Spiritual world. About the existence of God

Stories and reflections leading to the recognition of the existence of the spiritual world Contents Preface This book, being in close connection with the just published book entitled “From the realm of the mysterious. A simple speech about the existence and properties of the human soul,” nevertheless has its own independent content and plan. The main purpose of the first book is to convince the reader, by the power of irrefutable facts, obtained mainly from the field of experimental psychology, of the truth that man has a soul as a rational, free, immortal, spiritual essence, endowed with such wondrous properties that they clearly and irresistibly testify to its likeness to God; second, i.e. This book leads the reader through stories that, as it seems to us, are full of the deepest vital interest, and accessible in terms of presentation and content of reflection, to further truths: to the existence of God, the Creator of the human soul and the entire visible and invisible world, i.e. disembodied forces, of which some are holy angels, and others are spirits of darkness, demons. The compiler of this book knows well that a dry, strictly scientific presentation here, as in the first book, would be inappropriate: too few of our readers are still accustomed to reading with such a presentation. That is why here, as before, we have placed a number of stories borrowed from completely reliable and competent sources that show the existence of God in nature, in the human soul, in the private life of people, in the world history of the human race, in the history of the Christian Church, etc. Of course, this is not evidence 1, in the strict sense of the word, of the truth of the existence of God, but this is what replaces them to a certain extent, or, in any case, this is what leads every unprejudiced person to the inner consciousness of the necessity of the existence of God and the spiritual world in general. We did the same with other chapters - about angels and demons. In this last chapter we have placed a very necessary, in our opinion, article, which depicts the characteristic properties of great hysteria and makes it possible to distinguish a hysterical attack and illnesses of the so-called cliques from possession by demons, or possession, which, unfortunately, to great temptation and even greater harm, is often confused by those who do not know. The purpose of this book is to counteract the evil spirit of our time, which preaches godlessness, crude materialism and wickedness. Its disastrous breath, starting from Paris, as a modern hotbed of unbelief and wickedness, little by little covers all countries of the world and, although not yet in clear, but formidable signs, is already affecting Russia. If, after reading this book, the reader acquired a living, deep and heartfelt conviction in the existence of the spiritual world, if, thanks to our book, he came to a truer and even more joyful view of the world and human life, which all passes under the influence of divine Providence and the ethereal guardians of people - St. guardian angels; if he had drawn from our book a different direction, bringing into the sphere of thinking the light of true knowledge, into the heart - peace and joy when imagining the future afterlife of a person in the light of bliss with Christ, into the area of the will - courage in misfortunes, vigor in activity, patience in sorrows and humble submission to divine Providence - a direction consistent with the teaching of the Orthodox Church and, thus, directly opposite to the disastrous and destructive the spirit of our time, which brings into the minds, hearts and wills of its admirers mental darkness, hopeless melancholy and despair, sometimes ending in suicide, animal unbridledness in morals and readiness for the most evil manifestations of a perverted will, for all kinds of crimes - then the compiler, asking him for holy prayers for himself, would consider his work to have fully achieved the intended goal. Prot. G. Dyachenko 1900 June 1 day So that our judgments about the spirit of our time are not unfounded, we will present here several facts that confirm our thought. We will make a quick sketch of the state of religious enlightenment of our time, which will show us to what decline religion has reached in some European countries, mainly in the West, and what a false direction science has taken, turning into a crude materialism that denies everything supersensible. I. Turning to modern periodicals, one cannot help but note, first of all, the great decline in religious faith in God in our time. In the 16th century, religious feeling prevailed in Western Europe, governing all aspects of private, public and international life. In the XVII century. religious feeling began to weaken, giving way to hypocritical rigorism and hypocrisy. Philosophers of the 18th century they gave instead of the Christian religion “natural religion,” “deism” (otherwise “rationalism”), which had its basis exclusively in human reason; at the same time, in literature and society, the lifeless formalism of the church caused, as a reaction, the cult of feelings, “sentimentality”, instead of Christian love. Deism XVIII century. very soon turned into atheism (atheism), which in its constant development, speaking more openly and boldly, finally became the essence of the spirit of our time, gradually spreading in European society, mainly in its civilized strata, but beginning to penetrate the masses. Inseparable from atheism is materialism with its sad fruits. Modern atheism is the fruit of the French Revolution - it made its greatest progress in France. Here, as if in its hearth, gradually flaring up, the spirit of atheism finally reached, in its extreme representatives, insane, demonic power. During the siege of Paris, the newspaper “La libre pensee” literally published the following insane words: “Our enemy is God. Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom. If humanity wants to move forward, then it must have atheism as a basis. What is most necessary is the radical destruction of the sense of religiosity in children, since in childhood the brain fibers (nerves) are saturated with religion to the point that after adulthood, in old age, counteracting religious poison becomes difficult. For the benefit of the children, the growing generation today should be forced to become atheists.” 2 At the same time, a newspaper appeared entitled: “Ni Dieu, ni maitre!” (no power - neither Divine nor human). In the same 1870, one of the mayors of Paris ordered the destruction of the Crucifixion in the part of the city under his jurisdiction; accused on this occasion by the government before the court, he was acquitted by the jury. Atheists have been encountered before, but as a rare exception; their secret, sinister teachings caused fear and disgust in society, and persecution by the government. Now atheism comes out with an open brow, demanding the right of citizenship, and the name of its adherents is legion. In 1885, a special “anti-deistic society” was formed in Paris, which set itself the goal of eliminating the very word “God” from use 3 . The Paris Communal Council then decided to expel the works of Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, Victor Hugo and others from schools, on the grounds that they mentioned the name of God, but in all schools (instead of the Crucifixion) they were ordered to hang on the walls the “Declaration of Human and Civil Rights” 4. The spirit of atheism, which took such a development in France, also embraced, to a greater or lesser extent, other European countries. Thus, the spirit of “secularization” (of the Church) also penetrated into neighboring Belgium, which has always been drawn to France and has its own anti-Christian “liberal” party, which at times takes precedence in government over the clerical party. Following the example of Paris, here (in 1889) textbooks and anthologies were revised in order to “cleanse” them of the “clerical spirit.” Cleaning is done thoroughly; all textbooks and anthologies for public schools were printed in new, revised editions. The nature of these corrections can be judged from the following examples. One anthology, in an old edition, said: “Jesus tenderly loved His good Mother”; in the new edition it is printed: “little Moritz dearly loved his kind mother.” Instead of “we have a Father in heaven who loves us,” it is printed: “we have a Father at home who loves us.” The phrases “religion consoles us in our suffering”, “God is good”, “God sees those who do evil” in the new “cleaned up editions” are replaced by the following sayings: “Laura sees a cat”, “Dad has a bald head”, “as soon as the cats leave, the mice begin to dance” 5 . Atheism is also creeping into schools. In 1881 in Romania, pupils of the Iasi Gymnasium announced to the priest to whom they were supposed to confess that they did not believe in the existence of God at all. And there, students of one higher educational institution tore down and partially destroyed icons both in their school and in a neighboring church 6. The administration of the Stanislavsky gymnasium in Lvov (in Galicia) decided (in 1890) to expel many students from the gymnasium “for openly preaching atheism” 7 . Are we any better in this regard? “But there is no God,” says a 10-year-old girl to her peer friend in one orphanage in St. Petersburg, as the latter’s mother relayed this several years ago. They told about another mother, in St. Petersburg, who herself destroyed children's beliefs in her two daughters, institutes, instilling in them the ideas of atheism. II. When a person, abusing free will, in his madness rejects the existence of God, then the human spirit, having lost contact with the source of its strength, gradually weakens and falls under the domination of matter. Thus, atheism inevitably leads to materialism. The emergence of modern materialism was also greatly influenced by the extraordinary development of the natural sciences. The study of nature should bring a person closer to God through the knowledge of His power, wisdom and goodness in His creations 8; but the study of natural phenomena, under the influence of the atheistic spirit of the times, alienated man from God. The fruits of materialism are before everyone's eyes; they are numerous and comprehensive: 1) Perversion of moral sense. With a materialistic view of man, the concepts of morality had to change significantly. If a person’s life ends with the death of the body, if a person’s destiny is only his present earthly life, then its goal, obviously, should be the acquisition of a large amount of earthly goods and physical pleasures. When heaven is taken away from a person, he demands earth for himself. Under such conditions, what is beneficial, useful, pleasant has become good, and everything opposite to that is evil, immoral. “A new religion is brewing in the world,” argued one of the modern sages, “Christ humiliates the body, forces us to fight the flesh, we rehabilitate the body. The body is holy, there are no bad motives in it” 9. 