Theology Defined.

The subject, taken as a whole, may be divided into three self-evident and comprehensible parts. Theology may be termed a knowledge of the causes or sources of life; Religion, the conduct of life; and Immortality, the ultimate object or destiny of life. Theology is a knowledge of causes, and it ought to explain the origin, nature, and relations of all things, and the principles which regulate all manifestations of life and existence. In other words, there is only one science, and that is Theology; only one universal object of investigation, and that is Life.

Science has hitherto dealt mostly with external phenomena and transitory circumstances, but the human mind demands a disclosure page 42 of the arcana of causes, that operate eternally to the production of endless and diverse series of effects and phenomena.

As to a First Cause, the mind of man cannot conceive of anything as such, because we cannot conceive of a beginning. If causation and the medium matter through which it operates have been eternal, there is an eternal cause, but no first cause.

The first cause and the last cause are one and the same; for if there was not an omnipotent and eternally omnipresent cause ceaselessly operating, then Chaos would at once draw her sable mantle over the whole universe of formation, and there would be nothing to observe, and no one to observe it. A preceding effect cannot be the cause of a succeeding one. John's parents were not the cause of his existence—themselves being an effect, but an instrumentality by means of which the eternal cause again operated.

The universe is in every part alive, and has been living and thriving ever and ever. Everything in it is alive, and all members and portions of it are ceaselessly and industriously, hand in hand, with one aim and purpose, developing forms of life, life, life. There is no dead matter: all is animated with a great, intelligent, self-regulating soul; and we cannot imagine a time when this state of things did not exist, when ideas from this interior intelligent fountain were not being incarnated in forms and perpetuating an independent individual existence—types of the great original. Granting, then, this eternity of being to be a fact—that the illimitable, intelligent, vital, and divine vortex of all that forms, animates, and energises has flowed on for ever through matter, its external body or receptive principle—then we have an incessant series of vital forms, the result of the conjoined action of Father God, the positive or male principle, and Mother Nature, the receptive or female principle.

But though the human soul has been in course of organisation and existence on worlds and spheres in central portions of the universe from all eternity, yet there must have been a time when the formation of man commenced in this recent portion of Nature's domains. Cosmogony and geology show that all minor forms existed before man, that forms of life could not exist without sufficient instrumentalities and conditions to produce them, and that man is the inevitable result of the Eternal Cause in its operations to individualise its inherent principles in material organisations. The divine soul or life of the universe, inherent in our planet as a member of the body universal, could not at once manifest all its qualities and principles in forms of life. For countless ages its efforts were limited to simple motion. In course of time the association of atoms secreted from the general mass under diverse circumstances, produced a variety of substances or products, partaking more or less of the general pro- page 43 perties of the whole. It may be said that at first there was only one substance, and that destitute of properties; but the diversified forms of this substance, gradually produced, eliminated various properties of matter, and hence a diversity of substances, which in turn were conditions for higher manifestations of the inherent life principle. Thus elementary substances were gradually developed, producing a certain state of water, atmosphere, light, and heat; and from these conditions emanated the first forms of organised life. As these conditions improved, the products of life became more perfect, until animals endowed with complicated organisms and much intelligence prevailed. Every stage was a triumph, and each addition was a step toward humanity. No line can be drawn to show the place in the scale where the efforts of creative power culminated in the production of man. Races and countless generations of semi-human beings have existed and been swept away, with whom we could have no fraternal sympathy, but rather antagonism. Within the memory of history, many tribes have been blotted out, without any seeming cause; while mixtures and alliances of nations and tribes have produced higher and more vigorous types of humanity. The race is yet in an unfinished state of development; and types of men now in the womb of the future, will realise possibilities of which, on our highest summit of thought, we cannot conceive. All things are as good as their conditions and circumstances will allow them to be.

Let man explain his own origin. He is called the microcosm—the little world, a type of the great harmonious universe. Observe the conditions that bring forth the diversified phenomena displayed in human life—is the cause of them all not imbedded deep in the spiritual nature of man? To illustrate : The mammary and uterine apparatus was hidden in the bosom of the female since her first stage of fœtal development, but it required time and circumstances to make that unborn infant a nursing mother, and thus manifest the power that lay hidden within the organism.

The little child lies unconsciously smiling on his mother's lap; in future years he becomes the poet, the maker of laws, the discoverer of principles, or the unfolder of our spiritual nature, and makes an era in the social life of the globe he inhabits. But were not all these possibilities in the child, yea, in the very germ from which he was produced, though the time had not then come for their manifestation? In like manner, the principles which are the cause of all forms and existences, have been in the nature of things from all eternity; and it will take an eternity of association, progression, and development for these inherent or divine principles to carry out their legitimate work of perfecting forms and individualities.

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We now come to a definite idea respecting the nature and personality of God. We behold in him a person whose external figure Nature is, and whose soul is the origin and circulatory process whereby all forms are sustained and developed. The material and spiritual universe is therefore the only true revelation of God, and Reason is the great exponent of that divinely written book. The whole is constructed on principles of pure intelligence, and Reason is the only key to unlock the mystery and lead man to a knowledge of God.

We do not claim that the divine principles which emanate from the great positive Mind are equally represented in all nature. The inorganic world represents these principles in a low degree. In the vegetable creation we find active life added to what existed in the mineral. In the animal, we find sensation added to what existed in the plant, and in the higher forms intelligence also; but in the human soul all the principles and powers constituting the divine-mind are individualised and represented. Hence as the divine mind is eternal, so is its counterpart, the human mind. It seems to be the great object of the Universal Intelligence to individualise itself as often as possible, to labour unceasingly for the development of all matter into sentient, thinking, immortal beings.

It has been shown that in the nature and constitution of the human soul the highest and fullest revelation of the divine mind is exhibited; therefore, to know God, we must become acquainted with man. It is a curious historical fact, that the god of all nations is a counterpart of their own state of mental growth; and when once we come to a true and scientific conception of the nature of man, we come to a sure and infallible means of determining the nature of God. In fact, a knowledge of nature, material and spiritual, is a knowledge of God; for it is only through this nature that God can be manifested or can exist. A few practical observations may be deduced from this view of theology.

In the first place, the popular theological beliefs respecting God and his works, except in so far as the teachings of science are followed, are absurd nonsense. Things were not created by an arbitrary act of divine will, but are a necessary consequence of the existence of this divine being. God, therefore, neither plans, condemns, revokes, nor justifies, as all his purposes were formed in the nature of his being from all eternity. It thus follows, that all things are in harmony with these purposes, being the result of them, and that there is no "devil," or contrary principle in the universe, but that all, divinely or absolutely speaking, is good; that God has at no time placed any arbitrary restrictions or injunctions on man, or has revealed himself at any time in the special manner claimed by page 45 priests in their so-called sacred writings; that he neither judges, rewards, condemns, nor punishes: consequently, he knows no distinction between the good and the evil, the perfect and the imperfect, the clean and the unclean, the saint and the sinner; has no special love nor any hate, no crowns of gold nor lakes of brimstone. All things, be they good or bad, just or unjust, bask for ever in the effulgent favour and paternal love of God. It is the most despicable ignorance to teach that God is at variance with man, or man at variance with God; that God is angry at them, punishes them for sin, or manifests to them favour or revenge. Mankind are doing exactly what they were intended to do, and could not do otherwise even if they would. It will be perceived that what is taught by the priests respecting the nature of God, and man's relations to him, are not only false and degrading to man, but ungrateful and blasphemous to the God on whose pretended service they fatten.