The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the new Gospel of InterpretationMaitland, Edward
Religion
The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the new Gospel of Interpretation
Maitland, Edward
Kingsford, Anna Bonus, 1846-1888; Mysticism
There were sundry other tokens of recognition which are entitled to
reproduction here, as showing to how wide a range of educated and
intelligent opinion within the pale of Christianity our work appeals.
Their value is due to their representing a class of minds which, while
possessed of the ordinary ecclesiastical training, are not restricted to
the knowledge thereby acquired. For, seeing that such training means
little, if anything, more than the mechanical learning of what other men
have said who, themselves, had no real knowledge, the opinions,
expressed on the strength of it, are neither educated nor intelligent,
but adoptive only and perfunctory, and represent learning without
insight. And as such precisely are the opinions which constitute
ecclesiastical orthodoxy, the judgment of the representatives of that
orthodoxy on our work possesses no more real value than did that of
Caiaphas and his coadjutors on Jesus and His work[91]. Denouncing Him
as a blasphemer, they were themselves blasphemers. And inasmuch as they
were types of the votaries of ecclesiastical orthodoxy of all time, it
is obvious that the only new revelation--if any--which would find
acceptance at their hands, would be one that confirmed and reinforced
their errors, instead of exposing and correcting them. Proceeding, as
was declared by Jesus, from their "father, the devil," a
priest-constructed system ever prefers Barabbas to Christ;--prefers,
that is, a system which defrauds--hence the force of the term "robber"
as applied to Barabbas--man of the divine potentialities which Christ
came to reveal to him by demonstrating them in His own person, together
with the manner of their realisation.
Not that all who bear the title of Ecclesiastics come under this
condemnation. In every age of the Church there have been those who,
while holding office in it, have not consented to the "Scarlet Woman" of
Sacerdotalism. And never was there a time when the proportion of these
was larger, or when their sense of the need of a New Gospel of
Interpretation was more keen and urgent than now: so intolerable to
multitudes of the clergy of all sections of the Church has become the
antagonism recognised by them as subsisting between the traditional and
official presentation of religion and their own clear perceptions of
goodness and truth[92].
The testimonies which remain to be added are valuable as coming from men
who, while possessed of ecclesiastical training, have been taught also
of the Spirit, and, adding to tradition intuition, and to learning
insight, have in themselves the witness to that which they utter.
A distinguished French ecclesiastic, the Abbé Roca, writing in
_L'Aurore_, says of our books--
"These books seem to me to be the chosen organs of the Divine
Feminine" (_i.e._ the interpretative) "Principle, in view of the
new revelation of Revelation."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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