Spiritualism in Garments of Light
By W. A. S.
Present-Day Revivals of Ancient Errors—No. 2
Spiritualism in Garments of Light
SPIRITUALISM was interwoven with all the false religions of antiquity. Its philosophy of religion, refined and adapted, is, in the main, the fundamental idea of the new-thought movement. The Bible abounds in warnings against its ancient manifestations. Isaiah associates it with the Eastern corruptions in a chapter bearing special lessons for the latter days: “Thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the East, and are soothsayers [mesmerizers] like the Philistines.” Isa. 2:6. Spiritualism stands for more than the physical phenomena usually associated with it. The chiefest thing about it is its philosophy of God and of religion. When Eastern mysticism and Western naturalism were commingled with Christian ideas in the great Alexandrian “mixing bowl,” spiritualism was one of the ingredient. Speaking of Alexandria and her schools of that period, Canon Kingsley says:— Now one enters into a whole fairyland of those very phenomena which are puzzling us so nowadays—ecstasy, clairvoyance, insensibility to pain, cures produced by the effects of what we now call mesmerism. They are all there, these modern puzzles, in those old books of the long-bygone seekers for wisdom. Now again old controversies are being revived, and new and old are commingling together, to prepare the way for Satan’s crowning deception. The cruder and irreligious form of spiritualism has almost lost its place as an organized movement. It is superseded by the rapid development of a refined and religious spiritualism in the new-thought revival, which is leavening all denominations. The central idea is found in its doctrine of the individual as a medium for the manifestation of the divine. Confounding the merely physical existence with the spiritual life, it proposes to exalt all things to the level of the spiritual. Ralph Waldo Trine, author of “In Tune with the Infinite,” much quoted in new-thought circles, thus tells it:— The most powerful agent in character-building is this awakening to the true self . . . that I, this very eternal I, am a spiritual being, right here and now, at this very moment, with the God-powers which can be quickly called forth. . . . With this awakening one is brought at once en rapport with the universe. He feels the power and the thrill of the life universal. This conception, so flattering to the “self,” is a familiar one in Eastern thought. Annie Besant, the talented theosophist and defender of the Brahman philosophy, says:— That man in his inner Self is one with the Self of the universe—“I am That”—is an idea that so thoroughly pervades all Hindu thought that man is often referred to as the “divine town of Brahman,” the “town of nine gates,” God dwelling in the cavity of his heart. This view of the natural life of all flesh is very different from the Christian teaching that Christ dwells in the heart by faith; not bodily, for in glorified flesh he is our advocate in the sanctuary above. By his Spirit, the Comforter, he dwells in the heart of faith. The theosophy of the East diffuses God through all flesh and all space. An ancient sage stated it: “He is immanent in every atom, all pervading, all sustaining.” And now the same conception of “divine immanence” is hailed as a wonderful development of new thought. The well-known preacher, Dr. Washington Gladden, predicts in the North American Review a great revival from the general acceptance of this idea. After reference to the new theory of inspiration by which inconvenient portions of the Scriptures are set aside as “human crudities and errors,” he says of the new teaching:— It substitutes for our mechanical theories of creation the thought of the immanent God, who, in the words of Paul, is above all and through all and in us all; nay, it gives us also that doctrine of the immanent Christ—the Logos, the infinite Reason and Love. . . . The God in whom we live and move and have our being will not need to be certified by documents or symbolized by sacraments or demonstrated by logic; our knowledge of him will be immediate and certain. . . . This truth sanctifies and glorifies the whole of life. It is the truth which lies at the heart of what is known as the “new theology;” and, if the Christian pulpit can but grasp it and realize it, we shall have such a revival of religion as the world has never seen. But the same teaching has only cursed India for thousands of years. The doctrine of the “immanent God” was stated just as poetically in the Vedas as by any of the poets of modern transcendentalism:— He who is intelligence itself and subtler than the thread of the lotus-fiber, he who pervades the universe, and who, unchangeable and larger than the earth, contains this universe. Scripture phrases are now perverted to cover heathen ideas. In garments of light the new spiritualism is unmistakably preparing the way for Satan’s final5manifestation. The movement discriminates well in its attack on the old-fashioned view of inspiration; for the Bible description of God and his throne, of the substantiality of things in heaven and of the ministry in the heavenly sanctuary, deals a death-blow to the spiritualistic philosophy. But the newest development does not avowedly oppose the Bible. It indorses it, while wresting its words to the support of falsehood. Thus as of old, the truth of God is turned into a lie. In the bewildering mingling of light and darkness by which Satan’s philosophy of evil is to try to deceive the very elect, we may be thankful indeed for the light given us by the spirit of prophecy for this perilous time. As opposed to the spiritualistic idea, we have this view in “Early Writings,” fully in accord with the Scripture teaching:— I saw a throne, and on it sat the Father and the Son. I gazed on Jesus’ countenance, and admired his lovely person. The Father’s person I could not behold, for a cloud of