“According to the true gospel, as declared by the prophets, the substance of humanity is not material and created, but spiritual and divine. And man rises out of his lower into his higher nature by subordinating the former to the latter, and so rising wholly into that higher, becoming thereby divine – for between Spirit and Matter there is no boundary line. The knowledge of this was the priceless treasure of which Israel fleeing, “spoiled the Egyptians.” [Exodus 12:36] And it was the grand secret of all sacred mysteries from the first.
That, on the contrary, is a false gospel, proceeding from the priests, which, defying at once the intellect and the intuition, ascribes salvation to a vicarious operation, and, instead of the sacrifice of our own lower nature to our own higher nature, and of ourselves for others, insists on the sacrifice of our higher nature to our lower, and of others for ourselves.
It is of this inversion of the divine order that the prevalent habit of flesh eating and of vivisection – that most infernal of all practices that ever issued from the bottomless pit of man’s lower nature – are the direct and inevitable outcome. And until the divine order is restored, in act as well as in thought, by the renunciation of the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice as ordinarily held, and by the consequent rehabilitation of the character of God, all our efforts at improvement must be futile; our civilisation will be but a mockery of the term (…).
In conclusion: that at which we aim is no reform of institutions merely, or promotion of benefits merely material, but a radical renovation of the very Substance of men themselves on every plane of their nature, with a view to the realisation of the long-promised “new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth Righteousness,” [2 Peter 3:13] and the advent of that perfected state, the New Jerusalem, or City which hath God for its light, and which cometh down from the heaven of man’s own celestial region, even that kingdom of heaven which is within him, but which can never be realised by those who persist in so ordering their lives as to make bloodshed and injustice necessities.
“He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” [Micah 6:8] “They
(p. 224)
shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.” [Isaiah 65:25]
And if it be asked what is the source of, and what the authority for, these interpretations, the reply is that there is but one source and authority for truth, and that is the Soul of man himself, and that to obtain access there, and to know of the doctrine, it is necessary to do the Father’s Will, and to live the pure life required.
For the Soul sees divinely, and never forgets what she has once learnt. And all that she knows is at the service of him who duly tends and cultivates her. From her comes, directly and without admixture of human alloy, that which has just been said. And no other source or method is there of divine revelation.
It is true, as is commonly supposed, that divine revelation is uttered by a voice from heaven. But the heaven is the innermost sanctuary of the temple of man himself, and the voice is that of God speaking therein. Only where the soil, which is the body, is pure and purely nourished, so that no noxious exhalations arise to obscure the atmosphere, can the man and his Soul thus hold converse together.
Living as does the world to-day, it cannot know the potentialities of humanity. Hence it regards one foremost example as divine, at the expense of the rest of the race, whereas all are divine, if they will but let themselves be so. And revelation is, no less than reason, the natural rightful possession of man. Only let him live purely, and he will reverse the Fall.”
(Anna Kingsford e Edward Maitland. Addresses and Essays on Vegetarianism, chapter Vegetarianism and the Bible, pp. 223-224; emphasis added)