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as a source of Divine Wisdom and Heavenly Beatitudes

Shall we conceive the Almighty Lord

As matter only vitalized

The sense and soul atoms afford

But inert Nature deitized?

That orbs themselves assume their forms,
Outwrought from molten seas of yore?
The wondrous work Nature performs
Restores her whence she was, before
Her might proceeded to awake
Her unbegotten energies?

Or ere arose to undertake

To manifest what Nature is?

4

CHAPTER III.

BIBLICAL DOCTRINES OF GOD AND NATURE OPPO-
SED TO PANTHEISM.

The Lord is light, and he alone
Illumes the universe etern.
Life, Lord, Creator, God, are one;
Immensity the Spirit's Urn.

The atoms in the vast domain

By Him have form, by Him exist;
All Nature by His laws obtain,

In Him all worlds, all heavens subsist.
God is the Life, and God the Word-
Atoms, obedient to His Will
Conducted by the Sovereign Lord,
Proceed His purpose to fulfill.

To Nature's Divine Revelations, and all forms of Pantheism, we oppose the INSPIRED WORD, and urge its supremacy, 1. Because its metaphysics (as the analysis will determine,) accord more perfectly with the facts of mundane existence, with corporeal nature as allied to man, with human propensions, with physical, spiritual and moral frailties, with mental contradictions, and all known results within the sphere of human sense. 2. Because the Nature, Eternity of Existence, and Infinite Attributes of the Supreme Being, as revealed in the Scriptures,

more rationally commend him as God, Creator, and Divine Benefactor, than the "fire god" of Pantheism-the igneous and surging "Intelligence-Vortex" of Nature's Divine Revelations; and 3. Because the ethics of the Sacred Text are more wisely adapted to the social, moral and spiritual necessities of man, than the law of magnetic attraction of Harmonialism. The Inspired Word does not come to us as the result of human magnetism, but as the revealed WILL of Heaven, in accordance with the laws of Theopneusty-by the Inspiration of God, creating truthful conceptions of Divine Law and Wisdom, in the vital consciousness of Heaven's elected agents-the Patriarchs, Prophets and Apostles; by the Divine Logos, and by the ministration of angels, who were of God appointed holy Embassadors to those chosen from among men as external enunciators of Divine Truths.

Having, in the foregoing chapter, stated the leading principles of Pantheism, respecting Deity, or rather, Nature and her mode of unfolding, we shall now introduce the doctrines of the Scriptures upon the subject of Creation and her Author, that the two systems may appear in their proper light, and so proximate to each other as to reveal their contrast; thence the truth of the one and the error of the other.

That we may properly present this subject, it is necessary to inquire,

I. The effect these systems have upon the sense of those who have been the media of their external expression.

II. In what light they viewed the Creator. Thus we may discover, in a degree, the characters of the inspiring principles, for these agents must, of necessity, reflect, in part at least, the nature of the revealing cause, and the burden of their utterance will accord with the character of whatever quickens their sense, enlarges their conceptions, and guides their speech.

The heart of the men of old, who wrote as moved by the Holy Ghost, is revealed by the Psalmist when he said, "Oh, come, let us worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker." How much more befitting finite man, when contemplating Infinity, was the sense of David's inspired soul, as conveyed in this meek expression, than the presumptuous arrogance betrayed by the Poughkeepsie "Seer" when he uttered the following: "To reveal the second sphere" (the region of eternity proximate to earth,) "I shall progress or ascend to the third," (the region of eternity still above or more remote from earth than the second sphere); "thence to the fourth; thence upward and upward to the fifth, sixth, and finally, as an ultimate, to the

seventh," (the highest heaven, that of infinite perfection,) "in which I shall be able to comprehend all others."-N. D. R. p. 120. This the modern philosophy calls rational, in the first degree. In harmony with the above, it is written, page 672 ibid: "From the position now occupied I can perceive, and in a degree comprehend, the Seventh Sphere, or the Infinite Vortex of Love and Wisdom," (Deity,) "and the great Spiritual Sun of the Divine Mind that illumines all the Spirit worlds." Whose province is it to overlook, span, and, in a degree, comprehend the Almighty? Could the mightiest Angel, whose glory would veil the sun in night? the reflections of whose capacious mind are incomprehensible to man? whose journeyings number the stars as points of local distances? and before whose vision the unnumbered orbs are as pebbles in the distant landscape! Nay, as he turned his almost omnipercipient eye from the boundless realms of material nature, and glanced along the angelic heavens; as his thoughts arose toward the infinite Architect, he would exclaim, "O, the wisdom and goodness of God, how unsearchable, and his ways past finding out." But the Poughkeepsie "Seer," by a few human manipulations, ascends at once to the sphere of infinite perfection, fully capacitated to compre hend all others, and, in a degree, the sphere of

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