Might is Right The Gospel of To-day
"I never heard a tiger lecture, but I have read a book written by one." —Charles Louis Brewer in a 1908 lecture of The Gospel of To-Day (Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard)
Might is Right The Gospel of To-day
The Gospel of To-day (Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard)
From STEPPING-STONES To HEAVEN. Three lectures By C. L. Brewer /Charles Louis Brewer. FIRST LECTURE, The Gospel of To-Day, (MIGHT IS RIGHT By RAGNAR REDBEARD.)
TO-MORROW PUBLISHING CO. 2238 Calumet Avenue CHICAGO, ILL. 1908
GOLDEN TEXT.
Passing Stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you.
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream.)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you.
All is recalled as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured.
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me.
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only.
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return.
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone. I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again.
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
—Walt Whitman.
THE GOSPEL OF TO-DAY
If a tiger should come out of the jungle able to think coherently and express himself freely in English, without ceasing to be a tiger in every respect and aspect, he would be the most popular platform speaker in the world. No man, however wise and eloquent, no woman, however bright and beautiful, would be in his class. And his popularity would not rest on mere love of novelty, for we would want to understand his thought of things and get his point of view. The preacher would leave his pulpit, the astronomer his observatory, and the socialist his grocery-box, to hear what the apostle from the jungle had to say about Life and its problems.
Well, I never heard a tiger lecture, but I have read a book written by one: not a pretty toy tiger, such as may still be found in the mountains of Bengal, but a genuine old saber-toothed tiger of the Pliocene age—an incarnation of strength and ferocity who would think it fun to tear up a modern elephant, and against whose threatened attack the mighty mastodons of his own day parked themselves for mutual defense. In some forgotten astrial tomb his pristine soul was left to slumber for a million years, untempered by the process of the suns, untouched by summer’s ripening breath, and then it came forth to be a man, even as you and I.
In daily life, we are often reminded that our heredity runs back among the beasts of prey. Scratch a man deep enough—sometimes a pin will do—and we find the tiger, fox, jackal or hog, as the case may be. But we never see that past in its entirety—a flash of claw or fang, the glare of a startled eye, or a smothered growl from lips attuned to prayer—is about the limit of our social retrospection; and so it was with great interest and pleasure that I read what my Pliocene brother had to say about modern life and its historical development.
Naturally, he was an individualist of the most extreme type. Religion, politics, and ethics were unknown in his day, and for all such upstart fol-de-rol, he had supreme contempt. Might was Right—the only Right—and weakness the only Wrong. Courage was Pliocea for Salvation, and cowardice spelled Damnation. Brute force—the only force he knew—was the all-sufficient argument for every occasion. The law of the Jungle was perfect, fitting itself to every circumstance. Every question settled by fang or club or sword or rifled cannon was inevitably settled right, and every sham settlement arrived at by any other means was the patch-work of degenerates—a trick to shirk the struggle for existence and secure the survival of the unfit.
There is no shrinking here from logical conclusions. Life and glory and spoil to the victor involve death and shame and poverty to the defeated; and the exultant cry, “Woe to the vanquished” rings from page to page like the ancient roar that shook the forest. Peace and decay are synonymous terms; truce and treaty are fictions by which to gain an advantage. No agreement or law should be respected a moment longer than it can be enforced; for while “woe to the vanquished” is the motto of the victor, “vengeance on the victor” is the only thought of the vanquished. And never for a moment does this evangelist of victory question the right of the vanquished to all the vengeance they can take. For Might is equally Right wherever it may be— in palace or hovel, in the jeweled sword of the king or the poisoned dagger of the slave.
This complete acceptance of the gospel of force is not only logical but necessary to maintain the balance of power and preserve the race. Without aspiring slaves waiting for the chance to slay them and seize their wealth and power the Masters become careless, weak, stupid, degenerate, and the breeders of dwindling’s. The base slave who insults Life by consenting to live may always redeem himself and justify his existence by killing his master; but if he accepts slavery as his portion, and fails to strike when opportunity offers, he sinks beneath contempt, and deserves nothing but the blackness of darkness forever. The one word of cheer and counsel for the crushed and wounded is, “Be dangerous to the end.” Call back a remnant of your honor by striking down the conqueror with the last movement of your arm; and if that fails to bequeath to your posterity deathless vows of unlimited vengeance.