2) Instead of the recent desire for the honest, ideal (novels of the 30s and 40s) - the pursuit of profit as a characteristic feature of our time, no doubt familiar to everyone, moreover, the pursuit of profit in all kinds of forms 10. What isn't being counterfeited these days? Species, banknotes, banknotes, passports, bills, wills, diplomas 11 all kinds of signatures, trading companies 12, periodicals 13, paintings by ancient masters, silk, cigars, even eggs 14. Mammon has not become the “god” of our time, before whom everyone bows - they sacrifice conscience, honor, reputation, and social position to him. Cashbox thefts and bank thefts have become commonplace. Let us recall the recent scandalous trials of the Panama Company, the Roman bank and the directors of some Parisian newspapers, arrested (in 1894) on charges of blackmail. 3) Pornography. The extraordinary development of pornographic literature, especially in France, is to be seen as a product of the same materialistic or “real” view of morality; these are the novels of Dumas - son, Paul Feval, Flaubert, Zola and their imitators. This trend is popularized in a mass of popular brochures. Thus, one German company, which has agents in various cities, sent out up to 40,000 catalogs of books of this type alone 15 . Pornography has also affected art. Images of naked women began to appear at exhibitions. Several years ago (in 1886 or 1887), at an exhibition at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, there was a statue depicting the Athenian hetaera Phryne, when she, demanded for trial in order to charm her judges, appeared before them, throwing off her robe from her shoulders, completely naked. 4) Rehabilitation of passion and psychopathism. Justifying a crime committed under the influence of “passion” has now become a custom. In fact, if a person is material and commits this or that act only out of necessity, under the influence of “affect”, which he cannot resist, because he has nothing higher than matter, then how can he be blamed for the criminal act he committed? This theory triumphed in court in a number of criminal trials. Let's remember the Zas-ch case, the Ka-oh case. In both cases, attempted murder was acquitted by the jury, amid applause from the public 16 . In 1890, in Kharkov, the merchant G-kh was killed by his mistress K-ko; in St. Petersburg in 1895, O. P. kills his lover Dr. - here and there the jury acquits the murderers, the public applauds. The theory of rehabilitation of passion reached its apogee in connection with the sad trial of Sem-oh in the murder of Sarah Becker in the Mir-cha loan office. Here, for the first time, this theory was given the sonorous name “psychopathism.” A psychopath is not a crazy person, but a mentally ill person. He can distinguish good and evil well, but he thinks only of himself; Outside of this personal self, nothing is sacred to the psychopath. If such a subject, for example, lies, it is simply because he cannot “not lie.” This is how the well-known psychiatrist Ch. in St. Petersburg described the psychopath, and on the basis of this expert’s explanation, Sem-va, who was accused of murdering Sarah Becker, was acquitted by the jury as a psychopath. 5) Suicide and insanity. How does materialistic atheism affect our inner world? Does it give inner peace and happiness? The answer to this is in modern statistics of suicide and insanity. Statistics show that in no other era have there been so many crazy people and so many suicides as in our time. In France, for example, in 1835 there were 10,549 people in hospitals who were insane, and in 1882 there were already 48,813 people. In the North American United States there were 15,610 mentally ill people in 1850, and 91,997 in 1880, although the population had only doubled by that time. There were 1,739 suicides in France in 1835, and in 1883 there were already 7,213. The same thing happens in other European countries, so that recently there have been up to 60,000 suicides annually in Western Europe - only known and recorded 17. Amazing fact! It is estimated that over the past fifty years, almost twice as many people have died from suicide than from wars, namely 687,000 people (368,000 people died in wars) 18. 6) Under the influence of the same spirit of the times, the desire for the emancipation of women arose. It was a reaction caused by the vain, idle, aimless life of a secular woman, but, like any reaction, it crossed the boundaries defined for a woman’s activity by her very nature. The desire to be a public figure on an equal basis with a man brought a woman out of her inherent sphere of family life. A woman is a nurse, a teacher and educator of children, a doctor for children's and women's diseases - here she is even more in place than a man. But a girl student who fraternizes with students, a woman professor, a woman official who has subordinate officials is an anomaly from which her “femininity” suffers 19 . In the depths of that movement, on the banner of which the motto shines brightly: “Make way for women,” lurks, says Ernest Naville, a hidden desire to destroy one of the most essential and precious foundations of the social order - the family. 7) Let us also note disrespect for elders as a characteristic feature of the time. The younger generation considers itself smarter, more knowledgeable, and better than the old generation. “In the old days,” the late A. Rubinstein aptly noted, “parents spoke, but children (adults) were silent; Now the children speak, and the parents are silent. Previously, they cared more about upbringing, but now about education.” One involuntarily recalls the prophetic word of the Apostle Paul in his 2nd letter to Timothy (3:1-5). It is impossible not to pay attention to the increasing crime among minors, especially the lower class. Whole gangs of 16, 18-year-old thugs often appear in the docks. 