Second Discourse on Religion

155:6.1 And so, while they paused in the shade of the hillside, Jesus continued  to teach them regarding the religion of the spirit, in substance  saying:

155:6.2 You  have come out from among those of your fellows who choose to remain  satisfied with a religion of mind, who crave security and prefer  conformity. You have elected to exchange your feelings of authoritative  certainty for the assurances of the spirit of adventurous and  progressive faith. You have dared to protest against the grueling  bondage of institutional religion and to reject the authority of the  traditions of record which are now regarded as the word of God. Our  Father did indeed speak through Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Amos, and Hosea,  but he did not cease to minister words of truth to the world when these  prophets of old made an end of their utterances. My Father is no  respecter of races or generations in that the word of truth is  vouchsafed one age and withheld from another. Commit not the folly of  calling that divine which is wholly human, and fail not to discern the  words of truth which come not through the traditional oracles of  supposed inspiration.

155:6.3 I have called upon you to be born again, to be born of the spirit. I have called you out of the darkness of authority and the lethargy of  tradition into the transcendent light of the realization of the  possibility of making for yourselves the greatest discovery possible for  the human soul to make—the supernal experience of finding God for  yourself, in yourself, and of yourself, and of doing all this as a fact  in your own personal experience. And so may you pass from death to life, from the authority of tradition to the experience of knowing  God; thus will you pass from darkness to light, from a racial faith  inherited to a personal faith achieved by actual experience; and thereby  will you progress from a theology of mind handed down by your ancestors  to a true religion of spirit which shall be built up in your souls as  an eternal endowment.

155:6.4 Your  religion shall change from the mere intellectual belief in traditional  authority to the actual experience of that living faith which is able to  grasp the reality of God and all that relates to the divine spirit of  the Father. The religion of the mind ties you hopelessly to the past;  the religion of the spirit consists in progressive revelation and ever  beckons you on toward higher and holier achievements in spiritual ideals  and eternal realities.

155:6.5 While  the religion of authority may impart a present feeling of settled  security, you pay for such a transient satisfaction the price of the  loss of your spiritual freedom and religious liberty. My Father does not require of you as the price  of entering the kingdom of heaven that you should force yourself to  subscribe to a belief in things which are spiritually repugnant, unholy,  and untruthful. It is not required of you that your own sense of mercy,  justice, and truth should be outraged by submission to an outworn  system of religious forms and ceremonies. The religion of the spirit  leaves you forever free to follow the truth wherever the leadings of the  spirit may take you. And who can judge—perhaps this spirit may have  something to impart to this generation which other generations have  refused to hear?

155:6.6 Shame  on those false religious teachers who would drag hungry souls back into  the dim and distant past and there leave them! And so are these  unfortunate persons doomed to become frightened by every new discovery,  while they are discomfited by every new revelation of truth. The prophet  who said, “He will be kept in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on God.” was not a mere intellectual believer in  authoritative theology. This truth-knowing human had discovered God; he  was not merely talking about God.

155:6.7 I admonish you to give up the practice of always quoting the prophets of old and praising the heroes of Israel, and instead aspire to become living prophets of the Most High and  spiritual heroes of the coming kingdom. To honor the God-knowing leaders  of the past may indeed be worth while, but why, in so doing, should you  sacrifice the supreme experience of human existence: finding God for  yourselves and knowing him in your own souls?

155:6.8 Every  race of mankind has its own mental outlook upon human existence;  therefore must the religion of the mind ever run true to these various  racial viewpoints. Never can the religions of authority come to  unification. Human unity and mortal brotherhood can be achieved only by and through the  superendowment of the religion of the spirit. Racial minds may differ,  but all mankind is indwelt by the same divine and eternal spirit. The  hope of human brotherhood can only be realized when, and as, the  divergent mind religions of authority become impregnated with, and  overshadowed by, the unifying and ennobling religion of the spirit—the  religion of personal spiritual experience.

155:6.9 The  religions of authority can only divide men and set them in  conscientious array against each other; the religion of the spirit will  progressively draw men together and cause them to become understandingly  sympathetic with one another. The religions of authority require of men  uniformity in belief, but this is impossible of realization in the  present state of the world. The religion of the spirit requires only  unity of experience—uniformity of destiny—making full allowance for  diversity of belief. The religion of the spirit requires only uniformity  of insight, not uniformity of viewpoint and outlook. The religion of  the spirit does not demand uniformity of intellectual views, only unity  of spirit feeling. The religions of authority crystallize into lifeless  creeds; the religion of the spirit grows into the increasing joy and  liberty of ennobling deeds of loving service and merciful ministration.

