Spirit Teachings (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...to faith, is a cunninglyplanned means of preventing man from discovering the errors and contradictions which throng the pages of that infallible guide which is forced upon him. Those who use the touchstone of reason discover them readily enough: those who do not, betake themselves to the refuge of faith, and become blind devotees, fanatical, bigoted, and irrational; conformed to a groove in which they have been educated, and from which they have not broken loose simply because they have not dared to think. It would be hard for man to devise a means of cramping the mind and dwarfing the spirit more complete than this persuading a man that he must not think about matters of religion. It is one which paralyses all freedom of thought, and renders it almost impossible for the soul to rise. The spirit is condemned to a hereditary religion, whether suited or not to its wants. It is absolutely without choice as to that which is the food of its real life. That which may have suited a far-off ancestor may be quite unsuited to a struggling spirit that lives in other times from those in which such ideas had force and vitality. And so the spirit's vital nourishment is made a question of birth and locality. It is a matter over which they can exercise no personal control, whether they are to be Christian, Mahommedan, or, as you say, heathen; whether their God is to be the Great Spirit of the Red Indian, or the fetish of the savage; whether his prophet be Christ, or Mahomet, or Confucius; in short, whether their notion of religion be that prevalent in east, west, north, or south; for in all quarters they have evolved for themselves a theology which they teach their children as of binding force, as supremely necessary for salvation. It is important that you ponder well this...