In Both Worlds Part 23

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 encompa.s.s 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 G.o.d."

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-abas.e.m.e.nt; 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 G.o.d 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 mult.i.tude 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 G.o.d sent to perform miracles in Judea, and to preach a new gospel of peace and love."

"Jesus, the anointed One, is G.o.d himself," said John, with deep solemnity.

I answered nothing, for my mind was blank with astonishment. I gazed at the s.h.i.+ning form with solemn awe. I now observed that Jesus was speaking or preaching to the mult.i.tude 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 G.o.d; for without an acknowledgment of his supreme divinity, no genuine spiritual truth can be received. The idea of G.o.d 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 ident.i.ty with G.o.d? 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-'G.o.d 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 t.i.tles as 'the Lord of hosts,' 'the G.o.d of the whole earth,' and other names applicable only to the Supreme Being?"

"True."

"Why then should you be astonished that G.o.d is present in both worlds at the same time? Is He not omnipresent? ubiquitous? Unlimited by time or s.p.a.ce, 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

"My difficulty is increased when I remember that Jesus in his earth-life is accustomed to call himself the Son of G.o.d. 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 G.o.dhead; 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 G.o.d, or rather an emanation from G.o.d, in the same sense that Brahma, Osiris, Zoroaster, Moses, and Plato, are sons of G.o.d, 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 G.o.dhead, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, and so frequently prays to an invisible Father. By subjecting himself in a finite form to the limitations of time and s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.sume a human form in which he could be tempted as we are, in which he could be a.s.saulted by evil spirits and devils; in which he could conquer death, h.e.l.l 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 ident.i.ty 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 mult.i.tude that surrounded him seemed to approach nearer to us.

My reader-if this ma.n.u.script 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 G.o.d."

The wrath of G.o.d! 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-abas.e.m.e.nt, 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."