My book By No Means Equal was published a few months ago and the advent of a new government in the UK brings its message to the fore because this government is motivated, theoretically, at least, by the principle of equality. To a degree, this principle drives all Western liberal democracies but the book argues that equality is what you have left when you strip life of its spiritual component and try to preserve some kind of moral foundation. There are also those now whose spiritual understanding is secondary to the leftist ideology with which most modern people are indoctrinated who think that because God is one and love the cornerstone of truth, all souls are necessarily equal. They don't see that in a created world souls may all derive from God and be equal in potential but they are at very different levels of manifesting the fullness of spiritual being. Souls are all expressions of the divine but they range enormously in how much of the divine they can express, and this is both a matter of will and of actual development. This understanding takes into account both oneness and difference and realises that neither can be followed as a principle without the other to balance it.

If everything were equal then nothing could be because everything would be the same. It is inequality that allows for anything to be something. Equality is actually a property of matter undisturbed by spirit or the Logos aspect of spirit. Hence, equality as a philosophical principle is associated with materialism while inequality forms part of the spiritual conception of life, something we can better appreciate when we realise that inequality indicates the presence of the vertical axis of being, in other words transcendence, while equality is restricted to life conceived solely along the horizontal, life without transcendence. For the full view, the fact of inequality must be considered in association with that of oneness which in turn must always be combined with the truth of difference, and that means hierarchy.

The enforcement of equality is an attempt to banish a proper spiritual worldview or create a false one. Those organisations and ideologies that seek to do this are anti-spiritual in nature though many may present themselves as spiritually motivated. But for the forces that work against God both materialism and false spirituality work equally well. In fact, false spirituality is better because the spiritual impulse cannot be suppressed indefinitely so it becomes more useful to divert it into wrong paths than to deny it altogether, even if an initial period of denial helps in the latter corruption of it. The equality doctrine is part of the corruption of spirituality.

If you are interested in this subject of equality, the moral justification for the contemporary deviation from truth, the book goes into it in more detail and from various aspects. Love and justice are divine attributes but equality is a distorted parody of these things and to find out where it comes from you can go right back to the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

There's nothing like being wise after the event but no astrologer will be surprised by the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, given the planetary patterns of the time. Below is the chart of President Trump with the transits of the day added. The important thing to note is the Mars/Uranus conjunction in 26 Taurus right at the top of the chart. This is in a direct square to Trump's Mars in Leo and by association, since they are conjunct, his Ascendant which is also in Leo. (Incidentally, Trump both looks and behaves like an archetypal Leo even down to the mane of hair). Mars/Uranus signifies sudden surprises, accidents and even potential violence. When the two conjoined planets form such a close contact with natal Mars all these possibilities are intensified. The square to the Ascendant indicates an assault on the body, and when you factor in that the Mars/Uranus conjunction also sits on the fixed star Algol you have an increased likelihood of misfortune. Algol means the Demon's Head, the demon in this case being the Gorgon Medusa, and is reputed to be among the most violent and dangerous of all the fixed stars with accidents and injuries common when connected to important parts of the horoscope.

So, what saved Trump? If we look at the matter from a purely astrological  perspective we could say that the exact sextile from transiting Jupiter to Pluto in the 12th house might have had something to do with it. It is the 12th house that is being assaulted here and Venus has just made her entry in that house, providing another protecting influence. 

Donald Trump's birth chart must have been analysed many times over the last few years but I have not looked at it before. Having now done so, I am struck at how well his conjunction of Sun and Uranus both trine to Jupiter describes his ebullient, over the top character. I have already mentioned the Leonine qualities but perhaps the most significant factor is combative Mars in Leo sitting right on the Ascendant. Fight, fight, fight indeed. Also to note is the Mercury/Neptune square showing tendencies to lies and deception on the one hand and an intuitive ability to tap into the mystical undercurrents of life on the other. The Sun and Uranus are both in the 10th house as is the North Node, all showing public prominence. Like him or not, this is a chart of a man who makes a mark.

 We live in a messy, imperfect and out of balance world and we are messy, imperfect and out of balance people. However, we are shooting for the stars. Jesus said, "Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect", but he was the most forgiving and compassionate of souls. He was demanding and exacting, and yet he understood human weakness and frailty like no other. We have to have the highest possible standards because that is the truth, the only truth, that will set us free. At the same time, we must accept that we and others will fall short. If we aim for anything less than perfect we will never escape this world, but because we are in this world we can never be perfect. We will always fail. Until by the grace of God we succeed.

Any spiritual path that is valid is extreme in its demands. A teaching that reflects divine reality must be absolutist and perfectionist because those are the qualities of divine reality. In this relative world of imperfection these standards can never be met but we should always strive to attain them and not excuse or justify failure. A real teacher demands the best from his pupils but knows they will fall short. That doesn't matter as long as they keep the vision before them. 

Here is the problem. We must free our soul of sin but we can never actually do that. What we can do is set our hand to the plough and keep trying. That shows our heart is rightly oriented which is the important thing. If we wholeheartedly dedicate ourselves to God then he will wash the soul clean. We cannot do that ourselves but we can offer ourselves to him and open our heart and mind to his purifying love. That means love on our part. It is love that overcomes sin, the love that has the willingness to sacrifice self at its root. Nothing else will do. Not knowledge, not wisdom not higher consciousness, whatever that is. And "if you love me, you keep my commandments."

 It seems the British have decided to jump out of the frying pan into the fire and to exchange venal incompetents for a group of people ideologically committed to the destruction of the country as it has been. Could this be the moment when the sleep of Albion descends into nightmare?

It is understandable that the electorate wanted to punish the incumbent government, conservative in name only, but the choice they have made will plunge the country into deeper misery. I am not talking in economic or political terms so much here as, important as they are, those are secondary issues. I am referring to the spiritual darkness which will intensify under the new government as it pursues its agenda of dismantling the entirety of tradition and replacing it by rigid bureaucratic control and enforced egalitarianism or Eurocommunism as you might call it. Those who oppose this will be accused, like the early Christians, of being haters of humanity but the idea of love has long since been corrupted and used as a weapon to attack the good, the beautiful and the true. Freedom of thought will be increasingly curtailed with the excuse of safety, equality and fairness. The new prime minister has spoken of his desire to stamp out something called Islamophobia. This may be a cynical vote catcher but nevertheless only someone who has no love for his country or for Jesus Christ could speak in those terms.

The new UK government has achieved a landslide with a relatively small percentage of the vote. They have far more power than would normally be the case given the relative paucity of their support. They managed this because their opponents were split and one has to wonder if this was a tactic of those who pull the strings behind the scenes. I don't say the Reform party was consciously set up to give the left greater power but it has surely been used to do just that. I can understand why so many people turned to it because it asks some of the right questions but it doesn't have any real answers. The rot is too deep.