glorious light covered him. I asked Jesus if his Father had a form like himself. He said he had, but I could not behold it, for, said he, if you should once behold the glory of his person, you would cease to exist. Strike this view of God from us, and substitute the theory of the all-pervading personality called God by the new philosophy, and we are at once involved in the mazes of the spiritualistic deception. Then heaven is wherever God is, and he is everywhere, and there is no logical place in the system for angels as messengers between God’s throne in heaven and man’s home on earth. These ideas are wrapped up in this philosophy that is ensnaring the world, and that has sought to entrench itself among us as a development of the third angel’s message. But the two systems are utterly at variance. One is God’s truth, the other is Satan’s crowning deception of spiritualism. Says “Early Writings” again:— I have often seen the lovely Jesus, that he is a person. I asked him if his Father was a person and had a form like himself. Said Jesus, “I am in the express image of my Father’s person.” I have often seen that the spiritual view took away all the glory of heaven, and that in many minds the throne of David and the lovely person of Jesus have been burned up in the fire of spiritualism. I have seen that some who have been deceived and led into this error, will be brought out into the light of truth, but it will be almost impossible for them to get entirely rid of the deceptive power of spiritualism. Such should make thorough work in confessing their errors, and leaving them forever. It is no common experience that we are to face from now until the Lord comes. Spiritualism is permeating both Protestantism and Catholicism, and its philosophy has ever been the religion of heathenism. Every wind of doctrine is blowing. Error designed to ensnare us will naturally be urged in the language of the message, and with calls to get larger, broader, more spiritual views of it. But for our soul’s sake, and for the sake of Jesus and the souls for whom he died, we must never be off guard with spiritualistic theories masquerading as light for Seventh-day Adventists. And that is what any philosophic conception amounts to that would take away the thought of God which any little child must get by reading Bible statements or the extracts quoted from “Early Writings.” This is the throne of grace to which I, for one, want to come. I beg that no false science may ever substitute a mere philosophic conception for this view of reality given by inspiration. I want to be left a little child with God. The heart of a child understands more than the cleverest mind that seeks to find out God by reason and science, vainly “intruding into those things which he hath not seen.” Col. 2:18. The world by wisdom never did find God. Its attempts to do so are seen in all the corrupt systems of heathenism, whose ancient philosophers talked as prettily about high and exalted views of Deity as any moderns. But by the way of faith in all ages men have found him, and found a Saviour from sin. In this way a little child can walk. In truth, only childlike faith can walk the way. “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matt. 18:3. The door of heaven is open to the faith of a little child. And it is a very real place. There angelic beings await the commands of God, to speed to and fro between earth and heaven. Enoch and Elijah and Moses, and the saints who were raised with Christ (Matt. 27:52), are there, going to and fro amid surroundings real and tangible to men in redeemed flesh. Eden, which once was on earth, is in heaven. Rev. 2:7. Trees are rooted there in actual soil, untouched by the curse. Jesus, “this same Jesus,” the real Christ who died and rose again, “the man Christ Jesus,” is by the Father’s throne, in the same flesh, glorified, that he bore as our Brother on earth. And there is the father, whose face the angels and the redeemed can see, and whose loving face we, too, shall see when grace transforms our mortal sight. Strike out this view of Christian truth, and substitute for it the Hindu conception that makes God personally present everywhere the same as he is anywhere, and there is no light in the universe for a sinner seeking to find God. In its own terms, strange to our ears, and in its native home amid the hopeless, vicious surroundings of heathenism, one readily recognizes its character. But clad in the phrases of Christian thought, and fortified by an intermingling of truth and error,—and the refinement of error lies ever close to the refinement of truth,—it indeed becomes a snare to deceive the very elect, save as God intervenes by special anointing for the time of peril. It is a very “science of evil.” There is something in the ideas of the esoteric or spiritualized teaching about God and nature that brings the evil one especially near. This occult philosophy of the East has a fascinating, hypnotic influence on human minds that trifle with it. One can no more safely approach it with a neutral, inquisitive mind than one can safely mingle in the spiritualistic seance. All its associations breathe a pestilence and contagion to the soul. It is an old, old foe in a new face. There is safety for us only in the truth and work that God has given us. The one thing that concerns any believer in this truth is to know how to keep sins forgiven, and how most rapidly this warning message of the coming of Christ may be carried to every nation and people. This is the message, and this the one work. With the clear light of the past experience of the advent people streaming on before us, we can see the end of the pathway to the city of God. The springing up of new controversies and the revival of old are but evidences that the crisis is at hand, and that nothing now will be allowed to delay the rapid development of the forces of good and evil. The end of the conflict will be the glorious appearing of our Lord.