This attitude of the vanquished is not only due to himself, but needful to prove the victor really worthy of the spoil. The man mighty in battle who strikes down his foes right and left, and then shows that the seeds of degeneracy have taken root in his heart by going to the succor of his fallen foe is a potential craven, and should be slain before dishonouring the place of power and leaving a servile progeny to blight the earth. And not only is it foolish to raise up a wounded enemy, but it is both right and expedient to burn and crucify the prisoners, because a soldier who surrenders when he might die sword in hand deserves death, and should receive it in the worst form as a warning to others to quit themselves like men and be dangerous to the end; for only so can glorious war fully fulfil its saving function by separating the valiant who are fit to live from the servile who are devoted to death.
Following out this thought, it is evident that any agreement, custom, restraint, ethical vagary or humanitarian bosh that keeps two men or tribes or nations from plunging into relentless war to settle the first doubt about which is the strongest, and therefore the best, is an invasion of the Cosmic Scheme for the survival of the fittest—a fundamental law which is meaningless if the unfit survive also. Then progress stops, and decay begins; and if rebellion or invasion does not cleanse the land by fire and sword, famine and pestilence finally come to blot out the rotten millions, and make room for new creatures having in their nostrils the breath of life, in their veins the blood of men, and in their loins the seed of conquerors who will again chastise the nations with scorpions and rule them with rods of iron in the spirit of living loyalty to the power of Might—the eternal Right.
“Might was Right when Ceasar bled
Upon the stones of Rome;
Might was Right when Joshua led
His hords o’er Jordan’s foam.
And Might was Right when German troops
Poured down through Paris gay—
‘Tis the Logic of the Ancient World,
And the Gospel of To-day.
Cain’s knotted club is scepter still—
Your “Rights of man” is Fraud;
Christ’s ethics are for creeping things;
True Manhood smiles at God.
For Might is Right when empires sink
In storms of steel and flame,
And it is Right when weakling herds
Are hunted down like game.
Then what’s the use of dreaming dreams
That “each shall get his own?”
By forceless votes of meek-eyed thralls,
Who blindly sweat and moan?
No! a curse is on their cankered brain—
Their very bones decay.
Go, trace your fate in the iron game,
Is the Logic of To-day.
The Strong must ever rule the Weak,
Is grim Primordial Law;
On Earth’s broad racial threshing floor
The Meek are beaten straw.
Then ride to power o’er foemen’s necks,
Let nothing bar your way;
If you are Fit you’ll rule and reign,
Is the Logic of To-day.
You must prove your Right by deeds of Might—
Of splendor and renown;
If need be march through flames of hell
To dash opponents down.
For sword-strong races rule the earth
And ride the conqueror’s car;
And Liberty has ne’er been won
Except by deeds of war.
Might was Right when Gideon led
The chosen tribes of old;
And it was Right when Titus burned
Their Temple roofed with gold.
And Might was Right from Bunker Hill
To far off Monterey—
By land and flood it’s wrote in blood—
The Gospel of To-day.
Might was Right when Carthage flames
Lit up the Punic Foam;
And when the naked steel of Gaul
Bore down the spoil of Rome.
And Might was Right when Richmond fell,
And at Thermopalye—
‘Tis the Logic of the Ancient World,
And the Gospel of To-day.”
The frank analysis of Civilization from this standpoint is refreshing and instructive. Every historical and contemporary assault on the “Logic of the Ancient World” is riddled with charming candor. He naturally pounces on Jesus as the erotic leader of the decadent masses and execrates him as the representative of all that is base and vile in a really fallen race. He shows how the fundamental ideas of all religions unfit men for the relentless war on which life depends— make them, indeed, unfit to live. This is how he contrasts the Truths of Nature with the Falsehoods of Religion:
“Blessed are the Strong, for they shall possess the Earth. Cursed are the Weak; for they shall inherit the yoke.
“Blessed are the Bold, for they shall be Masters of the world. Cursed are the Humble, for they shall be trodden under hoofs.
“Blessed are the Victorious, for victory is the basis of Right. Cursed are the Vanquished, for they shall be Vassals forever.
