CHAPTER XXV.

EXISTENCE OF GOD.

"The people were astonished at his doctrine."-Matthew.

"My doctrine shall drop as the rain;

My speech shall distil as the dew;

As the small rain upon the tender herb,

And as the showers upon the grass.”—Jehokak.

"As other men have creeds, so I have mine;

I keep the holy faith in God, in man,

And in the angels ministrant between."-Tilton.

"I hold a faith more dear to me

Than earth's rich mines, or fame's proud treasure,

Reason pertains to God; reasonings, with their inductive. and deductive methods, to progressive man. Moral freedom is liberty of action, achieved in accordance with the divine. forces of our being and the laws of the Infinite. The sphere of freedom is the relative. It stands related to the absolute, something as the varying eddy to the deep, clear, rolling river, destined to sweep onward to the ocean.

Belief is an assent of the mind to certain propositions. It is based principally upon testimony. Sufficient evidences compel it; a lack of demonstration precludes any rational

belief. The reasonableness of evidence is the soul of evidence, and the highest authority that any individual can possibly have, is the voiced command of God in his own soul.

Spiritualists have no authoritative book-oracles, nor petrified Apostles' creeds to be interpreted by cowled priests or mitered pontiffs. They bow to no kingly master - Chrishna, Jesus nor John. They trust in no external signs, ceremonies or institutional law-logic, scriptural or secular, for salvation. They rely upon no wafers, sacramental altars red with the crimsoned currents of slain goats, kids or Christs, to remove the legitimate consequences that result from infringements of natural law. They acknowledge no ecclesiastical authority, nor lean upon clergymen or popes, Romish or American, for their knowledge of those spiritual matters that relate to immortality and eternity.

In giving general doctrinal statements, then, we define not for such Spiritualists as the King of Bavaria or Napoleon of France, or Garabaldi of Italy; not for the Howitts and Wilkinsons of England; not for Senator Wade and other honorable members of Congress; not for Robert Dale Owen, Prof. Upham or Col. Higginson; not for numbers of the most celebrated judges, jurists, poets and writers of the age; not for Theodore Tilton's "many honored members in evangelical churches who are Spiritualists; " neither for Judge Edmond's estimated "eleven millions of believers" in this country; but for ourself only, with an eye to the usually accepted opinions of the main body, and are therefore alone responsible for these doctrines and definitions.

Ignoring the fetich gods of Africa-the repenting, jealous god of Judaism-the changing, angry-getting god of Catholicism, the partial, malicious god of Calvanism-the masculine, miracle-working god of Universalism—we find infinitely higher conceptions of Deity in the definitions of Plato, Proclus, Jesus, John, Mahomet, Parker and Davis:

"Of good there is one eternal, definite and universal Cause-the Infinite Soul."

"God is spirit, and spirit is causation underlying all things."

"God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.'

"God is love."

"There is one God."

"To God-our Father, and our Mother, too-will we ascribe all praise."

"The great positive mind of the universe-Father God and Mother Nature."

Those accepting the Spiritual Philosophy believe in the Divine Existence, the Infinite Esse, embodying and enzoning all principles of mind and properties of matter; all wisdom and love; life and motion; God manifest in everything from sands to solar systems. This is the spontaneous concession of the world's consciousness. Egypt's Osiris, India's Brahma, Judea's Jehovah, the Grecian's Jupiter, the Mussulman's Allah, the Platonist's All-Good, the Theist's Deity, the Christian's Our Father, the Northman's Odin, the Indian's Great Spirit, express more than glimmerings of universal beliefs in that God whose altars are mountains and oceans, and whose pulpits are fields, earths, orbs and circling systems, perfect in order, musical in their marches, and flaming with holiest praises.

Rejecting the human-shaped, prayer-idolized, personal God of evangelical theologians,-because personality logically implies locality, and whatever becomes localized in space is necessarily limited and imperfect-to us, God is the Infinite Spirit; Soul of all things; the incarnate Life-Principle of the universe; impersonal, incomprehensible, undefinable, and yet immanent in dewdrops that glitter and shells that shine -in stars that sail through silver seas, and angels that delight to do the immutable will. When we designate God as the Infinite spirit-presence and substance of universal Nature, from whose eternally-flowing life wondrous systems of worlds have been evolved, we mean to imply, in the affirmation, all divine principles, attributes, qualities and forces, positive and negative-Spirit, as spirit-substance, and matter as physical substance, or a solidified form of force, the former

The

depending upon the latter, for its manifestations. masculine alone cannot create. There was never a higher formation without the two forces-positive and negative.

The progress of matter is through motion, organization, segregation, accretion, disintegration, and re-combinations reaching continually towards higher structural formations. The law is from angles to circles. Progress, so far as legitimately referable to Spirit, relates to the manifestational rather than the absolute. God as the Infinite Soul or the Life-Principle is not progressive. Progress, as applicable to the consciousness and ratiocination of mortals, implies, not only a low condition of imperfection to progress from, but investigation, experiment, defeats and victories.

Matter, or physical substance, does not become essential spirit-does not, as certain French philosophers have taught, "go up into consciousness." If an aggregation of unthinking monads may become thought-if one particle of matter may become spirit-two, ten thousand, all worlds, all matter, may become pure spirit! a method comparable to feet "going up" into limbs-limbs into body-body into brain-and brain into divine mind! This reasoning, carried logically into the actual, would finally ultimate in the transfer of "Mother Nature" into "Father God;' or the consummation contemplated by the Brahminical doctrine of the absorption of individualities, and all else, into the "Oceanic vortex of absolute Spirit." The position is untenable, and destructive to conscious individuality. Spirit must eternally depend upon matter for manifestation and the molding of sensuous forms. Spirit and matter, as substances, are not utterly discreted, as Swedenborg taught; but blended and correlated as the spiritual and physical body-duality in unity. Reduced to the last metaphysical analysis, we have this problem for solution:

Given physical substance, spirit substance, and the Divine Energy, to account for the origin and destiny of cells, worlds, systems and conscious spirits.

The existence of God is not only the logic of intuition; but one of the primary recognitions of human consciousness, which consciousness, therefore, is absolutely inseparable from the Infinite Consciousness.

Napoleon, while upon the ocean, pointed starward, and said-" Talk, talk much as you please, gentlemen; but who -what made and governs those unnumbered worlds that pasture in the illimitable fields of heaven?"

Only apprehending and comprehending that which is inferior to ourselves, we cannot comprehend God, nor can we fully fathom the measureless possibilities connected with the Divine within ourselves; much less can we reach the perfections of the Infinite through any lengthened series of finite progressions. Until parallel lines meet and circles are squared, never can any continuous number of multiplied finites amount to the sum of an infinite. All human progress is upon the finite plane. All true unfoldment is from the center outward. The ratio of the moral being matheinatical, it is clear that man may progress endlessly without reaching God. Progress is not attributable of God, and no methodical thinker connects progression with the infinite energizing Life-Principle of the universe.

In conic sections there is what is termed the mathematical paradox, where the asymptote continually approaches the curve, but never meets it; otherwise expressed, we have the formula of two mathematical lines, eternally approaching and never meeting; so finite man may forever progress; eternally nearing the infinite fountain of causation without reaching God. If matter, as certain theorists have taught, becomes essential spirit, then progress is ultimately defeated, for man necessarily loses his individuality and consciousness by assimilation with and absorption into, the infinite ocean of Pure Spirit!

Demosthenes is represented to have said through a modern medium:

"Had you asked me concerning God, a thousand years ago, I could have told you all about him; but now, after I have walked the highway of celestial worlds for more than two thousand years, I am so far lost and