning them, and their mediatorial mission on earth, were born and shaped in the Angel Congresses of supernal worlds. The world of spirits is the world of causes; this, of shadows and effects. All broad humanitarian plans, for redemptive purposes, are first conceived in the higher realms of spiritual existence; then inflowed by the natural law of influx to the sensitive of earth, to take form, be enunciated, and ultimately outworked into practical life. Ascended Hebrew prophets, Persian magi, and other sages of the Orient, long in the heavens, planned the birth of a more spiritual organism-a better type of Shemitic manhood, to lift the Jewish nation out of its chronic clannishness and dwarfing formalisms, into the diviner regions of absolute religionthat perpetual gospel destined finally to bless all nations. Law is infinite. All conceptions, births, deaths, are governed by fixed and established laws; therefore, natural. Mary was susceptible to spirit influence. Immortals knowing it, and seeing her to be a future mother, overshadowed her with their piercing, moulding magnetism. To this end the angel Gabriel, through the mediumistic Evangelist, Luke, said to her: "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee." Jesus therefore was precocious and loving; impressional and clairvoyant; a mortal brother of the immortal gods and goddesses who helped fashion him mentally, that he, inspired by them, and a "legion of angels," might aid in fashioning future ages. Speaking the Syriac dialect, mixed with, if not mostly Hebrew, his better words, dropping like gems from crowns, were guilt-edged, and alive with the logic of love and intuition. His life so rich and suggestive to a spiritual philosopher, so vague and mystical to an external matter-of-fact Jew, was a blended Odyssey and tragedy, with legions of inspiring powers behind the scenes. On Calvary he died a martyr! His principles live forever; while he, a perpetual inspiration to this planet, mediatorially preaches universal love as a redemptive power in all worlds. CHAPTER XI. MYTHIC. "Men groped to find the wrecks of primal matter, Stone heart, stone service, and a stony God!" Thinkers of the living present will necessarily study the man of Nazareth from three planes of thought: I. The historic Jesus, copied from the Chrishna of India : II. The theologic Jesus, a church monster of the "Christian Fathers:" III. The natural Jesus, an enthusiastic Spiritualist of Judea. Naturally worshipful, all nations have had their Jehovahs, Chrishnas, Christs, Bibles, and priests to expound them. The oldest of these are traceable to India. Under tropical skies there summered the most ancient civilizations. They had their arts, sciences, ethics, poets, authors, the literature of which, has streamed in such unbroken channels down the intermediate ages, as to overwhelm with astonishment the first scholars of Europe. Sir William Jones said their "Literature seemed absolutely inexhaustible, reminding him of infinity itself." Johnson wrote: "The Iliad of Homer numbers twenty-four thousand verses; but the Mahabharata of the Hindoos four hundred thousand; and the Puranas comprehending only a small portion of their religious books, extend to two millions of verses. Among the more valued of their religious works, is the Bhagavat-Gita, Chrishna's revelation. This is termed by a classical German scholar: "A magnificent Thespesian poem, abounding in metaphysics, ethics, and sublime religious doctrines." The same author classes Jesus among the "first of the Judean poets." Considered as prose or poetry, it has richer veins of thought than the book of Job, and bears certain oriental relations to the gospel of John. The Bhagavat-Purana, the 18th of the Puranas, is devoted to the history of Chrishna.* Some of the Upanishads dwell largely upon the beauty and purity of his life. He was the eighth Avater of Vishnu, the first person in the adorable "Trinity" of that portion of the Hindoos occupying the more central parts of India. This divine descent, according to the best authority, took place in the beginning of the KaliYuga, or "counted age"-an "age of vice and iron," about four thousand years since; and was for the purpose of redeeming humanity. Vishnu, thus descending, took upon himself human form, becoming Chrishna incarnate-"God manifest in the flesh." It is the same as the "verbum caro factum est"—the word made flesh-of St John, who, towards the close of an eventful life, became acquainted, in consequence of his scholarship and high spiritual culture, with the doctrines of the Eastern Magi, a class of philosophers called Gnostics. These Gnostics had derived most of their teachings from the "mysteries" of the Gymnosophists of India. The close and almost perfect parallelism between the Chrishna of the Bhagavat-Gita, and the Christ of the Sir Wm. Jones invariably spells the name of this celebrated person, Chrishna; Dr. Weisse, a distinguished German writer, Christna. Orthodox clergy, anxious to make Jesus a purely original character, without the least authority, spell the name differently. An eminent English Divine says: "The churches meanly and pitifully alter the spelling of the name from the original orthography, (Chrishna) which rests on the high authority of Sir Wm. Jones, invariably print it as Krishna, or Kreeshna, to screen the resemblance of the name to Christ from the eye's observance." |