“Blessed are the Audacious, for Beauty shall smile upon them. Cursed are the Poor in Spirit, for they shall breed Creeplings.
“Blessed are the Valiant, for they shall obtain great treasures. Cursed are the Lambs of God, for they shall be bled whiter than snow.
“Blessed are the Wise and Brave in battle, for they shall win. Cursed is he who doeth good to others, for he shall be despised.
“Blessed are the Unmerciful, for their posterity shall own the World. Cursed are the Pitiful, for they shall receive no pity.”
With an eye still flaming with the fierce, elemental Life of the Jungle he notes the blighting sweep of religious and ethical Ideals over the earth, and thus apostrophizes the accepted Leader of the Gospel of Degeneration:
“Blond Prince of all Evil
In the garb of a Saint,
Still weaving and weaving
Thy magical Feint.
Round millions you’ve woven
A hypnotic spell;
O Christ! thou Mephisto,
The mocker of Hell.
There’s not in thy teaching
One thought that is true;
Thou art a False Prophet,
O, crucified Jew.”
After Religion has been disposed of, the chief objects of his wrath are modern Democracy and Socialism. The loss of personal power in the impersonal State; the doing to death of the Individual in the Peon Puddle around the ballot box; the world-wide conspiracy of decadent mongrels to crush the Remnant of the Wise and Strong by pooling their puny interests, hiding their incompetence under the mask of Citizenship, and founding orphanages and asylums to keep alive even the runts of their dwindling breed—all this represents to his mind the Abomination of Desolation standing where it ought not—even at the Fountain of Life, robbing the Future of its Birthright in the mighty Past.
Not only does Democracy and Socialism threaten the world by federating erotic decadence against heroic virtue, disease against health and dementia against sanity; but it renders the doing of the daily work of the present time increasingly difficult. When the intelligence of the natural Leader is hampered by the ignorance of the Mob, and the commands which should be instantly given and obeyed have to run the gauntlet of stupid debates, idiotic roll-calls, and that climax of erotic madness, the ballot-box — then, indeed, may we know that the end is at hand; for such a country is rotten ripe for the blessed plague and welcome pestilence to sweep away the slave-citizen, who wears the face of a Man as a lie, and the putrid State—the Refuge of Lies.
He also shows how the black shadow of Government has blighted the earth by putting an end to private combat and revenge, which are essential to the preservation of personal worth and power. When man is no longer bred and trained especially to be a fighting animal, he ceases to be a Man, and becomes a Thing. True, the Thing still fights, for war is universal, and can never be evaded; but his fighting is now ignoble instead of noble, debauchery rather than a virtue, his shame instead of his glory. The very struggle for existence, which, in the Natural World, raised him from a jellyfish to a lion, and from a lion to a man, becomes his undoing in the reactionary eddy of Civilization; and he degenerates from a lion to a fox, from a fox to a jackal, and from a jackal to a viper. Behold the fruit of the tree of Democracy:
“We fight like women, and feel as such;
The thoughts of our hearts we guard.
Where the scorn of a God should scarcely touch
The sneer of a fool hits hard.
The treacherous tongue and the cowardly pen—
The weapons of curs—decide!
They faced each other and fought like Men,
In the days when the world was wide.”
Well and clearly does he distinguish between the iron rule of honest Might by those who have and use it, and the indirect despotism bolstered up by hired satraps, cunning flattery, and the baseness that stoops to conquer. Such are modern Governments of every kind, for
“Statute books and Golden Rules
Were made to fetter Slaves and Fools”
And this is especially true of Republics, where the duped people are lulled by the delusion that they are themselves the State, and make their own slave-laws. It was degenerate Tyrants, afraid to face the righteous judgment of the sword, who exploited the woozy phantom of Democracy and the glittering baubles of Religion as a means of preserving their own hides and perquisites.
“Thus did the great Guile-Masters
Their toils and their tangles set;
And wide as were the waters,
So wide was woven the net.”
