I stopped Sydney at this point to ask him a question. "You," I said, "often mention passages from the Bible. Tell me what you think about this book."
"I think," he replied, "that much of it is the word of God echoed on the mind of man, and that it is terribly neglected and sadly misunderstood. It is so written that all who will, may understand it as far as their mind is at one with the author. The purer, the wiser, the holier a man becomes, the more will it continue to reveal, till it shall stand out at last the miracle of miracles--the Book which contains all the mysteries of earth, yet is capable at the same time of concealing them from those who are not yet ready to receive the knowledge; for it follows its own teaching, and casts not its pearls before swine. To the beast nature it gives the bit, bridle, and lash, till they shall be guided by these to higher ground and purer air; but to the unselfish and pure, it is the true revelation of the Word of God. Of course it has had to go through the treatment, which an uncivilized humanity bestows on all spiritual gifts--the curse of worship. Once men had an elephant god, then a sun or moon god, and many have now a paper-and-ink god. For the animal nature clings to matter, and to good solid matter that it understands. Hence the extraordinary dislike which so-called believers in the Bible show for anything which is called spiritualistic or scientific; whereas the book they worship is, without exception, in the right interpretation of the word, the great book on spiritualism, and the most advanced treatise ever written on the higher branches of a science, to which the world at present is only feeling its way. It is the funniest sight in creation to see pigmy man getting angry, and struggling fiercely to protect the Word of God from His works; but after all, though it does not help the book, it may help its would-be protector, for he means kindly by his patronage, and cannot be expected to foresee with what reverence the greater wisdom of the future will hold the book of knowledge.
"But I had better continue my story now, and leave this subject, which opens out so many fields of thought, that there is no saying where we may wander.