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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
William Stainton Moses:
The "Counterfeiting Of God’s Work" Hypothesis
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Preview and Summary: The "Counterfeiting Of God's Work" Hypothesis" is another example of "the Joker is wild" principle. It ascribes to Satan an invincibility, an almightiness and supreme power, allowing him to manipulate history and events of the world by fiat. This notion, in fact, is one more idolatry and misapprehension of the nature of Evil.
William Stainton Moses was a prominent late nineteenth-century British Spiritualist minister. Michael Tymn offers biographical sketch:
In Moses’ biography, Charlton Templeman Speer stated that Moses and his father frequently discussed religious matters and both were gradually drifting into an unorthodox, almost agnostic, frame of mind. Mrs. Speer had taken an interest in spiritualism and persuaded her husband and Moses to attend a séance with Miss Lottie Fowler. During that sitting, on April 2, 1872, Moses received some very evidential information about a friend who had died. His curiosity aroused, Moses attended other séances, including some with D. D. Home, the renowned Scottish-American physical medium. Moses had earlier referred to Lord Adare’s book on Home as the “dreariest twaddle” he had ever come across. Dr. Speer, who had shared Moses’ early view, calling it all “stuff and nonsense,” joined Moses in the investigation of spiritualism.
After several months, Moses was convinced that he was indeed communicating with the spirit world, and soon thereafter he began to realize that he was a medium himself. According to Charlton Speer, a small circle of friends gathered regularly to observe and record the phenomena. They included himself, Dr. and Mrs. Speer, a Dr. Thompson, Serjeant Cox, a lawyer, and several others. Occasionally, Professor William Crookes (later Sir William), the distinguished chemist and psychical researcher, would attend the circle...
The following is an excerpt from Moses's books, testimony from Spirit Guides whom he channeled.
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We are dealing with the Divine mission which we have in charge. Of the many difficulties which beset our path this is one of the most considerable, that those who are most congenial to our purpose, and whose co-operation we most desire, are usually so hampered by preconceived theological notions, or are so fearful of what seems to contradict some things which they have learned, that we are unable to influence them, and grieve sorrowfully to find that which is derived from God charged on the adversaries, and boldly attributed to an all-powerful and malignant Devil. Of all classes of our opponents these are to us the most sad. The pseudo-scientific man, who will look at nothing save through his own medium, and on his own terms—who will deal with us only so that he may be allowed to prescribe means of demonstrating us to be deluders, liars, figments of a disordered brain—he is of little moment to us.
His blinded eye cannot see, and his cloudy intelligence, befogged and cramped with lifelong prejudice, can be of little service to us. He can at best penetrate but little into the mysteries of communion with the spheres; and the foundation of knowledge that he could acquire, though useful, and valuable even, would be of little service to us in our special work. We deal with other issues than those which would principally engage the attention of those few men of science who design to notice the phenomenal aspect of our work. The mind long trained in observation of the phenomena of physics is best devoted to the elucidation of those facts which come within its province. Our sphere is different, connected rather with the influence of spirit upon spirit and the knowledge of spirit-destiny that we can impart.
And the ignorant and uncultured mind which knows not of what we would tell, and cannot know until a long course of preliminary training has prepared the way—this class of mind, though hereafter it may attain to a plane of knowledge on which we can work, is of no service now.
To the proud, the arrogant, the wise in their own conceits, the children of routine and respectability, we can say very little. The more physical evidence is necessary to reach them. The story which we are charged with would be but an idle tale to them.
Is it to the receptive souls who know of God and heaven, and love and charity, and who desire to know of the hereafter and of the haven to which they tend, that we turn with earnest longing. But, alas! too often we find the natural religious instincts, which are God-implanted and spirit-nurtured, choked or distorted by the cramping influence of a human theology, the imperceptible growth of long ages of ignorance and folly. They are armed at all points against the truth. Do we speak of a revelation of the Great Father?—they already have a revelation which they have decided to be complete. Do we tell them of its inconsistencies, and point out that nowhere pretends to the finality and infallibility which they would assign it?—they reply to us with stray words from the formularies of a Church, or by an opinion borrowed and adapted from some person whom they have chosen to consider infallibly inspired. They apply to us a test drawn from some one of the sacred records which was given at a special time for a special purpose, and which they imagine to be of universal applications.
Do we point to our credentials, and to the miracles, so called, which attest the reality of our mission, even as the attested the mission of those whom we influenced of old? —they tell us that the age of miracles is past, and that only the inspired of the Holy Ghost long centuries ago were permitted to work such wonders as evidence of Divine teaching. They tell us that the Devil, whom they have imagined for themselves, has the power to counterfeit God’s work, and they consign us and our mission to darkness and outer antagonism to God and goodness. They would be willing to help us; for, indeed, we say that which is probable, but that we are of the Devil. We must be, because in the Bible it is said that false and deceiving spirits will come; and so we must be the deceivers. It must be so, for did not a holy and elevated Teacher prophesy of those who should deny the Son of God? And do not we practically remove Him and His work from the place in which God has placed it and Him? It must be so; for do we not place human reason above faith? Do we not preach and teach a seductive Gospel of good works, and give credit to the doer of them? And is not all this the work of the arch-fiend transformed into an angel of light, and striving to win souls to ruin?
