_THE CHRIST ABOVE NATURE._
[Illustration: Initial]
I now approach a subject so sublime and awe-inspiring, that it is
necessary for us, like Moses before the burning bush, to take off our
shoes from our feet; for the place is holy ground.
Let not the scoffer or unbeliever suppose that a stronger mind, a firmer
reason, a clearer light, are the cause of his incredulity. He will
disbelieve and repudiate what I am about to narrate, only because, in the
progress of development, his own spirit has not yet reached that stage
when he can comprehend and receive the most beautiful and holy truths.
We had been walking in an easterly direction during the latter part of our
conversation. Suddenly there appeared before us a vast golden-colored
sheet or blaze of light in the east. It was exceedingly brilliant, but at
the same time inexpressibly soft and beautiful. In the centre of this
great luminous field there was a snowy dove with outspread wings, bearing
an olive branch in her mouth.
“The sphere of the Lord in the world of spirits!” exclaimed my companions
in a breath; and they knelt with bowed heads and reverent faces at the
approach of the resplendent symbol.
“This was the sphere which I saw,” said John, “at the baptism of Jesus. My
spiritual senses were partly opened, and this golden light which surrounds
the Lord, appeared to encompass his natural body; and the dove, which
represents the Holy Spirit of love and peace, rested upon Him; while a
revelation was made to me, that this man whom I had baptized, was truly
the Son of God.”
I scarcely heard these words, nor did I understand them; for my mind was
in a state of great agitation. I had never been pious: I was scarcely even
religious in an external sense. I knew little or nothing of conviction of
sin, penitence or repentance. I was, therefore, amazed at the new
sensations I experienced. There was a painful sense of my own unregenerate
condition; a terrible self-reproach, self-loathing, self-abasement; and
with tears of contrition and humility I prostrated myself on my face. It
was the sphere of the Lord, the light of heaven, the Spirit of God
penetrating my soul and revealing me to myself.
My father now raised me from the ground, and fell upon my neck weeping.
“Be not astonished,” he said. “These are tears of joy! You have been
tested by the divine light. There are remains of goodness and truth in
your soul. You will be saved. Heaven is yours.”
This was more incomprehensible to me than anything yet, but I said
nothing; for a sweet calm overspread my senses, and I became aware of the
proximity of holy and august presences. I looked around me. I saw a great
multitude of good spirits before us. All faces were directed to a group of
figures which occupied a little knoll in their midst. In the centre of
that group, I recognized Jesus of Nazareth!
His face shone as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.
Dazzling as his form appeared, his features were perfectly familiar, but
etherealized and glorified, Moses and Elijah stood by him, one on his
right hand and the other on his left. I recognized them at once; for every
Jew has seen the statues and pictures of those national worthies.
Notwithstanding all that John the Baptist and my father had said, my
obtuse understanding had not yet grasped the idea, that Jesus Christ was
the Messiah—the Supreme Being.
“Has Jesus of Nazareth died also,” I inquired, “and been raised like
myself from the natural into the spiritual world?”
“Oh no!” said John, smiling sweetly at my bewilderment. “He exists in both
worlds, in all worlds, at the same time.”
“You speak enigmas,” said I; “interpret them.”
“Whom do you suppose this Jesus to be?” inquired John, earnestly.
“Some great prophet of God sent to perform miracles in Judea, and to
preach a new gospel of peace and love.”
“Jesus, the anointed One, is God himself,” said John, with deep solemnity.
I answered nothing, for my mind was blank with astonishment. I gazed at
the shining form with solemn awe. I now observed that Jesus was speaking
or preaching to the multitude around him. I did not, however, hear a word
he said.
“These are good spirits,” said John, in explanation, “whom the Lord has
liberated from the bondage of the evil spirits who infest this
intermediate state. He is teaching them the spiritual truths adapted to
their new condition, which correspond to the truths he is simultaneously
teaching his disciples on earth.
“You are not permitted to hear what he says, because the fallacies of your
natural life have not been sufficiently removed; and your mind would
pervert his divine truths, or change them into the opposite falsities. You
will be instructed in due season, and all things necessary to your life
and happiness will be given you.
“In the mean time,” he continued, “let us be seated under this beautiful
tree, whose boughs make mysterious music, while I endeavor to bring it
clearly to your mind that Jesus is God; for without an acknowledgment of
his supreme divinity, no genuine spiritual truth can be received. The idea
of God is a fundamental idea; and every one’s state depends upon it or is
determined by it. If that be false all is false; the mind is a dark
chamber full of motes and cobwebs.
“Did not the Jews stone Jesus for affirming his equality and identity with
God? Did not Jesus declare his pre-existence in saying that before Abraham
lived, he lived? Did he not teach his omnipotence, his infinity, when he
claimed to be one with the Father, and told his disciples that whoever had
seen him, had seen the Father? Is not his name Immanuel—‘God with us?’”
“Yes.”
“Did not the prophets affirm that the Messiah who was to be born of a
virgin, and to redeem Israel in the form of a man, was really the mighty
Counselor, the Prince of Peace, the everlasting Father, Jehovah? Did they
not repeatedly mention the Holy One of Israel, the Messiah that was to
come, under such titles as ‘the Lord of hosts,’ ‘the God of the whole
earth,’ and other names applicable only to the Supreme Being?”
“True.”
“Why then should you be astonished that God is present in both worlds at
the same time? Is He not omnipresent? ubiquitous? Unlimited by time or
space, does He not manifest Himself to his creatures in all times and in
all places? Can He not, if He will, appear simultaneously to all created
intelligences in all the natural and spiritual spheres He has created?
“This Jesus, the Messiah, is everywhere. If you ascend into the heaven
next above us, on fitting occasions you would see Him there in a more
glorified form. If you mount still higher, you will only be coming nearer
to Him, and behold Him in still more transcendent glory. Sometimes He
appears to the angels as a Divine Man standing in the sun of the spiritual
world. It was this truth, transmitted by tradition to the ancient people
of Asia, which gave rise (as they fell into naturalism) to the worship of
the natural sun and the adoration of fire.”
At these words I seemed to see my good and generous uncle Beltrezzor
bowing his head reverently to the great luminary, from which the celestial
face of Jesus looked down, smiling benediction upon the childlike old man.
“What you tell me,” said I, “of Christ, is so strange that at first sight
it appears incomprehensible. I perceive, indeed, that if Jesus be the
supreme God of the universe, He may be seen simultaneously from every
stand-point in the spiritual world, in every sphere, in every society, and
by every individual soul, and everywhere take on a form accommodated to
the spiritual states of those who behold Him. The difficulty in my mind
lies in identifying the man Jesus whom I knew in Bethany, with this
sublime resemblance of Him that I see in the world of spirits; and in
comprehending that they are one person leading a simultaneous life in two
spheres; and, finally, that this one person is the Supreme God.
“My difficulty is increased when I remember that Jesus in his earth-life
is accustomed to call himself the Son of God. Although he said plainly
that he and the Father were one, yet he sometimes speaks of the Father as
greater than himself: of praying to the Father for his disciples; and of
ascending to the Father on the consummation of his work.”
“He has certainly left the impression upon his hearers that there are two
persons in the Godhead; one higher, superior, interior; the other, a man
among men; and that between these two there is some mystical union
incomprehensible to the human mind.”
“Most of his disciples accept this idea blindly, as a holy mystery.
Persons of philosophic culture, who have studied Jesus as a phenomenon,
regard him as a Son of God, or rather an emanation from God, in the same
sense that Brahma, Osiris, Zoroaster, Moses, and Plato, are sons of God,
or manifestations of divine truth. The mystical union between Father and
Son is supposed to be an incorporation of the soul of man, by a life of
obedience and goodness, with the essential Divine nature from which as a
parent it was derived.
“In estimating the difference,” said John, “between Jesus and other
teachers of divine truth, the fact of deepest significance is, that he was
born of a virgin. The soul of man is derived from his father. Jesus Christ
had no earthly father; therefore, as to his inmost he was different from
all other men. He was not some angelic form returning into the flesh, or
let down from heaven into it; for that is impossible. And if it were so,
his claims to omnipotence, infinity, eternity, the Godhead, would be
preposterous. No: the soul of Jesus Christ was not introduced into his
earthly body through the agency or intermediation of any created
intelligence. His soul is the Divine Life, the Supreme Spirit.
“Seen from this earthly side, Jesus has no father. Seen from the spiritual
side, he is the Father. Spirits and angels know Him only as the Father.
They have never heard the term Son, in the earthly sense, applied to Him.
There is no Father beyond him or above him. Here he never prays to the
Father. Here he is himself recognized as the Father, Jehovah, the I AM.
