The Astral World—Higher Occult Powers: Clairvoyance, Spiritism, Mediumship, and Spirit-Healing Fully ExplainedTiffany, Joel
Religion
The Astral World—Higher Occult Powers: Clairvoyance, Spiritism, Mediumship, and Spirit-Healing Fully Explained
Tiffany, Joel
Spiritualism
As man develops in himself a love of his fellow-man irrespective of
exterior relation, but as a child of God, as possessing in his bosom
the germ of immortality, and as endowed with a facility of eternal
unfolding in the eternal future, he comes into the sphere of true
charity; and when his work is faithfully done here, he will enter upon
that reward which he has been laying up in heaven, where neither moth
nor rust corrupts, and where thieves do not break through and steal.
There is between the first and second spheres, speaking of them in the
affectional sense, another sphere, called the intellectual sphere.
Man as an intellectual being has loves or delights. The quality of
the intellect, you are aware, is to investigate, to think. Intellect
of itself has no affection, no sympathy. It can be allied with vice
or virtue. It can attend the missionary in his labor or the pirate in
his murderous work. It has of itself no conscience, no moral quality.
Hence you will find that men may be highly intellectual and vicious or
virtuous. Intellect can join upon vice or crime, and upon charity and
virtue, and that, too, without experiencing antagonism from such union.
Man may be developed intellectually without affecting particularly
his moral character. Intellect’s particular mission is to investigate
that which addresses the perception. It can join upon the sphere of
lust or the sphere of charity. Were it not for this, the selfish and
charitable natures could not unite in man, and there would be such
an antagonism in the individual, he could not be possibly developed
from the plane of his lustful nature to the plane of his moral nature.
Intellect is a sort of John Baptist that goes between the Moses and the
Christ of man’s nature. It does not partake of the lust of Moses nor of
the love of Christ. Its delights are sometimes mistaken for love, or
the joys of love. People often say of things which are beautiful that
they love them. They say that they _love_ the study of mathematics.
That expression seems to me to be improper. The heat of love is never
known to the cold intellect. The intellect can discourse eloquently
respecting justice and right; but, so far as the heart is concerned, it
may trample upon all justice. You will see men who, so far as theory
is concerned, will discourse eloquently concerning human justice and
morality, yet they utterly disregard and ignore all moral restraints
in their private character and practices. These men are babes in their
moral natures—they are less than babes. Intellect has to do with the
relations of things—pertains to dead matter. The difference between
intellect and morals is the difference between the essence and spirit
of matter and the essences or spirit of the soul. While science, which
belongs to the province of intellect, may harmoniously journey with the
moral affections, it may also journey with the sensuous affections. I
make these remarks so that you may not suppose that a man belongs to
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