Of all the differences between Spiritualist and Orthodox philosophy, I guess nothing is more difficult to comprehend than the Spiritualist view that God can in no way be considered an individual, to have a personality. For generations Christian theologians have asked people to look at God as being a benign father (most of the time anyway!) to whom we can open our hearts in prayer like we do, face to face, with our earthly father. I recall that when my grandfather decided, upon the receipt of overwhelming evidence, that he should become a Spiritualist, having been a Methodist all his life, his biggest problem was his loss of a personal God. He explained it by saying, “They have taken away my Saviour!” To try, as Spiritualists are asked to do, to look upon God as a Power or The Great Spirit or Infinite Intelligence, is an emotional leap that many Spiritualists find the greatest difficulty with. Consequently, in Britain at least, mediums will often begin their prayer at a Divine Service with words like, “Great Spirit, Father God” or “Great Spirit, Heavenly Father.”
I recently read an insightful commentary on this question by the great Arthur Conan Doyle in his book “The Stark Munro Letters.” It is so good I want to share it with you and make no apology to those of you who may have read his book because I feel it is such a vital subject to those who would have a truer understanding of life, its purpose and our relationship to that Great Infinite Power we call God.
“Those who I love best are those who have the least sympathy with my struggles. They talk about having faith, as if it could be done by an act of volition. They might as well tell me to have black hair instead of red. I might simulate it perhaps by refusing to use my reason at all in religious matters. But I will never be a traitor to the highest thing that God has given me. I WILL use it. It is more moral to use it and go wrong, than to forego it and be right. It is only a little foot-rule, and I have to measure Mount Everest with it; but it is all I have and I’ll never give it up while there’s breath between my lips.
With all respect to you Bertie, it is easy to be orthodox. A man who wanted mental peace and material advancement in this world would certainly choose to be so. As Smiles says – “A dead fish can float with the stream, but it takes a man to swim against it.” What could be nobler than the start and the starter of Christianity? How beautiful the upward struggle of an idea, like some sweet flower blossoming out amongst rubble and cinders! But alas, to say that this idea was a final idea! That this scheme of thought was above the reason! That this gentle philosopher was that supreme intelligence to which we cannot even imagine a personality without irreverence! All this will come to rank with the strangest delusions of mankind. And then how clouded has become the fine daybreak of Christianity! Its representatives have risen from the manger to the palace, from the fishing smack to the House of Lords. Nor is that other old potentate in the Vatican, with his art treasures, his guards and his cellars of wine in a more logical position. They are all good and talented men, and in the market of brains are worth perhaps as much as they get. But how can they bring themselves to pose as the representatives of a creed, which, as they themselves expound it, is based upon humility, poverty and self-denial? Not one of them who would not quote with approval the parable of the Wedding Guest. But try putting one of them out of their due precedence at the next Court reception. It happened some little time ago with a Cardinal, and England rang with his protests. How blind not to see how they would spring at one leap into the real first place if they would but resolutely claim the last as the special badge of their master!
What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts. But surely all will be well with us. If not, then He who made us is evil, which is not to be thought. Surely then, all must go very well with us.”
The most telling phrase for Spiritualists is “… that supreme intelligence to which we cannot even imagine a personality without irreverence.” What clearer understanding could there be of the impossibility of the finite being able to comprehend the infinite?
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