Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/49

 that what he supposed was love, was, after all, but a desire after gratification—that he was loving self instead of his wife.

Man may be lustful in his religion as well as in his moral relations. He may mistake what he supposes to be the love of God for the love of the use of God. He expects God is going to make him eternally happy, and bestow upon him unending enjoyment, and for this reason he shouts and praises him, and calls it loving God. He does not see that God is so much better than anybody else; but he has become satisfied that God means well, and will bless him; and he honors him for these things. Hence his seeking after religion that he may make himself happy and save himself from suffering is as lustful and selfish as seeking after something good to eat or drink, making self-gratification the object of his search. The great difficulty, my friends, with popular religion is, that it is only a religious expression of lust. That it has not beaten swords into plowshares and spears into pruning-hooks, and taught people to learn war no more, is because it has failed to adopt the means by which the world can be made pure and happy. Hence the religious man may be as selfish as the miserly man, and yet think he is so much like God that he is going to be saved. But it is not religion that he loves; it is only the use of religion. Satisfy him that God is not going to benefit him, but that he is going to damn him, and he will curse him bravely. I ask everybody to look at this.

It is claimed, as I have already remarked, that the impulse of lust belongs to the body, and does not grow