15, 19-year-old teenagers commit murders, brutally beating entire families. Here is one of many examples. In the settlement of Chizhovka, a 15-year-old boy kills his father, who scolded him for his idleness, with a shot from a gun. In recent years, our newspapers have reported a lot of information about such crimes. 8) Socialism, or political-economic materialism. “Socialism is the child of atheism,” one of the organs of the Social Democratic Party in Germany quite correctly put it, “and the introduction of culture into the great atheistic period.” At the end of the 18th century, Locke's idea of ​​democracy was popularized in France by J.J. Rousseau in his essay: “Contrat Social”. In the first half of the 19th century, the idea of ​​socialism was developed by Saint-Simon and Fourier; in 1848 and the following years, their followers made attempts to implement it in France. In 1864, Karl Marx established an international (international) workers' union, which gradually covered the whole of Western Europe. The fruits of this harmful teaching are known to everyone. Here, for example, is what socialists teach: “Christ was the first socialist who died for His views.” "Religion is only for savages." “Live for pleasure, there is no future life,” etc. 9) Anarchism. The first anarchist program was put forward by our compatriot, emigrant B. In it, he proposes the abolition of all power, both secular and spiritual, the destruction of class differences and, in general, all differences between people, even the difference between men and women. Following this, anarchist newspapers appeared in many countries, in different languages, with characteristic names: “Freedom”, “Indignation”, “Anarchist”, “Explosion”, etc. The number of these newspapers, gradually multiplying, increased in 1892 to 48 20; anarchist leadership and calendar appeared. Since 1892, anarchist atrocities have become more frequent; within 2 years (from 1892–1894) there were about 40 dynamite explosions or attempted explosions in almost all countries of Western Europe, mainly in France and Spain. “We are reaping the fruits of the extreme freedom of speech and writing that we have suffered for several years,” French Minister-President Loubet said in 1892 in a conversation with an employee of the newspaper Figaro. Everyone, of course, recognizes the validity of this remark. 10) One of the manifestations of the same spirit of the times should also include the anti-Christian custom, recently borrowed from the ancient pagans, of burning the corpses of the dead, contrary to the command of God given to our forefather Adam: “By the sweat of your brow... you will eat bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken” (Gen. 3:19). This pagan custom is spreading quickly. Thus, in Berlin in the first three months of 1891, 1,788 human corpses were burned. In Finland we have a “corpse burning society”. In one of its meetings, in 1895, the chairman, in view of the significant number of registered members of this society, pointed out the need and timeliness of an appeal to government agencies to introduce mandatory burning of corpses 21 . The religious and moral state of our modern educated world, mainly the West, involuntarily resembles a similar state of the Western Roman Empire in the era of its fall. The same unbridled passions, the same oppressive uncertainty of the future, the same decline of religious feeling and the same perverted direction of science. People are always the same, and the development of their social life is similar, only the forms of its manifestation at different times are different. And proofs of the existence of God can hardly be scientifically constructed, for God is the highest evidence, which is difficult to prove by anything else. From the Petersburg Newspaper, 1870, No. 106. See: “Church Bulletin,” 1885, No. 6. See: “Moscow. Vedom.”, 1881, No. 84. See: Last. to Rome 1, 20. See: L. Tikhomirov M. “Beginnings and Ends.” M., 1890 It is not surprising that the book of the American Inezdnirb “How to Get Rich” went through 48 editions and sold 430,000 copies. It has recently been translated into Russian. In 1893 and 1894, forgery of diplomas from the schools of civil engineers of arts and manufactures, affiliated to the University of Ghent, was discovered in Belgium, about which the Belgian envoy notified our government, since our manufacturers and factory owners were inviting civil engineers from Belgium. For example, the Popov tea company, which gave rise to the trial. “Niva” and the later “Neva”, in the expectation that, due to their consonance, they will probably mistake “Neva” for “Niva”. From maize flour, vegetable oil, wheat starch, etc. The girl Zas-ch shot at the St. Petersburg mayor, General Administrator. T. because he subjected one political prisoner to corporal punishment for insolence. A. Ka-va, who was in a relationship with actor V., having arrived from St. Petersburg to Peterhof, stabbed V.’s wife with a knife out of jealousy: “She loved him so much!” – her lawyer exclaimed pathetically. In St. Petersburg alone, according to statistical data, in 1881–1887 there were 2,823 suicides and attempted suicides. See brochure. Klitina: “Our time and suicide” and “Faith and Reason”, 1889, No. 15. “Essays on church and public life.” (St. Petersb. Sonntagsblatt, 1896, no. 17.) There are, of course, women with an undeniable talent for science, art, or oratory and politics, but this very talent puts them in an exceptional position. Including, in France - 10, in Germany - 10, in Spain - 9, in Italy - 8, in England - 4, in Austria-Hungary - 2, in America - 2, in Portugal - 2 and in Holland - 1. See: newspaper “Svet”, 1895, n. brochure: Astafiev. Zeitgeist. You might be interested in: