Yesterday we read how Emma Hardinge-Britten received the Spiritual Commandments from Robert Owen in spirit. Today I set out those commandments, having modernised the language used by Robert Owen. We could all do much worse than try to abide by these rules, even though it is difficult. If ALL people lived by them, what a paradise we would have on earth!
1: You shall search for truth in every department of being. Test, prove and try if what you deem to be truth is truth and then accept it as the word of God.
2: You shall continue the search for truth all your life and never cease to test, prove and try all that you deem to be truth.
3: You shall search by every attainable means for the laws that underlie all life and being, striving to comprehend these laws, live in harmony with them and make them the laws of your own life, your rule and guide in all your actions.
4: You shall not follow the example of any man or set of men, nor obey any teaching or accept of any theory as your rule of life that is not in strict accordance with your highest sense of right.
5: You shall remember that a wrong done to the least of your fellow creatures, is a wrong done to all and you shall never commit a wrong wilfully and consciously to any of your fellow men, nor connive at wrong done by others without striving to prevent or protesting against it.
6: You shall acknowledge all men’s rights to do, think, or speak, to be exactly equal to your own and all rights whatsoever that you demand you shall ever accord to others.
7: You shall not hold yourself bound to love, or associate with those that are distasteful or repulsive to you but you shall be held bound to treat such objects of dislike with gentleness, courtesy and justice and never allow your antipathies to make you ungentle or unjust to any living creature.
8: You shall ever regard the rights, interests and welfare of the many as superior to those of the one or the few, and in cases where your welfare, or that of any friend, is to be balanced against that of society, you shall sacrifice the welfare of yourself or your friend, to the welfare of the many.
9: You shall be obedient to the laws of the land in which you reside, in all things that do not conflict with your highest sense of right.
10: Your first and last duty upon earth and through all your life, shall be to seek for the principles of right and to live them out to the utmost of your power and whatever creed, precept or example conflicts with those principles, you shall shun and reject, ever remembering that the laws of right are:-
In morals – Justice
In science – Harmony
In religion – The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, the immortality of the human soul and, compensation and retribution for the good or evil done on earth.
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