It is such arguments, honestly put forward by those whose respect we fain would win, that are to us a bitter sorrow. They are in many cases loving, earnest souls, who need but the progressive tendency to make them bright lights in the world’s gloom. To them we fain would give our message; but before we can build on the sure foundations which they already have of knowledge of God and duty, we must perforce clear away the rubbish which renders further elevation unsafe.
Religion, to be worthy the name, must have it two sides—the one pointing to God, the other to man. What has the received faith, which is called orthodox by its professors, to say on these points; and wherein do we differ in our message; and how far is such difference on our part in accord with reason? For, at the very outset, we claim, as the only court to which we can as yet appeal, the Reason which is implanted in man. We claim it; for it was by Reason that the sages settled the list of the writings which they decided to be the exclusive and final revelation of God. To Reason they appealed for their decision. To Reason we appeal too. Or do our friends claim that Divine guidance prescribed for them what should be for all time the body of revealed truth? We, too, are the messengers of the Most High, no less surely sent than the spirits who guided the Hebrew seers, and who ministered to those whose fiat settled the Divine word.
We are as they: our message as their message, only more advanced; our God their God, only more clearly revealed, less human, more Divine. Whether the appeal be to Divine inspiration or not, human Reason (guided doubtless by spirit agency, but still Reason) sways the final decision. And those who reject this appeal are out of their own mouths convicted of folly. Blind faith can be no substitute for reasoning trust. For the faith is faith that either has grounds for its trust or not. In the former case the ground is reasonable; in which case Reason again is the ultimate judge; or it is not, in which case it would commend itself to none. But if faith rest on no ground at all, we need not further labour to show it baseless and untrustworthy…
The soul has cultivated habits that have become so engrained as to be essential parts of its individuality. The spirit that has yielded to the lusts of a sensual body becomes in the end their slave. It would not be happy in the midst of purity and refinement. It would sigh for its old haunts and habits. They are of its essence. So you see that the legions of the adversaries are simply the masses of unprogressed, undeveloped spirits, who have banded together from affinity against all that is pure and good. They can only progress by penitence, through the instruction of higher intelligences, and by gradual and laborious undoing of sin and sinful habit. There are many such, and they are the adversaries. The idea that there is no such thing as evil, no antagonism to good, no banded company of adversaries who resist progress and truth, and fight against dissemination of what advantages humanity, is an open device of the evil ones for your bewilderment.
SM: Have they a Chief—a Devil?
Chiefs many who govern; but not such a Devil as theologians have feigned. Spirits, good and bad alike, are subject to the rule of commanding Intelligences.
If there be nought in what we say of God and of man's after-life that commends itself to you, it must be that your mind has ceased to love the grander and simpler conceptions which it had once learned to drink in. . . .
Cease to be anxious about the minute questions which are of minor moment. Dwell much on the great, the overwhelming necessity for a clearer revealing of the Supreme; on the blank and cheerless ignorance of God and of us which has crept over the world: on the noble creed we teach, on the bright future we reveal. Cease to be perplexed by thoughts of an imagined Devil. For the honest, pure, and truthful soul there is no Devil nor Prince of Evil such as theology has feigned. . . . The clouds of sorrow and anguish of soul may gather round [such a man] and his spirit may be saddened with the burden of sin—weighed down with consciousness of surrounding misery and guilt, but no fabled Devil can gain dominion over him, or prevail to drag down his soul to hell. All the sadness of spirit, the acquaintance with grief, the intermingling with guilt, is part of the experience, in virtue of which his soul shall rise hereafter. The guardians are training and fitting it by those means to progress, and jealously protect it from the dominion of the foe.
It is only they who, by a fondness for evil, by a lack of spiritual and excess of corporeal development, attract to themselves the congenial spirits of the undeveloped who have left the body but not forgotten its desires. These alone risk incursion of evil. These by proclivity attract evil, and it dwells with them at their invitation. They attract the lower spirits who hover nearest Earth, and who are but too ready to rush in and mar our plans, and ruin our work for souls. These are they of whom you speak when you say in haste, that the result of Spiritualism is not for good. You err, friend. Blame not us that the lower spirits manifest for those who bid them welcome. Blame man's insensate folly, which will choose the low and groveling rather than the pure and elevated. Blame his foolish laws, which daily hurry into a life for which they are unprepared, thousands of spirits, hampered and dragged down by a life of folly and sin, which has been fostered by custom and fashion. Blame the ginshops, and the madhouses, and the prisons, and the encouraged lusts and fiendish selfishness of man. This it is which damns legions of spirits-not, as ye fancy, in a sea of material fire, but in the flames of perpetuated lust, condemned to burn itself out in hopeless longing till the purged soul rises through the fire and surmounts its dead passions. Yes, blame these and kindred causes, if there be around undeveloped intelligences who shock you by their deception, and annoy you by frivolity and falsehood.
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