Physical death is the fulfilling of a natural law everywhere
prevailing; a change, which the mutability of all material creations
renders necessary, and salutary, and, when received without the
prejudices engendered by education, pleasing. Religion has nothing to
do with it, and more than that it ought to influence every act of life.
No more has religion anything to do with the intercourse of disembodied
spirits with those in the form. That also is wholly controlled by laws
inherent in the nature of things, and will, when the ridiculous hue and
cry raised by sensualistic minds has somewhat abated, resolve itself
into a fixed fact having no more direct bearing upon human affairs than
any other form of social intercourse. It has taught no new code of
morals; it has not overthrown, so much as it has revealed the true
state of things. It has revived the spiritual teachings of him by whom
the world--called from him Christian--professes to be guided and
controlled.
Fanaticism is the law of some minds, and it will display itself in
whatever arena they are engaged. In politics the man they vote for is
almost a god. In mechanics, they have invented a machine which shall
ensure "perpetual motion;" in chemistry, the elixir of life, or a cure
for all the ills of human life; in morals, the kingdom of heaven is
speedily coming through the intervention of their dead friends.
The truest religion is that which adheres most faithfully to nature's
laws; for strive we ever so hard, we must return to them. They are
God's will made manifest, and the mind most free from prejudice
engendered by false education is the one which secures to itself the
most harmony, making possible that removal of "mountains" so often
quoted--meaning the inevitable obstacles of spiritual life.
Christ said: "The kingdom of heaven is within you" and he might have
added that of hell also. Here is the beginning, if not the ending of
all growth and reform. There seems to be a universal tendency or wish
to escape from one's self, and most so-called reforms begin at the
surface--the ultimate--rather than at the centre. This should be an
education to children, teaching them that their temptations are to be
dreaded only as they are responded to by something within, and that
loses all power with them as they gain self-knowledge and self-control.