The Spirit Creed of God reveals a loving Father who is not loving in name alone, but in deed and truth―into whose dealings, nothing but love can enter―who is just and good and full of affection to the lowest of His creatures.
It [spirit creed] does not recognise any need of propitiation towards this God.
It rejects as false any notion of this Divine Being vindictively punishing a transgressor or requiring a vicarious sacrifice for sin.
Still less does it teach that this Omnipotent Being is enthroned in a Heaven where His pleasure consists in the homage of the elect and in the view of the tortures of the lost who are forever excluded in quenchless misery from light and hope.
No such anthropomorphism finds any place in our creed.
God, as we know Him in the operation of His laws, is perfect, pure, loving, and holy―incapable of cruelty, tyranny, and other such human vices―viewing error with sorrow as knowing that sin contains its own sting, but eager to alleviate the smart by any means consistent with the immutable moral laws to which all alike are subject.
God―the Centre of Light and Love!
God―operating in strict accordance with those laws, which are necessary for orderly existence!
God―the grand object of your adoration, never of your dread!
We [spirit-lives] know Him as you cannot know―as you cannot even picture in imagination―
None has seen Him―
Nor are we content with the metaphysical sophistries with which prying curiosity and over-subtle speculation have obscured the primary conception of God.
We pry not.
The first conception with you even is grander―nobler―more sublime.
We wait for higher knowledge.
You must wait too.
The elect are they who work out for themselves a salvation, according to the laws, which regulate their being.
We know nothing of the potency of blind faith or credulity.
We know the value of a trustful receptive spirit―free from the littleness of perpetual suspicion.
Such is Godlike, and draws down angel guidance.
We abjure and denounce that destructive doctrine that faith, belief and assent to dogmatic statements have power to erase the traces of transgression―that an earth-life of vice and sloth and sin can be wiped away and the spirit stand purified by a blind acceptance of a belief―of an idea―of a fancy―of a creed.
Such teaching has debased more souls than anything else to which we can point.
Nor do we teach that there is a special and potent efficacy in any one belief to the exclusion of others.
We do not believe that truth is the perquisite of any creed.
In all, there is a germ of truth―in all, an accretion of error.
We know the exalted intelligences who stand high in spirit life―who were enabled to progress despite the creed they professed on earth.
We value only the earnest seeking after truth.
We do not care for the minute discussions, which men delight in.
We shrink from those curious pryings into mysteries transcending knowledge, which characterise your theologies.
We do not care for sectarianism except that we know it to be a mischievous provoker of rancour and spite and malice and ill-will.
The theology of the spirit is simple and confined to knowledge.
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