Published in 1919 | 164 pages | PDF reader required
INTRODUCTION
The characteristic religious literature of today is marked by an increasing recognition of the spiritual realm as a cosmic reality. The familiar emphasis on a Hebrew anthropomorphic Jehovah and the consequent legalistic symbols of sin and righteousness, judgment and forgiveness, is passing, and the ancient but less familiar Greek tradition of God as the One Source is becoming more and more familiar. It is becoming more and more familiar because it is seen with increasing clearness that it fits in better with the world's increasing knowledge of matter, nature and soul.
Heaven is no longer cherished or scorned as a place of felicity to which the soul goes after death, as it is seen to be consistent with the reality of a spiritual life beginning here and now, into which the soul advances in its logical progress toward its homeland in Spirit. If such an immaterial existence, apart from a material body, is true, then spiritual messages are not impossible, but to be expected.
The world is coming more and more to realise the inadequacy of verbal logic as a safe guide to Spiritual Reality, and is listening more humbly and wistfully to these spiritual messages, and none of them have come with more marks of authenticity and convincingness than these presented herewith.
The underlying philosophy of Living Waters is characteristically that of Plato and Plotinus. This is seen particularly in the selection of March 12th. The Soul has correspondence with Nature below itself and sees it to be good and beautiful; and has correspondence with Spiritual Reality above itself by messengers and aspiration; while above all is God, the source of all Goodness, Wisdom and Beauty, to which the Soul has access, not by work or thought or effort, but by simple and loving aspiration and appropriation.
Set aside your habitual and familiar symbols and framework of religious thought and read them with open, receptive minds. Jesus is honoured in all; in some He almost appears to be the speaker Himself. The joyousness and beauty and elevation will be an inspiration to every open-minded Christian, to whom John said: Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.
DWIGHT GODDARD
New York
August 22, 1919.