Bruce Charlton has spoken of the two forms of evil at play here, that which seeks control (Ahrimanic) and that which seeks destruction (Sorathic). As usual, his analysis is spot on. The previous government was Ahrimanic in a passive sense because it had no real beliefs, but the new one will be actively so because it does have beliefs though they are anti-God beliefs. Naturally, they are not framed like that but these beliefs spring from a rejection of God and the natural order of creation. We can never understand why the modern world is as it is until we realise that we are in a spiritual war. The enemy cannot win but it can do enormous damage to people's souls before it loses, and that is what the whole business is all about. And although the enemy cannot incarnate directly in the world, it can certainly influence and overshadow human beings that allow this because of their inner emptiness and spiritual rejection. This has become more of a likelihood.

Ultimately, none of this matters. Our task is only to recognise it and stay faithful to God. If humanity is to be healed then its spiritual sickness must come out. This is what we are witnessing.

 God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times" Genesis 1:14 (New International Version translation).

Despite the presence of the Magi at the birth of Jesus, Christians have always been reluctant to accept the validity of astrology, seeing it as a link to pagan times and gods as well as being incompatible with free will. But then no Christian would deny heredity which could equally well be said to determine our behaviour to a certain extent, and a wiser reaction to pagan wisdom would be to baptise it rather than simply demonise it.

It is understandable that astrology as divination is frowned upon when it is tries to second guess God and undermine his will. But if study of stellar patterns is used as a kind of weather-forecasting, something that seeks to understand times and tides, it is less questionable. I personally think there are too many variables for this to be particularly useful other than in a very broad brush way, but astrology as character analysis can be instructive. I found that studying my birth chart gave me added insight into my own psychological strengths and weaknesses, and was a helpful spiritual tool insofar as it showed truths about myself in an objective, dispassionate way that I might have otherwise been reluctant to accept.

Clearly, we are not meant to know the future and to seek to do so is blasphemous as it is an attempt to replace God's will with our own. Moreover, we are nowhere near spiritually mature enough to deal with such knowledge as, in our current state, to know our future would be to nullify its lessons. But that does not mean that astrology doesn't work or that it is in any sense diabolical. As the passage from Genesis makes clear, it is part of the majesty and beauty of creation. It is a profound system of symbolism that is built into the cosmos, and God speaks to us through the heavens as he does through nature. We can misuse the knowledge we gain thereby but if astrology is studied with the full realisation that it is subordinate to Christ, considering it rather like a messenger of God or angel, then it can enrich our imagination and guide us to a deeper understanding of the universe and ourselves.

This is a horoscope cast for midnight in London on 1st January 1900. In terms of planetary positions and relationships it would largely apply to the whole world. Any astrologer who saw this with Sun conjunct Mars, Moon conjunct Saturn and more or less everything else in a stellium opposite Neptune and Pluto would think that the 20th century was going to be a bumpy ride. Be prepared is the old scout motto. The study of the heavens can sometimes help us do just that.

A few years ago I wrote a book called The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (see here and here) which was largely based on essays from this blog arranged thematically. The crisis has obviously intensified since 2019 when the book was published but its nature has not changed. It concerns humanity's rejection of God which has the effect of leading people to search for meaning in false paths, some political, some supposedly spiritual through the attempted deification of the human self, and some just plain hedonistic. That's to name just a few of the wrong directions in which people may go when they turn away from the path of truth and reality.

The events of 2020 could not have happened, certainly not to the extent they did, in a world in which people acknowledged God. To acknowledge God does not just mean you accept a higher power in which all truth is centred and from which it derives. It means you perceive a meaning and a purpose and goal beyond this world which, let's face it and despite its many beauties, is a distinctly unsatisfying place if it represents the sum total of existence. But surely we should know we are not the body and if we are not the body then this world is not all there is and if that is the case then there must be more, something more real that lies behind it. 

We should know we are not the body for many reasons but one simple one is that we speak of 'my' body. That means we recognise that the 'I' lies elsewhere. It is not the product of the body or physically derived but uses the body as part of its experience and means to express itself. Think of your body. It really is just flesh and bone and blood, and surely it should be obvious we are more than that. Obvious as in known unless we are bamboozled by intellectual sophistries. This is not to denigrate the physical body which is currently part of the totality of our being but it is only part and by no means the central part. If people had understood this then they would not have allowed themselves to be panicked by officious bureaucrats and a cravenly compliant media into a quasi-totalitarian situation with an unnecessary and potentially dangerous medical intervention presented as the only escape route. But most people succumbed to the propaganda and they did so because of fear. It was a test which the majority failed. The medical crisis, assuming there ever really was one which is highly doubtful, has passed but the groundwork has been laid for human beings to have their freedom taken away again at some future date. When something has happened once it becomes much easier to do it again. If it's been done before there is precedent so we are less inclined to question it the next time.

Human beings are so constituted that we can accept or deny reality. We have the freedom to do that. But if we make the wrong choice, there are inevitable consequences as in cause and effect consequences. These may not be obvious straightaway but they will become increasingly apparent. Such is our situation. We have turned away from reality and at first there may even have seemed to be the illusion of greater freedom after doing that. There is also a certain freedom if you jump out of a window. However, the law of gravity cannot be ignored and we descend in this certain freedom until we hit the ground. So it is in a spiritual sense. We are falling and the only way to avoid a crash is to learn to fly which basically means return to the acknowledgment of God who alone can save us from a hard landing. I am speaking metaphorically, of course. Suffering in the material sense is not circumvented by faith and spiritual suffering often increases as that is part of the purificatory operation on the soul. But these are transitory and have an ultimately beneficial purpose. The suffering that comes from the rejection of God has no purpose. It is just the negative consequence of denying truth and it does not lead to joy.

Why does one deny truth? Some people might claim that it is an intellectual matter but that is either too simplistic or else an excuse for the failure to exercise proper spiritual responsibility. The true answer lies in the will. The will is sovereign. It is the one thing that is entirely our own and part of the reason for our life in this material world is to test it in an environment where there is no coercion. The current spiritual crisis may in part be seen as the inevitable consequence of a cycle reaching its conclusion when material clouds have thickened to such a degree that the spiritual sun is almost completely obscured. But even when you cannot see the sun its light is perceptible and so it is now. The light of God may be obscured but it is still present and we should know that without that light we could not see anything at all. The current crisis, which is now in the process of moving from simple crisis to actual madness, is to bring things to a head. Use the situation in the world today as a springboard to push against and return to God.

Any form of spirituality which doesn't recognise the powerful presence of evil in the world today is a false path. Any approach to God which ignores the pronounced spiritual evil of the present time is not just deficient but ignorant and not just ignorant but very possibly part of the evil itself, either directly or through a kind of coercive absorption. If you don't recognise this it may be that you too are on the side of evil, even if that is only passively so, and that is because of a spiritual lack within you.

