citing ambition for
self-exaltation. It was cherishing these evils that caused his fall, and
through them he aims to compass the ruin of men. "Ye shall be as gods," he
declares, "knowing good and evil."(987) Spiritualism teaches "that man is
the creature of progression; that it is his destiny from his birth to
progress, even to eternity, toward the Godhead." And again: "Each mind
will judge itself and not another." "The judgment will be right, because
it is the judgment of self.... The throne is within you." Said a
Spiritualistic teacher, as the "spiritual consciousness" awoke within him,
"My fellow-men, all were unfallen demigods." And another declares, "Any
just and perfect being is Christ."

Thus, in place of the righteousness and perfection of the infinite God,
the true object of adoration; in place of the perfect righteousness of His
law, the true standard of human attainment, Satan has substituted the
sinful, erring nature of man himself, as the only object of adoration, the
only rule of judgment, or standard of character. This is progress, not
upward, but downward.

It is a law both of the intellectual and the spiritual nature, that by
beholding, we become changed. The mind gradually adapts itself to the
subjects upon which it is allowed to dwell. It becomes assimilated to that
which it is accustomed to love and reverence. Man will never rise higher
than his standard of purity or goodness or truth. If self is his loftiest
ideal, he will never attain to anything more exalted. Rather, he will
constantly sink lower and lower. The grace of God alone has power to exalt
man. Left to himself, his course must inevitably be downward.

To the self-indulgent, the pleasure-loving, the sensual, Spiritualism
presents itself under a less subtle disguise than to the more refined and
intellectual; in its grosser forms they find that which is in harmony with
their inclinations. Satan studies every indication of the frailty of human
nature, he marks the sins which each individual is inclined to commit, and
then he takes care that opportunities shall not be wanting to gratify the
tendency to evil. He tempts men to excess in that which is in itself
lawful, causing them, through intemperance, to weaken physical, mental,
and moral power. He has destroyed and is destroying thousands through the
indulgence of the passions, thus brutalizing the entire nature of man. And
to complete his work, he declares, through the spirits, that "true