“The term Son of God is used in accommodation to the sensuous states of
the natural mind. It is peculiar to the earth-life, and cannot rise above
the plane which separates the spiritual from the natural. It is only the
human natural mind, divorcing the spiritual from the natural, that sees
God in a double form, calling Him when invisible, the Father, and when
visible, the Son.”
“These things are wonderful,” said I; “but how to explain them to men, who
cannot think spiritually, however much they may think about spiritual
things?”
“There is another and profounder reason,” continued my instructor, “why
Jesus speaks of himself on earth as the Son of God, and so frequently
prays to an invisible Father. By subjecting himself in a finite form to
the limitations of time and space, he subjects his own spiritual
consciousness, so far as it is united, to obscuration. In his human body
he thinks and feels as a finite being, the Son; while at the same moment
in his spiritual form here He thinks and feels as the Divine Wisdom
itself.
“The grand purpose of the incarnation was, to assume a human form in which
he could be tempted as we are, in which he could be assaulted by evil
spirits and devils; in which he could conquer death, hell and the grave,
and become the Mediator, the Way, the Life and the Resurrection. The
infestations of evil ones obscure his mental vision and take away from him
at times his perception of identity with the Father. Thus he has two
earthly states of life, one of glorification or spiritual insight, when he
feels conscious of his Fatherhood; and one of humiliation, when he is
sorely tempted and tried, and when he lifts his heart in prayer to that
Fountain of love and light which is the centre of his own infinite bosom.”
“These things amaze me,” said I, “beyond expression. Nor do I believe that
any human being has any true conception of the character of Jesus, of the
mission he is filling, or of his plan of redemption. Certainly none of the
thoughts you have communicated to me have ever dawned on the minds of his
disciples.”
“Nor is it probable,” said John, “that mankind will be prepared, for many
centuries, to understand what can only be comprehended from a spiritual
stand-point. The least portion of the work of Jesus is apparent to men in
the world. The sublime and far more difficult portion is wholly invisible
to them, as it occurs here in the world of spirits which is not open to
their perception.”
My angelic friend was about giving me further light on this lofty theme,
when Jesus and the happy multitude that surrounded him seemed to approach
nearer to us.
My reader—if this manuscript ever finds a reader—may wonder why I did not
approach the Divine Man and speak to him, after I had discovered that my
earthly friend was the Supreme Being manifested in the human form. Ah!
they know nothing of the sphere of the Lord! I could not even lift up my
eyes to his feet. I was overwhelmed with wonder and awe. Had not so many
other spirits been present to engage my attention, to divert my thoughts
and to impart courage and life to me, I should have swooned and fallen.
Oppressed by the heavenly sphere, whose nearer approach I was not prepared
for, I seized my father by the hand and he led me away. The scene faded
behind us; and we went down into a little green valley filled with small
white flowers and watered by a little brook. There I was freed from the
terrible sense of oppression, and recovered my composure. We sat down in
this valley of humiliation, where the small white flowers were the
innocent thoughts of the new life, and the musical voice of the brook was
a hymn of contrition.
“O my father!” said I, “is it always thus in the spiritual world, that the
divine sphere of Jesus agitates the mind and pains the heart, so as to
almost suffocate the life within us?”
“When the sphere of heaven approaches those who are in evil and falsity,”
answered my father, “it occasions intense pain in their interiors, and
they cry out; ‘Why art thou come hither, O Christ! to torment us?’ Such is
the judgment: and the wicked call upon the mountains and the rocks to hide
them from the wrath of God.”
The wrath of God! monstrous conception!
It is the gentle breath of the Divine Love which is converted into a
burning fire when it enters the perverted and corrupt forms of their own
souls!
“The same sphere of divine light approaching those who have some remnants
of good and truth, and who can be saved, produces a profound
self-abasement, a trembling contrition, a suffocation of the old life with
all its wicked desires, and an inexpressible longing for a new life of
purity, peace and love.”
I now understood it all. I felt the self-abasement, the contrition, the
inexpressible longing. The sun had already disappeared. The sun of the
spiritual world does not rise and set like ours; but it brightens or pales
in appearance with the changing states of the spirit. Then shone out
innumerable stars in a blue dome, like the friendly faces of cherubim and
seraphim smiling on us.
At length the wearied new-comer into the spiritual world passed into that
mysterious realm of profoundest sleep, which is common to all worlds, and
in which the unconscious soul is alone with God.
[Illustration: Ornament]