The mind is incarnated in a physical temple of which the dome is measured by inches, but its thoughts and affections expand into greater dimensions. Earth is too limited, and its materiality is too obvious for the soul. It seeks those living orbs that roll through infinitude. Star after star is counted; constellations are mapped out, like milestones along familiar roads. Still the mind goes on. It reaches the ineffable mysteries of the sidereal heavens, those invisible worlds of grandeur beyond the most distant stars. Amazed at the splendours and harmony, pulsating with joy and the desire to know yet more, the soul demands: what and where is God? The fields of science have been traversed, the beauties of art have been displayed for our contemplation; the religious works of all nations have been searched, that the soul might comprehend and gaze upon the Supernal
Ruler of the universe; but He remains the unseen, uncomprehended Father of all spirits—pure, holy, everlasting, infinite. Belief in God, or in a superior power, is indigenous to the soul and consequently to all nations and tribes on the surface of the earth. While individual conceptions of God reflect prevailing beliefs for the vast majority, to the mind which thinks independently such notions will be representative of the person himself, and to this extent God is in our likeness. They may be scientific, philosophical or theological. God considered scientifically is the greatest fact in the universe—the greatest Principle and Reality. He is the active or moving Principle, contrasted with which Nature is moved or passive. He is Being, of absolute necessity. Vitalising all things, He dwells with all substances and elements, and individualises His motion, life, sensation and intelligence therein.1 It is true therefore that God is Nature.2 Being substance in and of Himself, and exerting an active and moving power continually in the empire of matter, it is reasonable to conclude that His attributes and elements are also matter or substance. All His modes of motion may be generalised under attraction and repulsion or—in the language of Harmonial Philosophy—as association, progression and development. But a scientific inquiry into the nature and mode of God is the first and most inferior effort of human
reason, and its conclusions are of an external kind, true only so far as- they go.
Philosophy, on the other hand, considers God in reference to principles, causes and designs, instead of things, effects and phenomena, which are the province of science. He is for philosophy the Great Central Source of life, love, order and form. Nature exists and operates between God and His designs, while the end or issue of such design must correspond to the magnitude and majesty of the Inventor. Contemplate that Eternal Centre from which proceeded the innumerable worlds of immensity, and reason will confess that God is positive but all else negative. Spirit and matter must not be confounded nor separated. When defining spirit I have been compelled to employ the term matter, in the absence of a better word, because it is expressive of substance, and such is spirit. So also the Positive Mind must not be confounded with Nature, nor separated therefrom. God is as distinct from Nature as is the human soul from its body.1 He is personal in the sense that He contains the principles of perception, and all other principles; yet is He not separate from or outside Nature. His mode of being and action is determined by that inevitable constitution of things, of which He is the Unfolder, Sustainer and Co-essential.
Theologically considered, God is the Great Father, Spirit of all spirits. The essential qualities and properties of His Infinite Soul penetrate all Nature and all
intelligent essences. These qualities and properties are love, understood fundamentally, and thus God is love. Theologically we think of the inexhaustible sweetness of this love; we think of God's close and unchangeable relation to our most interior selves; we feel a particular providence in our existence, a protection from multifarious temptations and accidents in the doing of His will willingly. When this view rests, as it should rest always, upon a scientific and philosophical foundation, divested of mystery and supernaturalism, it is a source of unfailing consolation. If God is apprehended as an organised principle,1 operating according to eternally established laws—so surpassingly righteous that they produce a kind of necessary freedom or independence—then will our spirits bow with intellectual obedience to the Will of our Father and experience a beautiful liberty in moving harmoniously with universal Nature. It follows that, viewed with scientific eyes, God is a Great Fact, philosophically a Great Positive Mind and theologically a Great Spirit Father. The executive element of the Great Positive Mind is will, and the essential element is love. Divine Love and Divine Will, in their governing and directing principle, constitute Divine Wisdom—eternal, infinite, spread throughout the length and breadth of the universe.