Looking at the present age, so woefully degenerate, according to the standards of his primeval youth, he declares that “the living forces of Evil are to be found in Moral Ideals.” Democracy, if honestly advocated, is “the strident doctrine of the maniac,” the “hope of mildewed minds,” the refuge of “men without sap,” the dream of “mental castrates”; floating down the “dark stream of decadence” and “dwindling into multitudinous nothingness.” Morality, springing from the “sterilized minds of mental gildings,” is for subordinates only. “Nature’s curse is on the meek and lowly/ for “courage that looks down with supreme disdain upon all ideas of right and wrong,” includes every virtue, and humility every crime. “God chooses the foolish, weak and despised things of the world” perforce because nothing else would have anything to do with him; and so the wholesale destruction of feeble types and dwindling races is not only a natural and congenial, but necessary occupation. Christianity, that dream of “Epileptoid Priesting’s of Unreason,” is the “negation of everything grand, noble and heroic,” and the “glorification of everything feeble, atrocious, dishonorable and dastardly.” The “Divine Democrat” was executed on a government gibbet because the ruler of Imperial Rome was a stronger, and therefore a better man. Being the weakest, it was right for him to “die an abysmal failure—a Redeemer who did not redeem—a slave agitator deservedly destroyed for preaching a falsehood— the monstrous falsehood of Love, Brotherhood and Equality.”
Here are a few choice shots from his unmasked batteries of pristine scorn, dwindling into a predilection for epigrams: “Christianity is a world-wide conspiracy of Decadents against all the Heroic Virtues.”
“The bones of those who drew up and signed the Bill of Rights, Magna Charta, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Declaration of Independence, have long ago mouldered into ozone and fertilizer. Rotten are the brains that conceived them, and the fingers that signed and sealed them. Equally rotten are their irrational and infantile philosophies. Rotten also in the heart are the men who obey these voices from the tomb.”
“Constitutions are all very well to humbug stridulating slaves, but in a freeman’s house or business they have no place.”
“Socialism, Christianity and Democracy are the whining yelping’s of base-bred mongrels.”
“Equality is the summed up dementia of two thousand years.”
“They who accept the Faith, Hope and Charity ideal in any form are degenerates.”
“Moral dogmas are always manufactured to suit the occasion, and used as instruments of intimidation.”
“Those who claim Mastership on any other basis than conquest are upstart usurpers, and should be stricken down without mercy.”
“The strong and mighty ones are Nature’s Noblemen, in whom she delights. The poor and lowly are a creeping pestilence—the down-trodden are the justly damned.”
“The cant about Moral Principles is one of the tricks in the game of dog eat dog.”
“Black, furious and tragic are and always have been the bloody annals of Evolution.”
“This world is too peaceful and tame. It is a circumcised world—nay, a castrated world. It must be made fiercer and more natural. Maniacs are they who would ward off the sun’s blazing rays from writhing souls, or the wintry blasts from hearts already broken.”
“Deep, permanent and abiding is the elemental antagonism between the Sociology of the Man of Nazareth and the Primordial Laws of the Universe.”
“All the prophetic demagogues of Democracy from Isaiah and Paul to Carlyle and Ruskin, screeching against the march of bannered armies, are but dogs baying the moon.”
“Democracy! thou leprous thing! thou loth-some disease! thou plastic demon! thou murderer of men! Many nations have bowed down to thy infection, and perished from the earth; but America shall arise and wipe thee out—thou blightsome malady—thou human rinderpest!”
“Christs may come and Christs may go, but Ceasar reigns forever.”
As we might expect from the rest of his presentment, our taloned and talented author speaks approvingly of cannibalism and hopes the time is coming when rejuvenated Man will again roast and eat his vanquished enemy as in the good old days. He even notes with pride that a part of the earth was once properly ruled over and made worthwhile by noble lords who kept herds of female slaves for the purpose of raising out of their own loins fat, juicy children for the banquet-board—and who showed their practical grasp of the Utilitarian Philosophy by having the mothers served up to the lackeys when their breeding days were over.
His ideal of the correct attitude of Man toward Woman is that of the master mechanic toward his tools. The female organism is the most valuable asset of the Masculine Universe; and he defines a woman as “two-thirds womb,” and the other third nerves and sentiments thereunto pertaining. Incidentally, she is convenient as a slave, but in general her work, her place, her whole sphere should be determined with the one end in view of making her the most efficient mother of the greatest number of the strongest fighting animals she is capable of producing. The idea that she should have anything to say about it herself is merely another incident of modern dementia.
