The True and Inner Religion of the Heart

I believe in one God.

I am the Son of God.

I know that my Redeemer liveth.

When we pass the “article of death” and go through the first stages of spiritual life and emerge from the mental confusion consequent on our change of environment, then naturally to most must come a readjustment of their religious faith. To nearly all the surroundings in which they find themselves are immensely different from what they had expected; consequently, there is a great change in their mental attitude.

Spirits have no means of proving the existence of God other than we have—they neither see nor handle the Invisible; there is no possibility of outward proof that God is! Their faith rests on the intuitions of their deepest spirit, on the needs of their being and on their reason but of any tangible proof they have none. So we must understand that everything in the Spirit World that is not purely psychic (answering to our physical) is a matter of belief and not of actual proof.

Thus religious belief in the Spirit World springs from much the same sources that it does with us, except that with them it does not depend on what they have been taught or have heard from others; religion is for each, whatever form it may take, the real and sincere outcome of the inner state. The truth with regard to God and Man becomes the faith of most, if not all, sooner or later. But, at first, there is great variety of creed. Some believe that this state—which spirits speak of as a passing and intermediate one—is final. They say—“We always knew that man had a double nature; that the physical was not all; our mistake was in thinking that his higher nature was fully developed on earth. We see that here those higher powers have full play, therefore we are now complete and this state is the final one. Let us, then, devote these powers to humanity and do all we can to help our brethren to make the best of this new and brighter world.

Such people often lead beautiful, self-sacrificing lives in the Spirit World, for they work with the energy of those who believe that the day is short and the night is at hand.

Others, again, whose natures lie somewhat open on the spiritual side but who are still bound in the old grave-clothes of injustice and selfishness believe that to those only who have faith an entrance into the heavenly spheres will be granted.

Some, looking backwards rather than forwards in their views of life and growth believe that they will be reincarnated on the earth from whence they came; such seek rather for their own perfection than for their union with the great stream of life, with each other and with the highest.

To some the worship of nature is sufficient, others seem to find all they need in the concentration of their faculties on their life and work; while others again who come over with their hearts full of faith in a personal God—a special Saviour for a favoured few—often endure great anguish of spirit and cry—“They have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him!” But this anguish is the furnace in which all selfish egotism is burned away and so by various paths, they are led to true unity of thought, of life and of essential being.

James was quite right when he defined religion as personal holiness and self-sacrificing love. In spirit life the law of spiritual being is, first, that we should sorrow for failure in past or present; failure to reach our highest ideal whatever that ideal may be and then next that we should seek to live not unto ourselves but for our brethren.