In accordance with the rules of analogical reasoning, it is easy to comprehend what God is, and where and how He dwells in the universe. He is the sublimation of all substantial qualities, essences, elements, principles, in the highest concentration of unity, the crystallisation
of all that is refined, pure, bright and harmonious.1 He resides especially in the vortical encephalon or cerebrum of the universe. The analogy which exists between the Divine Mind and the universe is therefore established. As the human mind is organised on a finite plane, so is the Divine Mind organised on an infinite plane. As the seat of human sensation, affection, sentiment, intelligence and voluntary power is in the brain, so are the qualities, essences, principles, omnipotent power and eternal omniscience in the sensorium of the universe. The outer universe is a visible manifestation of the Indwelling Deity. Nature is the body, God is the soul. Nature is the dormitory of all that is unfolded in the great sensorium. God is the Cause, Nature is the effect; God is the spiritual, Nature the material; Nature is finite, God is infinite. The two are joined indissolubly and harmoniously—matrimonially, so to speak—and can never fall asunder. The highest conception which the human mind can attain of the Infinite is essentially theological; but the relations which the Infinite sustains to the finite,2 which God sustains to Nature, can be
comprehended only by a philosophical intellect, and hence such terms as our Heavenly Father and the Great First Cause will be understood readily, but the Organised Principle and the Great Sensorium of the universe make a deeper call on minds. The Great Positive Mind is love, will, wisdom; Nature is substance, aggregation, universe; and the laws which flow from God into the organism of Nature are those of association, progression and development. God acts upon the universe anatomically. In the structure of planets and in the forms of solar systems there are manifold indications of a great anatomical law; and inasmuch as spirit is a substance superior to matter, which it moves, the formative principle which lies back of and beneath all visible combinations of matter must of necessity contain whatsoever the externals of Nature manifest to sense. The series, degrees, associations of structures in Nature are expressive of principles contained in the One Great Principle. God also acts physiologically on the universe. As the acorn develops into an oak, as the germ of all forms produces an ultimate development in its own image and likeness, so the Divine Mind begets Its image and likeness in the human soul.
So also it expands and unfolds its celestial and immutable principles into mineral, vegetable and all animate forms. A great functional or physiological law flows through the labyrinths of immensity. Nothing which manifests life is without functions to perform in the great body of causation, and the forms and functions of material organisms in Nature are demonstrations that the Great Motive Power of the universe contains principles of structure and function, which in these attain their ultimate. In the third place, God acts on the universe mechanically, for there is a certain sense in which Nature is a vast mechanism, of which God is the Great Inventor; and in its sublime workings the true mechanic on earth can learn of God. From the lowest to the highest he can discern the constant evolution of principles, motives and forces. The centrifugal and centripetal tendencies of human mechanics imitate, on an imperfect scale, corresponding tendencies and motions among planetary bodies. Once more, Nature indicates the modes of Divine Existence.1 As the spirit of man acts on his body so does the Spirit of God act upon the universe. But, in the fourth place, God acts on the universe chemically, and this Divine Chemistry is the harmony and perfection of those laws which interrelate the Great Vital Principle and its physical organism—that is to say, the boundless universe. The principle of association, which is the primary manifestation of Divine Love, flows forth into all branches of organic life, and chemical
action is its sequence or companion. Such action is indeed one mode of creation. In the fifth place, God acts upon the universe electrically. The Divine Mind employs electricity as a medium of communication to all parts and particles of the universe, an expression of the unchanging pulsations of His Eternal Soul. He acts also magnetically. The Eternal Mind is surrounded by a Great Spiritual Sun, resplendent with emanations of immortal life and beauty. Its essences, principles and harmonies flow through the whole organism of Nature, as the blood and principles of life and sensation flow through man's body. But in fine God acts upon the universe spiritually, as the Great Spiritual Principle, totality of being and crown of all.