have so few visions, that any will awe them; so naturally they
will accept any vision as valid. Then their rapid and fertile
inventiveness will come into play, and spin the wildest creeds
from each vision living dust ever dreamed.

They will next expect everybody to believe whatever a few men have
seen, on the slippery ground that if you simply try believing it,
you will then feel it's true. Such religions are vicarious; their
prophets alone will see God, and the rest will be supposed to be
introduced to him by the prophets. These "believers" will have no
white insight at all of their own.

Now, a second-hand believer who is warmed at one remove--if at all
--by the breath of the spirit, will want to have exact definitions
in the beliefs he accepts. Not having had a vision to go by, he
needs plain commandments. He will always try to crystallize creeds.
And that, plainly, is fatal. For as time goes on, new and remoter
aspects of truth are discovered, which can seldom or never be fitted
into creeds that are changeless.


Over and over again, this will be the process: A spiritual
personality will be born; see new truth; and be killed. His new
truth not only will not fit into too rigid creeds, but whatever
false finality is in them it must contradict. So, the seer will
be killed.

His truth being mighty, however, it will kill the creeds too.

There will then be nothing left to believe in--except the dead seer.