What an 'unspiritual' and unloving thing to say! We should tolerate many different approaches and no one of them is better than another if they all seek the same end. So it is said. But this is the problem. People have been so disarmed by the thought of love and kindness that they forget that God's mercy must always be accompanied by his justice or it is just sentimentality. Love needs truth or it is not real love.

So many people who think of themselves as spiritual, and who may indeed practise some kind of spiritual discipline, have no awareness of modern evil, and even consider some of its aspects positive goods. This is because instead of submitting the self to God, they try to make that self emotionally and psychologically comfortable or enlightened without repentance. For repentance you need to be able to see yourself as the fallen sinner you are. These are emotive words but the fact is there is no spirituality without repentance, and repentance requires a ruthless honesty with oneself. You are not seeking to gain something (the true motive of many spiritual seekers), but to redirect the will.

Are the teachings that promote unity, love and doing good to one's neighbour part of a grand spiritual deception now in the 21st century? That may seem an absurd idea but half-truths are often worse than outright lies because they use the sweetness of the apple to smuggle in the putrefaction of the worm. They use the legitimacy of truth to veil a hidden corruption and the corruption here is that we can separate goodness, light and love from their source which is God or Christ. We cannot.

There is no genuine spiritual awareness without the acknowledgement that we of ourselves are nothing. All is from God and God is not an impersonal cosmic energy that we can tap into and exploit if we look deeply within ourselves, but the living, breathing God (yes, God has breath, what do you think spirit is?) who is our Creator. We are not the source of any love we might feel. That derives from God and if its source is not recognised then, guess what, it is not real love but a cheap facsimile of it.

When I was a worldly adult I thought like a worldly adult. I spoke like one and I reasoned like one. But now is the time to put away the grown-up things of this world and become as a child. What are we looking for? Peace, love, happiness or God? We will only have the gifts of God in the full and real sense when we have God himself and to have God you must want him more than his gifts. Motivation is key. 

 I'm not only a Christian. There is part of me that is pagan, particularly Greek, Celtic and Norse, and part that is Hindu and part Buddhist. Part of me is an ancient Egyptian living in the space between the bright blue sky and hot yellow sand and part a Chinese sage secluded in misty hills, and there are other parts too. Anywhere there is beauty and wisdom is somewhere to which I feel that, in some measure, I belong. 

All this is true and all of it matters to me. I would not be without any of it which, I suppose, is a privilege of our otherwise spiritually benighted times in which we have easy access to the whole of history. Nonetheless, although I respond to and have absorbed many different influences, they are all assimilated into and subsumed by a fundamental Christianity. It is against Christ that everything is measured, and where there is any contradiction between him and it, he conquers. Other tributaries can flow into the Christian river but the source of that river is Christ and its flow is directed towards the Kingdom of Heaven where he is king.

Like many people of my generation who engaged in the spiritual search I went away from conventional Christianity to explore other traditions, though that was always on the outside looking in as my main path was as described in my first book from which the title of this blog was borrowed. I learnt much from these encounters and they deepened my understanding of the spiritual world. They also helped me engage with Christianity on a more profound level when I returned to it as in the familiar words of T.S. Eliot in his poem "Little Gidding".

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

 Ma'at and Ṛta are two words signifying concepts whose meaning we have almost completely lost today. The first comes from ancient Egypt, the second from ancient India and they mean more or less the same thing which is truth, universal order or simply that which is right. The cosmos is built on these things and the earthly state or nation should reflect that as should the microcosm, the inner state of the human being. The human soul should conform to Ma'at if it is to walk the correct path and the nation must be based on its principles if it is to be favoured by the gods and prosper. As soon as these principles are deserted because of human corruption or sin or for whatever reason, the benevolence of the gods will be withdrawn and things will start to fall apart. The nation may even be conquered by outside forces or overrun by uncivilised, barbaric elements.

In Egyptian theology Ma'at was personified as a goddess, sometimes shown with wings symbolising her divine origin. She was the daughter of Ra the creator God, so high up in the hierarchy of spiritual beings. She represented the order and harmony of the universe, the pattern on which it was designed and the principles according to which it should be governed. She was also of great importance in determining the post-mortem destination of the soul. After death every soul was required to enter the Hall of Judgment where its heart would be weighed on a set of scales set against Ma'at's feather of truth. If the heart balanced with the feather then Thoth the god of wisdom would record that fact and the soul would be admitted by Osiris to the Sekhet-Aaru or Field of Reeds which was the Egyptian heavenly paradise. If, on the other hand, the heart was heavier than the feather it would be consumed by the goddess Ammit who combined the features of crocodile, lion and hippopotamus, these being the most fearsome beasts known to the ancient Egyptians. This grim fate implied the destruction of the soul. Such was the importance of living by the principles of Ma'at.

The Judgment of the Soul with Osiris (far right) and the Feather of Ma'at in the right hand scale. The jackal-headed god Anubis officiates.

Ṛta expresses a very similar idea. It describes cosmic and moral order and is mentioned over 300 times in the Rig Veda which is the oldest Sanskrit text, currently regarded as dating back to the second millennium BC. The chief god at that time, the sky and ocean god Varuna, is called the king of rta and through its power restores the good order lost from time to time because of sin and ignorance. However, even he is subject to rta in the sense that it precedes him in the order of creation so he may serve and exemplify it but its origin lies further back than the gods. In ancient India the word itself faded from use but its meaning persisted in the idea of dharma which became fundamental to Hindu religion.

These two words convey a similar meaning to the idea of the Tao as used by C.S. Lewis in his book The Abolition of Man. This is more his adoption of the term than the traditional Chinese sense of the word as the mysterious undercurrent of being, but it fits in with that well enough. For Lewis it is a universal moral structure that transcends the vagaries of the times and cultures in which it may be expressed. It is not verifiable by conventional scientific means because its ground lies in the realm of first principles which cannot be proved as they just are. Lewis traces its presence through many religious traditions, all of which had intuited the reality of this Natural Law as we may think of it. But today we have lost touch with it because we have abandoned the sense of a transcendental absolute. Indeed, a definition of modernity could be that it is the triumph of relativism which might have seemed reasonable at one point but inevitably just ends up in nihilism.

Ma'at, Ṛta, the Tao, all these things point in the same direction, to an eternal, absolute, unchanging, incorruptible reality. We need to rediscover the truth of that reality and start to build our lives and our cultures on that basis. It is flexible enough to allow for different expressions of the one truth but these will differ only in form. In essence, they will be one. However, we must also remember that since Christ natural virtue, which is what Ma'at etc call for, is no longer enough. Piety, worship of the gods, following the path of dharma, supported by the traditional four cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude, are the foundation but on these must be built the house and that is constructed of the spiritual virtues of faith, hope and charity. The difference is that whereas the natural virtues can be acquired through right thinking and human effort, the spiritual virtues can only come from God though God will only bestow them to the soul that has made itself ready to receive them. This should tell us that faith, hope and charity, spiritually considered, are rather more than they are conventionally thought to be as anyone can have them in an ordinary sense but in the proper spiritual sense they are gifts of the Holy Spirit and so qualitatively different to the human versions.