Having lived so much nearer than we do to the beginning of things he ought to know something about that interesting period. He agrees with our Scientists that the solar system was once a vast whirling fire-mist, which contracted to form the sun, while outlying portions broke loose and whirled into shape and place as planets. He naturally revels in that Cosmic Panorama of ele-metal fury, and brightly says that the earth was “the product of secondary cyclonic rage.” This terse and satisfactory statement is supposed to account for, and justify, “the Logic of the Ancient World, and the Gospel of To-day.”
Having given his point of view as a background, I may remark, before going on to develop my own, that nothing he says is at all abhorrent or offensive to me. I am content to be amused and instructed by his verbal explosions of primary and secondary cyclonic rage; and welcome his brutal, and therefore free and shameless exposure of the secret parts of his mental and moral anatomy, because, knowing him whom I have seen through, I also know you, who would consider such examination impertinent. I can smile, without resentment, at his vicious attack on Jesus of Nazareth, just as if it was aimed directly at myself; and I trust that others will do likewise.
We must note in the first place that he uses a great deal of Truth in his argument. His analysis of the Old Order he knows so well is very good; and although his conception of the real origin and purpose of governments and religions is necessarily inadequate, his picture of them in actual use is strikingly true to life. Except for brief periods, and in special cases, every State and Church has been, and still is, a tool in the hands of the Great Guile-Masters, and exploited to befuddle and enslave the masses of Mankind.
His condemnation of Democracy, as a subtle flanking movement of these same Guile-Masters to preserve their fictitious supremacy, is largely true; and so is the arraignment of it as the climax of social inefficiency and absurdity. On the theory that the best government is that which governs least, it is a good thing, and carried to its logical conclusion will make all government ridiculously impossible. That is the contribution of the Democratic Ideal to Humanity, and we rejoice to see it doing its work so well. But when we try to carry it over from political into industrial affairs, where the highest efficiency is desired, instead of the lowest inefficiency, it becomes an evil thing—one phase, at least, of “the summed up dementia of two thousand years.”
His objection to Socialism is founded on his crude, elemental conception of Individuality, coupled with the natural tendency of such minds to regard the Social Commonwealth as a mechanically ordered institution, governed by an arbitrary and rigid program. An argument from such premises needs no answer; and as the brethren of that stripe would not be very good Socialists anyway, it is well to leave them to find their own way into the dispensation of graceful service.
Much, the same may be said of his attitude toward Woman; but his striking definition of her as “two-thirds womb” is much more nearly true than could ever be demonstrated by the scales or the tape-line. I fancy a woman of the best modern type—a real New Woman, and not a new caricature of Womanhood—would smile at such a charge, and find it sufficient to say: “Well, what would you expect? Wist ye not that I am an Incarnation of the Divine Feminine, and must be about my Mother’s business?”
The denunciation of the modern man as a weakling, a degenerate, an erotic dwindling, etc., is pretty well substantiated by the facts. Having ceased to be a good animal, and not yet begun to be any good as an angel, he is a very unsatisfactory proposition. Our poor, deluded sweethearts don’t say much about it, and gracefully let us in on the ground floor because we are the best to be had. But the genuine twentieth century Girl, with rich, red blood in her arteries and an electrical heart warranted, not to miss a beat for a hundred years, would sweep a whole regiment of current male monkeys out of the way like pawns from a chess-board, if an Old Norse Pirate came a-wooing in proper elemental fashion. And I trust that a little later when the real New Man appeared to be her heaven-sent Mate, the biggest Viking bold whoever struck terror along the coast would get wise to his finish, and silently steal away.
And her attitude would be correct in both cases; for the glorification of Power is a vital point on which the gentleman from Pliocea is everlastingly right. His mistake is in not seeing that as Life advances Power is transmuted into finer forms and higher potencies. Power has not decayed; but he has failed to keep step with its changing manifestation. Being stuck on the wisdom of his own generation, he neglected to provide for his own eternal salvation while being milled through the Evolutionary Ages. And there have been, and still, are others.
About the time I read his strident protest against what he missed, the good grey head of that splendid woman, Susan B. Anthony, nodded into the Big Sleep, and I selected these lines from the poetic tributes to her memory as a concise and inspired answer to his whole argument for Elemental Superiority:
“No dead march beating on the air, no roll of muffled drum
Yet hath she fought as brave a fight as ever soldier won.
