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When I read the New Testament with the knowledge which I have of Spiritualism, I am left with a deep conviction that the teaching of Christ was in many most important respects lost by the early Church, and has not come down to us.
"I used to think of you travelling from one to the other of the great cities, and I used to think that when you had spoken to them, the people would see the truth and rise and take their own. I used to be very fond of the Old Testament once," he went on, his voice sinking a little lower. "Life was so simple in those days, and the words of a prophet seemed greater than any laws."
High or Low it was all the same to him. What excited his curiosity most was the Enchiridion Militis Christiani of Erasmus in Latin of course, and that he could easily read but almost equally exciting was a Greek and Latin vocabulary; or again, a very thin book in which he recognised the New Testament in the Vulgate.
And there He called Peter and Andrew and James and John and several others to be His followers, and they left all and followed Him. After they had followed Him they revered Him, and later on adored and worshipped Him. He left them on their faces, each man saying, 'My Lord and my God! All that is in the New Testament. "But put the New Testament away.
Another unfounded reproach which Theologians, in order to magnify the importance of the New Testament, cast upon the Old, is this: They say, that the Old Testament represents God only as the tutelary Deity of the Israelites, and as not so much concerned for the rest of mankind.
Dear brethren, the main weakness, I believe, of what is called Evangelical Christianity has been that it has not always kept true to the proportionate prominence which the New Testament gives to the two thoughts, 'Christ for us, and 'Christ in us. For one sermon that you have heard which has dwelt earnestly and believingly on the thought of the indwelling Christ and the Christian indwelling in Him, you have heard a hundred about the Sacrifice on the Cross for sins, and the great atonement that was made by it.
It is obvious that the feelings attributed to other men are nothing but the tertiary qualities of their bodies. In beings of the same species, however, these qualities are naturally exceedingly numerous, variable, and precise. Nature has made man man's constant study. His thought, from infancy to the drawing up of his last will and testament, is busy about his neighbour.
Nobody contested with her the possession of the few things that had belonged to him, which were scarcely more than the clothes he had on when he died; so she made them up into a parcel and took them away with her. In his waistcoat pocket she found one book, a little Testament, which she had given him herself. It looked as if it had been a good deal read.
It has been said, on the other side, that there was no teaching against religion or Christianity in this system. I deny it. The whole testament is one bold proclamation against Christianity and religion of every creed. The children are to be brought up in the principles declared in that testament.
Meanwhile the natives who composed our crew, having nothing particular to do, had squatted down on the deck and taken out their little books containing the translated portions of the New Testament, along with hymns and spelling-books, and were now busily engaged, some vociferating the alphabet, others learning prayers off by heart, while a few sang hymns, all of them being utterly unmindful of our presence.
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