Without the idea of an overarching Absolute human beings have nothing to anchor themselves to reality, and so will make up all sorts of fantastic notions to further their ambitions, desires and goals. But these can never go beyond the limitations of human experience and the human soul is so constituted that it must do this or suffer spiritually. The rediscovery of Ma'at is essential if we are not to drown in relativism.

Right and left are largely meaningless terms nowadays but they are still used because it suits the establishment to perpetuate its power with this charade. The two sides give the illusion of choice but are just variations on the same theme. Most people know this but go along with it anyway as there seems no alternative. 

Now there is the bogey man of the far right used to terrorise the sheep back into the fold. Quite soon a person will be described as far right who

• Loves his country
• Respects the laws of nature
• Thinks men and women are different 
• Honours beauty
• Believes in God and behaves accordingly
• Is a Christian

This last point shows the way forward. There is no political solution to the downward spiral in which we find ourselves. The only solution is spiritual. It always has been but the peculiar nature of our time is that this will become ever more apparent and eventually reach a point at which it cannot be ignored without a conscious effort of denial. If you feel like lamenting the loss of your country remember that your true home is not here.  Use the destruction of your earthly home positively, as a stimulus to focus your thoughts on where you really need to go. "My Kingdom is not of this world."

 One of the books on the right is called Earth is a School which it is. A school for the development and refinement of consciousness and a testing ground for the orientation of the heart in an environment so cleverly set up that one can find reasons to believe or not in God, depending on one's desire. I got that phrase from my teachers but the one that is the title of this piece I came up with on my own which may explain its unromantic sounding nature.

God creates to become more than he is, expanding himself throughout creation, and also to express and share love. But if love is to be real then it must be freely given which means that God must create fully independent individuals. They are extensions of him but they cannot just be extensions of him. They must have their own integrity and it must be absolute. This means love can be given or it may not. It also means the resulting individuals may freely cooperate with God and creation or resist that or even, to further their own ends, turn against it. To have the possibility of deliberate, freely chosen good you must have the possibility of not good. 

This is why God cannot make a creation that is all good to begin with. Or he could but it would be full of clones of God who had no independence, and any love would be a sort of automatic, passionless, all-purpose, blissed out and bland everybody loves everybody else equally sort that you see in some spiritual communes or, at least, you see people imitating that because they think it's what they should be doing. But that is not love which to be real must be personal.

There needs to be a first creation which acts as a selection gateway to the second creation which is the real one. Nothing evil or dark or in any way damaged or even less than perfect can get into Heaven, the second creation. This is why I call the first creation a filter for the second. All propensity to evil in the individual is brought out in the first creation where it may either  be indulged in or made excuses for or justified. Or, and this is the only reaction that gets it through the fine meshes of the filter, repented. The soul makes its choice and on that choice depends its future, whether it goes on to the second creation, the one in which evil does not just not exist but is impossible, or is recycled through one of the many environments in the first creation which differ inasmuch as they are reflections of the consciousness of the soul so some are indeed dark while others may be perfectly pleasant, even wonderful by earthly standards, but they are not the Heaven of absolute good.

If only we knew this for sure, you might say, then we would make the right decision. But that's the whole point. We don't know for sure so we must make an authentic decision, one that reflects our true self. One could add that we do actually know. All the information has been presented to us. If we choose not to accept it, that is our affair.

This idea of Earth as a filtration system, designed to extract impurities in the soul, does not preclude the Earth as a school scenario. Both operate, albeit in different ways. One the one hand, the soul is developed through its experience, expression and experiment in the world of duality, the material world, in which subject and object are wholly sundered. On the other, its inclination to or from itself and towards or away from God is brought out and examined. It is given the opportunity to see itself and to know itself, and also the chance to grow so that when it does reach the portals of heaven it can contribute creatively to the new creation and experience more of it. Many souls may qualify for heaven but the greater the spiritual development, the deeper the spiritual participation and the more the ability to add to heaven's glory.

For heaven is not a place of static peace and tranquillity. It is the eternally blossoming flower that grows from the seeds planted on Earth. Thus, it increases in beauty and glory and wonder, and we increase with it.

Why is there evil in this world? The answer to that is simple. There is evil in this world in order to eradicate it completely and let those who wish go on to a new world in which evil cannot exist. This world brings out and filters evil so that the new creation may be one of absolute good. You might say that Earth is a refinery.

An earlier piece on a similar theme is A Body of Slag.

 There was an interesting article on the Orthosphere recently on celibacy by Professor J.M. Smith with which I am in broad though not complete agreement, and I thought I would offer my take on the subject here. I feel I can comment from the position of someone who has lived both lives, that of the celibate in early manhood and the married with children later on. The celibate phase was intentional not through disinclination, bad luck, negligence or failure, and it was because I was leading a life dedicated to the spiritual path as described in my book Meeting the Masters. 

I understand Professor Smith's point about the quality of priests being improved by abandoning the requirement of celibacy. It might weed out some of the sexual oddities and encourage more full-blooded males to join a group which they might thereby render more masculine and less effete. It would certainly widen the pool of available talent. But then you have to look at some of the vicars in the Church of England and wonder, would it really? I don't know. I would say, though, that to judge an institution by its defects does give a one-sided view of the overall picture.

Professor Smith's article is about priestly and monastic celibacy but I would like to open up the discussion to celibacy as part of the spiritual path and whether it still has a place. First off, I must say that celibacy is and ought to be difficult. It is not natural and those for whom it poses no problem are, in my opinion, not properly developed. Fruitfulness and fertility are wholesome expressions in the physical world of joy and creativity. Desire is godly because it is the flame of love as manifested in the human mind and body.

Yes, desire is godly, pace Buddhism, but attachment to desire is, if not sinful in itself, conducive to sin. It also binds one to the material world and material things. Now, celibates can be as full of desire as the promiscuous and sometimes even more so if suppressed energy, given no natural outlet, festers away beneath the surface and becomes a constant focus of attention. But the ideal of celibacy is to detach oneself from the world and be focused entirely on God. The world of matter, the Creation, is certainly good, but it is not the Creator and it may be that to have a full relationship with God one must turn away from his things and face directly towards him. As far as we know, Jesus was celibate and he seemed to ask his disciples to devote themselves full time to their spiritual lives which is hard to do if you have a wife and children to support. This may be a requirement only for those who are seeking a deeper contact with God but we may all have to become celibate at some time if we would attain to that deeper contact.

There are two aspects to the celibate life. One I have just mentioned and that is the need to give proper attention to a wife and family. The married man cannot devote himself to God quite as much as the celibate. His attention is necessarily divided, at least until a certain later stage of married life. That doesn't mean celibacy in itself is positive but it may be a positive negative. The second aspect is sex itself. This mysterious energy is the most powerful we know of, excepting for some the love of God. While not being a need, it is more intense than any need and more fulfilling in its satisfaction. Some traditions speak of this energy requiring to be turned inwards and upwards rather than expressed outwardly and would say that outward expression mitigates against the reorientation inwardly just as a river cannot flow in two directions at the same time. We have to make water flow uphill, back to the source. A lot of spiritually interested people reject this idea nowadays but it has a notable pedigree and one wonders if the modern rejection comes from the fact that we simply want to have our cake and eat it too, and look for reasons to justify doing what we want to do or are unable not to do.

Energy follows thought. In all cases, it is the mind that matters more than the body. By this criterion actual celibacy is less important than the state of the mind. At the same time, a mind truly focused on God will naturally seek less external stimulation and result in a body requiring less external satisfaction.

In the ancient Indian way of spiritual development there were four stages of life known as Asramas. The first was that of the student known as Brahmacharya which lasted to about the age of 25 and in which celibacy was enjoined. Then came the stage of Grihastha which was that of the married householder wherein one raised a family and fulfilled and enjoyed all the material demands and satisfactions of life though always within a spiritual context meaning one of virtue and religious devotion. After the age of 50 came the retirement stage of Vanaprastha when one started to withdraw from the world and focus one's energies more on Moksha, liberation or salvation as we might call it in the West. If one wasn't celibate necessarily then sex was certainly something that should be receding from one's mind and attention. The fourth and final stage was that of Sannyasa which was the life of complete renunciation and here again celibacy was enjoined though as the normal age for entering on this stage was 75 that should not be too much of a problem. This all represented the natural path of the soul through the world and returning to spirit and I think still represents a good path for everyone though it should be noted that anyone could move into the Sannyasa stage straight from that of Brahmacharya if one felt particularly called to the spiritual life.  

This Indian system tells us that celibacy has its place in the spiritual life, particularly at the beginning and end, but so does married life in which the full enjoyment of sex is not only permitted but encouraged as a good and healthy thing. There is no rejection of the body here but its incorporation into a grander scheme of things that has the ultimate aim of union with God though for this to take place it is expected that the soul is able to move beyond the demands of the physical body, the energies of which must be purified and transmuted. This means desire must be directed towards God.

Some might think this Indian description of life stages has no relevance for the Christian but I believe it has a universal application. If we think of the spiritual path as consisting of salvation and deification with the former as the preparatory stage and the latter as the ultimate aim then we might say that celibacy has a role to play in the context of deification as an occasional discipline and necessary condition for progress to be made. Every soul seeking full union with God, which union renders the soul divine in itself, must develop an exclusive relationship with God and that means all other loves and attachments must be renounced. The creation must be renounced for full knowledge of the Creator. But this may just be a stage. If we say that God himself has a spouse which is the redeemed part of Creation so every soul, as a reflection of its Creator, does likewise, and having reached conscious union with the Creator the soul can then turn back and re-embrace creation, though in the full light of God.

 Jesus said there was no marrying in heaven but his first miracle was at a wedding and religion constantly speaks of spiritual completion in terms of a marriage. There might appear to be a contradiction here but perhaps Jesus was speaking in terms of earthly marriage. There is also spiritual marriage, ultimately that between God and Creation but also between every individual soul, on the vertical plane with God its Creator for whom every soul is female, and on the horizontal with its created other half. Celibacy relates to the union with God but the sanctified soul does not just exist in that union. It also has relationships with other souls and among these is the reflection of the Cosmic Marriage of Spirit and Matter on its own level.

 This is an extract from my book Meeting the Masters which is relevant to the discussion of divine femininity and Satanic feminism. It refers to my contact with a spiritual being who was clearly female despite coming through a male medium. The essence of her message was that love disperses all darkness which is a statement that is almost trite but becomes profound when delivered by a being who, as in this case, embodied what she said. This encounter dates back to 1979 and I wrote the passage below in 2010.

"Earlier when discussing the Masters I wrote that I had no experience of their female equivalents. I had completely forgotten this talk! However, reading through my notes brings the whole episode back with absolute clarity. This companion in spirit (as she described herself) was obviously a very lofty soul. She emanated a loving gentleness that was profoundly affecting, and the balm of her presence had a consoling quality that caused me to feel an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude to her for taking the trouble to visit me. She had a feminine grace and purity that do not seem to be so highly prized nowadays but are just as much divine characteristics as will or intelligence. In addition to this, she transmitted a peace that made all troubles and fears just melt away. I remember the radiance of her peace very well. The Masters also brought peace but the peace she brought had a soothing quality all its own.

The question might be asked that, as this was coming through Michael, how did I know it was a female spirit? All I can say is that there could be no doubt. The soft voice, the gentle manner, the whole vibration of the person, all of these were clearly feminine. As always there was no trace of Michael and though this being spoke through a male body, the voice was feminine. The scent of lily of the valley she brought with her just confirmed all this. I never knew the Masters to be accompanied by such a heavenly perfume. Nowadays many people talk rather glibly about the goddess and the feminine aspect of divinity. Curiously, this is happening at precisely the time when a true grasp of femininity appears to be being lost, leading one to suspect that there is a political as much as a theological imperative behind it. However, there most definitely is a feminine aspect to divinity, most perfectly embodied by such figures of wisdom and merciful love as the goddess Isis and the Virgin Mary, and, in China, Kuan-Yin, and this is the closest I have ever come to experiencing it. It is probably not one many feminists would approve of though since one of its qualities is a perfect submission to divine will. I should add that it is the height of wisdom to submit to divine will since the only true freedom is freedom from self.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that certain aspects of modern feminism are actually antipathetic to true femininity because they seek to supplant the traditional feminine virtues, which are (largely, though by no means exclusively) to do with nurturing, intuitive wisdom and compassionate love, with those usually associated with the masculine. It is an old trick of the devil to sneak in falsehood under the coat-tails of truth, and he has successfully done so on this occasion by corrupting the idea of the feminine under the guise of the pursuit of an entirely legitimate and overdue fairness and equality, with which no-one could have the slightest argument.* All human beings lose by this but perhaps the biggest losers are women themselves who are denied contact with their true nature. I sometimes think that if the balance between the sexes were right then everything would be and we would finally know true harmony, but that time still seems to be a long way off. The sexes are meant to be complementary but, in the name of equality, they are increasingly being lured into a competitiveness which can only bring about disequilibrium. The root causes of this are egotism, both male and female, and metaphysical ignorance.

It is fine and good to refuse to be bound by stereotypes (cultural conditioning) but we should not forget that there exist archetypes too, independent of human will and imaginings, and that a properly functioning society can only be one in which these are acknowledged (I don’t mean slavishly enforced) rather than denied or ignored. For the individual as well, true fulfilment can only come from conforming to one’s divine pattern. This is not a plea to return to past modes of behaviour which were also unbalanced but for human beings to learn to be guided by what is real rather than what is desired to be real. The current state of affairs is too far advanced for deviation from that course to be likely at any time soon but I write these words for anyone, male or female, who might be open to them."

* The equality referred to here is one of spiritual worth as mentioned in the Divine Femininity essay.

 I have been made aware that somebody recently has complained about some of the contents of this blog. I don't know exactly what but assume it is something I have written calling into question one or other of the shibboleths of modernity. One of the liberal dogmas that a good person must hold and if they don't it is because there is something morally wrong with them. A classic case of the illiberalism of liberalism.

The problem is that most people nowadays are unable to conceive that reality might have a metaphysical basis and so for them if something offends against feelings it is bad. What I write here is wholly based on metaphysical, that is to say, spiritual, assumptions. Worldly beliefs and ideologies do not enter into it. I say assumptions but I really mean traditional teachings and personal intuitions. My worldview is essentially Christian though with some modifications based on mystical and esoteric thought and personal experience. This involves the idea of the development of consciousness leading, put in its most basic terms, from animal man to modern man to God-realised man, a trajectory that moves consciousness from identification with Nature to self-identification to union with God. As far as I am concerned, this journey is what life is all about and anything that opposes it or would arrest it or reverse it is anti-spiritual and it doesn't matter whether that be human or supernatural in origin. It is working against the will of God. So to offend against modern sensibilities if those sensibilities are spiritually corrosive, and most of them nowadays are because they are grounded in a rejection of God and divine purpose, is not a choice but an obligation. I am not writing for a personal reason but out of what I consider to be necessity. I am not alone in that. Many other people are doing similar things because they too realise the gravity of our current spiritual position.

Enough about me! This post is just to say that I will continue to write about things I believe to be relevant whatever they might be. It is never my intention to cause upset but if God is a God of Love he is also a God of Truth and we can only really encounter his love in the full sense when we open our hearts to his truth. This may involve offending human feelings sometimes but that is only to awaken our minds to the deeper and, yes, more loving reality beyond personal feelings. 

Someone has objected to my recent post Satanic Feminism. I'm not sure on exactly what grounds but it may be the juxtaposition of the word Satanic with that of Feminism. I should say that this phrase was not of my making but the name of a book published by the Oxford University Press, the premise of which I was discussing. I should also say that I was approaching the subject, as everything on this blog, from a metaphysical point of view and considering what the spiritual origin of this radical revolution was.

For feminism was a radical revolution, overturning thousands of years of a cultural norm that existed more or less everywhere in the world. I don't think people today really appreciate that. We in the secular West are so used to it and take it so much for granted that we never question it but perhaps we should. A spiritually aware person, and especially a Christian, cannot fail to see that feminism arose concurrently with the rejection of God. It goes against traditional teaching of all religions which may be a bad thing or a good thing but surely gives us valid grounds to examine its origins more deeply than we normally do.

My contention would be that a change in consciousness that was of divine inspiration and had an evolutionary purpose was hijacked by a counter-evolutionary force. Around 250 years ago developments that had been gathering pace started to come to full expression. A new form of consciousness, one that had appeared here and there for hundreds of years in pioneers of humanity, began to spread much more widely and impact the whole of society and culture. This was when the 'I' became fully aware of itself and of its ability to think and to act. No longer part of a tribe or group, it was now a full individual as a consequence of which it was spiritually cut off from the rest of the universe. A famous precursor of this form of consciousness would be the figure of Hamlet, often called the first modern person, but now it spread throughout all human beings, especially, to begin with, those in the West, and it led to the questioning of religion and the assertion of self. It had many benefits as people began to act independently, the development of science for one, but it also increased the sense of alienation. It was an advance because moving from group consciousness to self-consciousness is a necessary step to full and active participation in divine life but it also brought trouble in its wake as the separation from God became absolute. You cannot know yourself properly and be fully conscious of yourself if you retain the greater connection to universal life but when you lose the connection to universal life you may well be plunged into isolation and existential loneliness.

This change in consciousness lies behind everything of the last few centuries, good and bad. It lies behind feminism because it was experienced by both men and women equally who now had to negotiate life and being and relationships from a new perspective. Feminism from this perspective is an inevitable consequence of evolutionary development. As women become more aware of themselves as full individuals in a similar way to men so their inner life changes and that means their outer life must change too.

So feminism in its raw essence and origin was not Satanic. But what if that change was captured and re-routed? There are two forces in the universe, not two equal forces because ultimately everything comes from God, but still two forces that are in opposition. There is the divine force that seeks to bring human beings to spiritual completion and there is a counter force that we call evil because it opposes good. It is principally spiritual evil which means it seeks to do spiritual harm and if we do not understand what spiritual good is we may have a problem understanding how spiritual evil works. One way it works is by consolidating the material and worldly so some things that appear good in material and worldly terms actually work against the true and ultimate good. The aim of this evil force is to separate from God, not temporarily as in the sense of being a self-centred individual but permanently. This tells us that the current stage of full individual consciousness carries risks because if that sense of self is over-stimulated and encouraged it can lead to a much wider and deeper separation from God and the true good. Self-centred individuality is like adolescence, a temporary phase that should act as a springboard to a deeper adult engagement with God, but unfortunately the whole process has been derailed and we have got stuck and embedded in that phase. This has been due to interference from demonic sources but also, it has to be said, our own spiritual weakness.

This is the sense in which feminism can be described as Satanic as in the book cited earlier. A natural and healthy and spiritually positive change was hijacked and its material elements pushed and promoted while its spiritual ones were largely ignored, suppressed or denied. This means that the worldly ego was appealed to and its weaknesses exploited, while the redirecting of the ego to spiritual awakening, proper spiritual awakening I should stress because there are many forms which are to do with the ego self-medicating, failed to take place. Sunshine and rain cause both nourishing fruits and poisonous weeds to grow, depending on the receiving soil and the seeds that lie therein. A downpouring of spiritual energy can be reacted to by the soul or the ego depending on which one the subject is more attuned to. It can also be mis-channeled by the counter-evolutionary forces which can be identified under the traditional name of Satan, and this was what occurred.

What should have happened was what I mentioned in the earlier essay which was the development of a deeper understanding of both masculinity and femininity in their spiritual and creative aspects. If men and women had responded to spiritual energy spiritually they would have opened themselves up to their true spiritual archetypal qualities as man and woman, and this would have built on the Law and the Prophets rather than doing away with them which is the correct path of spiritual development. Feminism as we now know it is a perversion of a good. That is, its origins do lie in a certain truth but that truth has been corrupted.

For what it's worth, my understanding of man and woman and the relationship between them is based on the traditional Christian one qualified by an awareness of the recent development of consciousness, but this should have had an evolutionary impact rather than the revolutionary one it did have. Man and Woman are the two fundamental pillars of creation, equal in spiritual worth, different in spiritual function. The Satanic element of feminism is the confusion of worth and function.

You see, it is a metaphysical matter not a political or social or even a human, in the sense we now think of human, one. That is why people whose worldview is based on the ethos of modernity and secularism will not understand it. To such people a position such as the one I have outlined here will seem bad because it conflicts with their idea of good. But if you lack metaphysical understanding you cannot even know what the real good is. To learn about the true feminine mysteries discarded and rejected by feminism I would recommend a book written from the Catholic perspective by Alice von Hildebrand called Man and Woman: A Divine Invention. There is a divine femininity but it is not to be found in feminism.

 There has been a good series of posts on the Orthosphere recently on the subject of universalism and whether all will eventually be saved. One of them is here. They reminded me that I had written something on this subject a few years ago (here and here) which brought forth some interesting comments so it is clearly a subject that concerns people as well it might. Inevitably, no conclusion is reached in either case but the potential contradictions between perfect love and perfect freedom are explored.

For this is what it comes down to. God is a God of mercy and justice but in a conflict between the two which takes precedence?  Since God is perfect the answer must be that neither takes precedence and both are fully satisfied, but how can that be? For us it is not possible but with God, as we have been told, all things are possible. One way for the demands of both to be met is that the soul is granted an indefinite period of time to get it right. This might require something in the nature of reincarnation and karma but that is rejected by Christianity, and though there are hints of it in the New Testament (for instance, reaping what you sow, the idea that John the Baptist might be Elijah come again, and "did this man sin or his parents that he be born blind?"), they are inconclusive to say the least. I personally am sympathetic to reincarnation as something like an evolutionary mechanism but it does focus on the theosis side of the spiritual path and ignores, or certainly downplays, the significance of salvation. I believe both are important.

Another possibility would be that purgatory is not just to purify the already saved of residual sins so that they are worthy to enter Heaven, its acknowledged objective, but also has a salvific aspect. Or, if we don't call this purgatory, there are forms of post-mortem existence that have this function. This would also be contrary to orthodox teaching which insists on the right choice being made in this life even if it is at the point of death. That's because there is something unique about life in a physical body as regards making a choice in complete freedom, a freedom that does not exist in the spiritual (meaning non-material) realm, or not to the same extent, because it is not fully separate from God. Nevertheless, if we want God to extend his mercy indefinitely, and we do not accept a return to the physical world, we should admit the possibility of repentance after death. 

Then there is the question of Hell and what it is. In one of the posts on the Orthosphere I commented as follows. Heaven is an opt-in destination so you must want to go there and behave accordingly. This would mean that anything that was not Heaven could then be seen as a form of Hell. Perhaps the mistake the universalists make is to see Hell as necessarily a place of eternal torment. That may exist but it may not be the default option for those who reject God. Hell may have many mansions too and many of these may be not too different to how this world is, all reflecting the varying degrees of God rejection and self-assertion to be found in human souls. But they are not Heaven. 

I said in the comment that Hell as a place of eternal torment may exist but I am not persuaded that it does. From the eternal point of view, what may happen to the truly recalcitrant soul that refuses to turn round and accept the reality of God is that it gradually loses its life force. All life comes from God. The demons must steal life energy from those who have it because they can no longer get it directly. Evil is parasitical. This is a major reason for their need to corrupt souls. They can then harvest the low level energy produced, the energy of anger, hatred, lust or whatever, but eventually souls that cannot receive life from God will wither and die if they cannot steal it from elsewhere. Meanwhile they will be in a sort of Hell because Hell is separation from God but this may not be experienced by them as torment. It may even have its pleasures though these will not be spiritual or not properly spiritual. After all, we are separated from God (apparently not really, of course) even while in this world.

God obviously wants all souls to be united with him but this must be on a voluntary basis or it is coercion and that would negate the whole point of creating souls with free will who can, in their turn, add positively to creation. If a soul fails the test of turning to God in an environment where that does require a choice (the material world) there are two possibilities. Either it is consigned (that is to say, it consigns itself) to the cosmic recycling bin or it is given new opportunities to get it right, perhaps here, perhaps elsewhere in quite different environments. The idea that it is tortured forever for the failure of a single finite life seems unreasonable, illogical and quite contrary to the idea of a God of love. However, like attracts like in the spiritual world, and for as long as a soul rejects God its consciousness will remain endarkened which is a kind of hell though may not be experienced as such by the soul that has adopted this position. I believe we need to see post-mortem conscious existence as containing many levels. It is not just black (Hell) or white (Heaven) but there are many shades in between. If we see Hell as anything that is not white we may be closer to true understanding. Perhaps jet black Hell is the one place from whence there is no return but most souls who fail to attain Heaven go to some kind of grey hell and from these there is possible redemption. Black Hell is for full and final God rejection but for those who may not have reached this tragic depth there remains hope.

In fact, many of them are net negative. I was prompted in this thought after being sent this link to the London Mind, Body and Spirit Festival which takes place shortly. Most of the spiritual professionals who appear at these affairs in talks and workshops are just selling their wares. They are basically business people who have a talent for giving a spiritual presentation but they cater to those who seek spirituality as a lifestyle accessory or means to develop themselves. They are the psychics, intuitives, positive thinkers, motivational speakers, wellness experts and aura readers who offer a kind of therapeutic self-help for people tired of materialism or, since few of them actually renounce it, looking to expand their horizons a bit beyond materialism. I suppose you could say they are a stage to be gone through but you shouldn't need to experience that stage to realise the essential emptiness and self-indulgence of it.

I'm sure some of these teachers believe they are doing good and perhaps some of them are but in my opinion they are mostly leading people away from true spiritual understanding down one of the many blind alleys that the novice might encounter when he first starts to aspire to something more than this world has to offer. Anybody who makes spirituality their profession, other than a bona fide priest who anyway follows a vocation not a profession and is certainly not in it for fame or fortune, is either a fraud or, since most of them are not that, an opportunist or, best case scenario, on a low rung of spiritual understanding. Some years ago my guides informed me that there were many teaching half-truths at present and, though they were not all evil, they were not very evolved. I wouldn't say the picture has changed since then. I am not saying these people are evil but what they have to offer is a spirituality intended to make one feel good, and the spiritual path is not about making the earthly self happy and fulfilled or even loving and good. It has one purpose only which is to reorient the heart and mind to God.