155:6.10 But  watch, lest any of you look with disdain upon the children of Abraham  because they have fallen on these evil days of traditional barrenness.  Our forefathers gave themselves up to the persistent and passionate  search for God, and they found him as no other whole race of men have  ever known him since the times of Adam, who knew much of this as he was  himself a Son of God. My Father has not failed to mark the long and  untiring struggle of Israel, ever since the days of Moses, to find God  and to know God. For weary generations the Jews have not ceased to toil,  sweat, groan, travail, and endure the sufferings and experience the  sorrows of a misunderstood and despised people, all in order that they  might come a little nearer the discovery of the truth about God. And,  notwithstanding all the failures and falterings of Israel, our fathers  progressively, from Moses to the times of Amos and Hosea, did reveal  increasingly to the whole world an ever clearer and more truthful  picture of the eternal God. And so was the way prepared for the still  greater revelation of the Father which you have been called to share.

155:6.11 Never  forget there is only one adventure which is more satisfying and  thrilling than the attempt to discover the will of the living God, and  that is the supreme experience of honestly trying to do that divine  will. And fail not to remember that the will of God can be done in any earthly occupation. Some callings are not holy and  others secular. All things are sacred in the lives of those who are  spirit led; that is, subordinated to truth, ennobled by love, dominated  by mercy, and restrained by fairness — justice. The spirit which my Father and I shall send into the world is not only the Spirit of Truth but also the spirit of idealistic beauty.

155:6.12 You  must cease to seek for the word of God only on the pages of the olden  records of theologic authority. Those who are born of the spirit of God  shall henceforth discern the word of God regardless of whence it appears  to take origin. Divine truth must not be discounted because the channel  of its bestowal is apparently human. Many of your brethren have minds  which accept the theory of God while they spiritually fail to realize  the presence of God. And that is just the reason why I have so often  taught you that the kingdom of heaven can best be realized by acquiring  the spiritual attitude of a sincere child. It is not the mental  immaturity of the child that I commend to you but rather the spiritual simplicity of such an easy-believing and fully-trusting little one. It is not so  important that you should know about the fact of God as that you should  increasingly grow in the ability to feel the presence of God.

155:6.13 When  you once begin to find God in your soul, presently you will begin to  discover him in other men’s souls and eventually in all the creatures  and creations of a mighty universe. But what chance does the Father have  to appear as a God of supreme loyalties and divine ideals in the souls  of men who give little or no time to the thoughtful contemplation of  such eternal realities? While the mind is not the seat of the spiritual  nature, it is indeed the gateway thereto.

155:6.14 But  do not make the mistake of trying to prove to other men that you have  found God; you cannot consciously produce such valid proof, albeit there  are two positive and powerful demonstrations of the fact that you are  God-knowing, and they are:

1. The fruits of the spirit of God showing forth in your daily routine life.
 2. The fact that  your entire life plan furnishes positive proof that you have  unreservedly risked everything you are and have on the adventure of  survival after death in the pursuit of the hope of finding the God of  eternity, whose presence you have foretasted in time.
 

155:6.17 Now,  mistake not, my Father will ever respond to the faintest flicker of  faith. He takes note of the physical and superstitious emotions of the  primitive man. And with those honest but fearful souls whose faith is so  weak that it amounts to little more than an intellectual conformity to a  passive attitude of assent to religions of authority, the Father is  ever alert to honor and foster even all such feeble attempts to reach  out for him. But you who have been called out of darkness into the light  are expected to believe with a whole heart; your faith shall dominate  the combined attitudes of body, mind, and spirit.

155:6.18 You  are my apostles, and to you religion shall not become a theologic  shelter to which you may flee in fear of facing the rugged realities of  spiritual progress and idealistic adventure; but rather shall your  religion become the fact of real experience which testifies that God has  found you, idealized, ennobled, and spiritualized you, and that you  have enlisted in the eternal adventure of finding the God who has thus  found and sonshipped you.

155:6.19 And when Jesus had finished speaking, he beckoned to Andrew and, pointing to the west toward Phoenicia, said: “Let us be on our way.”