Her weapons were of soul and brain, her white flag lettered peace,
Her own heart bled, and yet again, and on without surcease.
She charged the ranks of foemen forever in the van,
And by conquering Right for Woman she hath also won for Man.”
Do you think there was no historic development back of this grand woman, whose appearance was impossible according to our brilliant author? If the doctrine of Reincarnation is true she may have been his jungle-mate in long gone Pliocea, and the mighty spirit that in its crude beginning developed in claw and fang, the same that yesterday, increased a thousandfold in the refining furnaces of Life, flashed before us as one of the most magnificent Incarnations of the Divine Feminine the world has ever known. And per¬ haps her glorious work was largely done for him— an effort of transmuted but undying pristine love to arouse him to a realization of the littleness, the weakness and the meanness of his undeveloped state—a concentrated call of God to a lost soul to come up higher.
It is right here that we have to face the whole issue, accept his terms, and challenge him to a show-down.Might is Right, as he says, and the only Right. God’s battalions are always the strongest, regardless of external appearances; and they always win. The Law of the vortex of rage, the Law of the Jungle, the Law of Rome and Gaul and Britain, is the Law of the world today and will be the Law of the Social Commonwealth, and of the Golden Age beyond. The Strong must ever rule the Weak is Millennial as well as Primordial Law; and “go, trace your fate in the iron game,” is the cosmic command to every living thing, from the crawling worm beneath our feet to the great high Gods above. Power is the supreme expression of Life, and Life is all that we are, and all with which we have to do. Claw and Fang, the knotted club, the sword, gunpowder, dynamite, the strident voice of the Demagogue, and the smooth, persuasive flow of magnetic oratory, are preliminary forms by which the Dynamic Energy of the rising Entity in Being gets in its work on the environment over which it is ordained to have dominion After these modes of expression have played their part and passed away, come to the greater and subtler powers of Silent Thought, Vital Feeling, and the Illumined Will, by which we may dispense with all instruments and mediums, and exercise immediate dominion over all material things, and participate in the Cosmic functions of the Universe.
There is no degeneracy or weakening here, but the changing forms of the ever-changing Right of Unfolding Might. The saber-toothed tiger disappears and so does the wolf and bear. The cannibal chief is gone; and so are the slave- masters and imperial despots. Just now the proud possessors of tainted dollars and babbling tongues hold the center of the stage; but they, too, shall pass away. Already the higher potencies of Thought and Will are making themselves felt in every avenue of life. The man comparatively weak in body and so gentle that he would not step upon a worm, but who knows himself, can lay aside every weapon and walk unharmed among such savage beasts as remain to remind us of the former days; and they prudently respect an invisible power they cannot understand, but against which they know their claws and fangs are powerless. Another of God Almighty’s Gentlemen, not at all formidable to the outward eye, and so truly gentle that he will not strive in the pulpit or lift up his voice on street or platform, can quietly block the games of Financial Magnates, and confound the councils of the Princes of this world, who fancy the wisdom of their Mortal Minds is greater than that of the Children of Light.
Naturally, there is a tragedy in the passing of the old familiar forms of use and power. The strong body of the beast, the pomp, and regalia of war, and the crushing power of wealth in untold millions become dear to us, and we see them go with the feeling that the best of life is lost. Like the worm who sadly but bravely spins his tomb and seals himself up to die, unconscious of the glorified body with which he shall soon come forth, we weep over the sunset memories of a golden age that has passed away like a dream, and fail to note the auroral splendour that makes all things new. It nearly breaks our hearts to see the Half-Gods go; but we should awake to the fact that they have merely gone a-courting, and will presently return with their better halves to reign with us in such power and glory as we have never known, and scarcely dared to dream.