So, are there no spiritual teachers worth following? It depends what you mean by teacher. There are certainly people from whom one can learn but the whole concept of a spiritual teacher is foreign to the West. It is imported from Eastern religion, the guru and so on, and therefore it is operating on a different sort of level. But even on that level I would maintain that the spiritual teacher role as it exists now exists as much for the teacher's sake as it does for the pupil. Certainly we can and should share our understanding but the spiritual path today is an individual path and all teachers can do is give us a push in the right direction at an early stage. Thereafter, we must form our own relationship with God. No doubt many teachers would say exactly that but often by their behaviour they encourage dependence, personality worship and idolatry. Nowadays the spiritual teacher is just another manifestation of celebrity culture.

Here is a third and final selection from Coleridge's Table Talk, again with comments in italics.

Facts, you know, are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises. The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a legitimate deduction from all the facts which are truly material. 

Truth is made up of facts but it goes beyond facts as reality transcends things.

How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance ! 

Dance, like music, can exalt or corrupt but it tends to increase self-awareness so compounds a loss of innocence.

* s face is almost the only exception I know to the observation that something feminine — not effeminate mind — is discoverable in the countenances of all men of genius. Look at the face 

of old Dampier, a rough sailor, but a man of exquisite mind. How soft is the air of his countenance, how delicate the shape of  his temples!

The evolved soul will combine elements of the masculine and the feminine though always in the context of the man or woman that he or she is. You could see transexuals as a corrupted debasement of this idea.

On Astrology and Alchemy

It is curious to mark how instinctively the reason has always pointed out to men the ultimate end of the various sciences, and how immediately afterwards they have set to work, like children, to realize that end by inadequate means. Now they applied to their appetites, now to their passions, now to their fancy, now to the understanding, and lastly, to the intuitive reason again. There is no doubt but that astrology of some sort or other would be the last achievement of astronomy: there must be chemical relations between the planets; the difference of their magnitudes compared with that of their distances is not explicable otherwise; but this, though, as it were, blindly and unconsciously seen, led immediately to fortune- telling and other nonsense. So alchemy is the theoretic end of chemistry: there must be a common law, upon which all can become each and each all; but then the idea was turned to the coining of gold and silver.

It is my profound conviction that St. John and St. Paul were divinely inspired; but I totally disbelieve the dictation of any one word, sentence, or argument throughout their writings. Observe, there was revelation. All religion is revealed;— revealed religion is, in my judgment, a mere pleonasm. Revelations of facts were undoubtedly made to the prophets; revelations of doctrines were as undoubtedly made to John and Paul;—but is it not a mere matter of our very senses that John and Paul each dealt with those revelations, expounded them, insisted on them, just exactly according to his own natural strength of intellect, habit of reasoning, moral, and even physical temperament?

The way the heavenly powers work is to impress ideas on their disciples in the world. That way human will is left free and we have to, as it were, find the original within ourselves, stretch up to it from the clues given so increasing our own intuitive faculties. 

So little did the early bishops and preachers think their Christian faith wrapped up in, and solely to be learned from, the New Testament,—indeed, can it be said that there was any such collection for three hundred years? —that I remember a letter from x to a friend of his, a bishop in the East, in which he most evidently speaks of the Christian Scriptures as of works of which the bishop knew little or nothing.

Interesting if true. I don't know enough of early church history to know.

In natural history, God's freedom is shown in the law of necessity. In moral history, God's necessity or providence is shown in man's freedom.

What makes a human being human? Freedom.

The sum total of moral philosophy is found in this one question, Is Good a superfluous word,—or mere lazy synonym for the pleasurable, and its causes;—at most, a mere modification to express degree, and comparative duration of pleasure?

What is the Good? We used to know but we don't any more. We have lost the idea of the true good.

It is curious to trace the operation of the moral law of polarity in the history of politics, religion, &c. When the maximum of one tendency has been attained, there is no gradual decrease, but a direct transition to its minimum, till the opposite tendency has attained its maximum; and then you see another corresponding revulsion. 

Hope for the future then.

Never take an iambus as a Christian name. A trochee, or tribrach, will do very well. Edith and Rotha are my favourite names for women.

I have no idea what this means but how could I leave it out?

No man was more enthusiastic than I was for France and the Revolution: it had all my wishes, none of my expectations. Before 1793, I clearly saw and often enough stated in public, the horrid delusion, the vile mockery, of the whole affair.

You could say this about many movements ostensibly for freedom which after the initial burst of energy turn sour as freedom becomes disorder and the breaking of boundaries leads to chaos.

Every attempt, in a sermon, to cause emotion, except as the consequence of an impression made on the reason, or the understanding, or the will, I hold to be fanatical and sectarian.

Any preacher or orator who seeks to appeal to his audience's emotions might enflame but does not illumine. In fact, he does the opposite. Wisdom is sober.

You are always talking of the rights of the negroes. As a rhetorical mode of stimulating the people of England here, I do not object; but I utterly condemn your frantic practice of declaiming about their rights to the blacks themselves. They ought to be forcibly reminded of the state in which their brethren in Africa still are, and taught to be thankful for the providence which has placed them within reach of the means of grace. I know no right except such as flows from righteousness; and as every Christian believes his righteousness to be imputed, so must his right be an imputed right too. It must flow out of a duty, and it is under that name that the process of humanization ought to begin and to be conducted throughout.

Which comes first, rights or duties? Certainly there can be no rights without duties. The first section shows the folly of the idea of reparations.

I think St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans the most profound work in existence; and I hardly believe that the writings of the old Stoics, now lost, could have been deeper.

 To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood;…. this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish genius from talent. 

To preserve innocence while still absorbing experience is to maintain the contact with God.

I quite agree with Strabo that there can be no great poet who is not a good man, though not, perhaps, a goody man. His heart must be pure; he must have learned to look into his own heart, and sometimes to look at it; for how can he who is ignorant of his own heart know any thing of, or be able to move, the heart of any one else? 

Some music is above me; most music is beneath me. I like Beethoven and Mozart—or else some of the aërial compositions of the elder Italians, as Palestrina and Carissimi.—And I love Purcell.

Some music comes from the higher world, some from this world and some from the lower world. In fact, not just some but most now in the case of the latter.

The most common effect of this mock evangelical spirit, especially with young women, is self-inflation and busy-bodyism. 

Wokery summed up.

If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.

For compassion a human heart suffices; but for full and adequate sympathy with joy an angel's only. And ever remember, that the more exquisite and delicate a flower of joy, the tenderer must be the hand that plucks it.

The Trinity is the idea: the Incarnation, which implies the Fall, is the fact: the Redemption is the mesothesis of the two—that is—the religion.

I am, dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope— those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love,—for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? I say realities; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream; Yet, in a strict sense, reality is not predicable at all of aught below Heaven. Hooker wished to live to finish his Ecclesiastical Polity;—so I own I wish life and strength had been spared to me to complete my Philosophy. For, as God hears me, the originating, continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart were to exalt the glory of his name; and, which is the same thing in other words, to promote the improvement of mankind. But visum aliter Deo (God wishes otherwise), and his will be done.

This was spoken on July 10th 1834.  He died 2 weeks later.