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to confine, no tyrants to rule, no murderer to bereave, no works but wise, and
no will but love.
Works of darkness, works of evil, works of selfishness, works of ignorance,
are works of men. Alas! they are the works of a misguided work of God. Man
is misguided, reason is misguided, nature in man is misguided. With all the
wisdom unfolded, with all the learning understood, with all the religion
revealed, with all the faculties of mind employed, with all the schools,
colleges, Bibles, papers, laws, governments, discipline, science, art, and
refinement, worldly wisdom has vouchsafed to use as means of human
progress, the mind is still misguided, wronged, abused, and cheated of mind;
and wisdom is not practiced as God and nature require, to feed the soul with
bread. And why? Who will tell? Who will overcome? Are our statements
wrong? Are we misguided too? Then indeed hope is gone. Who will say, we
are deceived? He who judges without knowledge, without evidence, without
any thing but ignorance and mistaken assumption to justify. And suppose we
are: who then comes with the needed relief? What can man expect which he
has not enjoyed from the means which the last eighteen centuries have
afforded? Are not the means all that they ever will be on which man has rested
for deliverance? Do means gather strength with age? If so, why adopt new
inventions? And why adopt new inventions when the old are better, or, at
least, as good? And who shall decide which is best? If experience must decide
the question, then the old must gain the preference, for new things are things
of inexperience they are experiments; yea, experiments of human wisdom. If
the old must stand, it is not difficult to decide the result. Like causes, like
conditions
SPIRIT WORLD. 57
will produce, as they ever have produced, like results. And what are those
results? Overcome evil with good is yet a stranger on earth. Mind is mind,
misguided and abused. When will the world learn righteousness? When will
the moral and social wrongs of society be rectified? And how! Works of men
have been employed; have failed not one instance of success. Shall man
longer trust in failures for a remedy, or the wisdom which controlled, when
failures succeeded failures? How can that be a remedy which fails in its
mission? How can that succeed which has never succeeded? Ignorance,
misguidance, sin, and misery, are no new things under the sun. They are
conditions of mind confined to no era. Means, then, which fail to rectify the
same conditions in one age, must fail in another age. Means which originate in
the same source, however new, are equally distrustful; because a source can
not impart what it does not possess. When man, therefore, calculates on
deliverance by means originating in human wisdom, his expectations will be
cut off. Human wisdom would be human folly in attempting to cast off itself.
Indeed, how can a thing, of itself, destroy itself. How can that which is evil do
good? How can mind, misguided, guide? How can the soul in ignorance
enlighten? How can that in which there is no light, give light; in which there is
no wisdom give wisdom; in which there is no truth, give truth? Misguided, it
misguides; misdirected, it misdirects; uncorrected, it will not correct. Whence,
then, comes the antidote? Is it found in the works of men, or in the wisdom of
God? Whence, then, comes the hope of the world? Is it from earth or heaven?
Whence came the inspiration of Revelation? Was it from earth or heaven?
Whence came the power to work miracles? Was it from God or men? All from
on high. No human hand
58 LIGHT FROM THE
was in the work; but the wisdom of God moved, and when it moved, the
movement was felt and obeyed. Such is, and such will be, as it has been, the
distinction between human and divine wisdom.
What, we ask, shall be done to afford the needed relief? We have seen that a
disease can not cure itself. We have seen all modes of treatment adopted as
remedies for the evils and ills of man, by the works of man, but without
success. No man can tell why men should be compelled to languish and
despair without relief. No man can tell how these evils can be overcome by
man. No man can do what he can not tell how to do. Some men tell what God
can do. Others tell what he can not do. Some men hope, and some despair of
deliverance. Some will write, preach, and publish, what God will do to rectify
the wrongs of men, but few expect those wrongs can be overcome where they
exist. They can see no wisdom equal to the undertaking, which will interpose
in the work of reform till the resurrection. When the resurrection is, or what it
is, they do not know. Some believe it will commence when the body dies,
others do not. Neither one nor the other know what they should know, on such
an important subject. But they work; alas! and what work do they produce?
Do their opinions rectify even their own wrongs? And, if they do not reform
the believer from his wrongs, can it be reasonably expected that others will be
overcome of their wrongs?
We find men not content under such a state of things. We see them groaning
under the heavy burdens which are levied upon them to support opinions
opinions of men who need to go to school, and learn the first rudiments of
religion in the school of wisdom as taught by Jesus, and as revealed in nature.
Men who do not know what the resurrection is, nor when it is, certainly have
some
SPIRIT WORLD. 59
thing to learn before they can be very useful to others. They have a lesson to
learn which will open their eyes and reveal their ignorance, when the whole
truth of that subject shall be revealed to them. They have a lesson to learn
which the will and wisdom of men, like themselves, can not teach. It is a
lesson which their will and wisdom can not unfold? It is a lesson which even
the Bible, however useful and true, does not satisfactorily disclose. It is a
doctrine which has been revealed, but all the revelation is not in the hands of
men. The whole subject was developed by Jesus, but the development is
fragmentary in the Bible. Yes, it is darkness; and men of all professions are
stumbling in that darkness, not being able to know what the resurrection is, or
when it is, or how it is with the children of the resurrection.
Works on works have been written, preached, and published, to explain
something which the workers did not understand, to throw light on revelation
from heaven; as though revelation solicited light from those in whom there
was no light, and where its light shone to, give light; as though the wisdom of
God in that light needed more light to make men in the body see it; as though
a professedly satisfactory revelation was unsatisfactory without the aid of
human wisdom to solve its sayings, without the doings of man to unfold its
unfoldings; as though wisdom required folly to commence sowing where it
had sown the seed of truth; as though that sowing would encourage the growth
of wisdom on earth; as though the earth would be productive of no harvest
unless folly shared in its cultivation; as though that cultivation required
something more than infinite wisdom and skill, and, consequently, demanded
a share of folly to give bread and life to a hungry world.
Works of men have their objects. Has selfishness
60 LIGHT FROM THE
nothing to grain by its works? Does it work without money, without
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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