The degenerate, the weakling, the dwindling who spawns away into multitudinous nothingness, is he who lacks the ambition and appreciative instinct needed to keep in tune with the Changing Order and lead the crest of Tidal Evolution from form to form. For his erotic and submerged soul dementia and decay are very real and awful things, and the best he can do for posterity is to omit it entirely. Once there was a very foolish monkey who hearkened to the still small voice of God saying in the rudimentary ear of his embryonic soul, “Arise, and get thee up out of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy father’s house, and be a Man, even as I showed thee in the vision in the top of yonder bamboo tree;” and all the wise, conservative monkeys, who wanted to be true to the traditions of the fathers of an age about to pass away forever, had lots of fun at his expense. But what do the descendants of those monkeys, chattering for our amusement in the Zoo, think of them today?
And those who have seen the Open Vision, even through a glass darkly, know that the seeming loss of the advancing ones is for a season only. As I hinted just now, the real New Man, with a physical make-up approximating toward the Resurrection Body, is one against whom the Elemental Man has no chance in any trial of strength or beauty. It is in line with the wisdom of God that we should be cursed, as we think, with weak and homely bodies that we might be forced to develop the latent powers of soul and brain. Thus it seems true that we grow weaker and wiser; but when the soul has found itself and mastered the secrets of the higher spheres, it can turn as a living savior to the body and reward it with greater power and beauty than it ever attained unto in its own peculiar Golden Age. In the field of Divine Realization Woman is naturally and necessarily ahead of Man; and it is in her that the Christ Child first appears to grow in wisdom and stature, and find favor with God and Man. The New Woman is becoming large and strong and a-lilt with more than skin-deep beauty because she is turning on the home stretch of the heavenly race, and her body commences to reflect the auroral power and splendor of her mind and soul.
The Gospel of Today is an assentation of the Divine Right of Infinite Might to rule and reign in Brahamic Bliss and Splendour. It comes with the resistless force of countless aeons of Cosmic Evolution behind it and aims at the actual demonstration of all power in heaven and on earth. Its meek and lowly heralds do not hesitate to assail the citadels of hell and make the sweet-voiced ministers of love flames of living fire to burn the way to glory. We are here to break down the prison doors, proclaim liberty to all the inhabitants of the earth, and preach the gospel of Infinite Opulence to the poor. We have come to open blind eyes and deaf ears, enabling the lame to walk and cause the sad to laugh for joy. Our business is to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers and raise the dead in despair to lives of pristine radiance. Incidentally, we have to sweep away all the Institutions with which the Mortal Mind has hedged itself about and let each Individual stand erect as a self- sufficient dynamic center of Invincible Power and Eternal Life. For this cause came we forth as living Words of God, and expect to accomplish that which He pleases and prosper in the thing whereunto we are sent. As Minister-Plenipotentiaries of Jehovah, we claim all power in heaven and on earth, and if we fail to make good He will raise up other Sons and Daughters able to render a better account of their ministry.
Looking back over the Way of Life by which we have come, where tragic centuries stand as mile-posts, we accept the “Logic of the Ancient World” as the basis of our own Evangelism, and welcome this strident cry from the great soul of a Brother lost in the jungles of psychological Pliocea as evidence of the eternal truth of the Gospel of Power. By it, we also get a line on the pit from whence we came, which enables us to approximately determine the direction and distance of the “One far off Divine Event toward which the whole Creation moves.” And seeing this we may gladly accept the strenuous challenge of the Elemental Man, send back a ringing yes to all his vital points, and transmit the Law and Gospel of the Aspiring Past to the coming centuries of Fulfilment. Yes—
“Might was Right when Carthage flames
Lit up the Punic Foam;
And when the naked steel of Gaul
Bore down the spoil of Rome.
And Might was Right when Richmond fell,
And at Thermopalye—
Tis the Logic of the Ancient World,
And the Gospel of Today!”
And Might will still be Right when Love
Sets every prisoner free;
And when the Gods of Lust and War
Are swept from land and sea.
And Might will reign as transformed Right
In splendid' majesty,
When Man shall rise and on the skies
Emblazon Liberty.
“Might was Right when Gideon led
The Chosen Tribes of old;
And it was Right when Titus burned
Their Temple roofed with gold.
And Might was Right from Bunker Hill
To far off Monterey—
By land and flood it’s wrote in blood—
The Gospel of Today”.
The Force of God in Man and Clod
Still rules the Universe.
Almighty Power speaks every hour,
In thunder and in verse.
And Might shall be the only Right
From Hell to Paradise—
By sun and star Tis flung afar—
The emblem of the Wise.
