Is religion important in spirit life?

I believe in one God.

I am the Son of God.

I know that my Redeemer liveth.

When you have passed the article of death, and have gone through the first stages of this life, and emerged from the mental confusion consequent on your change of environment, then naturally to most must come a readjustment of their religious faith.

Nearly all the surroundings in which you find yourself are immensely different from what you had expected, consequently, there is a great change in your mental attitude.

This will be especially the case with two orders of minds—the atheistical and the orthodox.

By the orthodox is meant those of any creed—or nation whose religion is a matter of creed, of doctrine—

Those to whom the letter of the law is more important than the spirit.

To the atheist, finding that his individuality has survived and passed beyond the physical plane, there comes naturally the thought that perhaps immortality may not be the idle dream he once believed it to be. 

The orthodox, finding himself neither in the heaven he expected to go to, whether that heaven was a spiritual—or a sensual one, nor in the hell he thought his enemies would enter, naturally drops much of his old wordy, musty creed and begins to lay hold on to more spiritual principles.

You have no means of proving the existence of God other than you have—you neither see, nor handle the Invisible—there is no possibility of outward proof that God is! 

Your faith rests on the intuitions of your deepest spirit—on the needs of your being and on your reason, but of any tangible proof, you have none.

How is it then, you will ask, have not your friends told you that they have seen Him and have had their spirits go out to Him in adoration?

There are many here who deny that He is any more than a spirit manifesting in soul form like their own. 

They say that all who are here have passed over from the earth within the last hundred years. 

Thou art not yet fifty years old and how makest thou thyself then older than your fathers!

So you must understand that everything here that is not purely psychic, answering to your physical, is a matter of belief and not of actual proof. 

Some believe that this state is final. 

They say—

We always knew that (wo)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 here, 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 in 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 Most High.

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 come over with their hearts full of faith in a personal God—a special Saviour for a favoured few—often enduring great anguish of spirit, and crying—

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 the true unity of thought, life and essential being.

It is of small importance what form your religious views may take—or whether you have any at all—especially as you believe that in due time all will know the joy that now only some possess. 

James was quite right when he defined religion as personal holiness and self-sacrificing love.

In this life, the law of your being is first that you should sorrow for failure in past—or present—failure to reach your highest ideal whatever that ideal may be and then next that you should seek to live not unto yourself, but for your brethren.