114 INSTINCTIVE TENDENCY TO SENSUOUS SYMBOLS. only give them that honor on account of the beings they repre sent. They are in our temples, because it is necessary, in order to pray well, to have something before our eyes that may fix the mind; and when we pray, it is not the statue we pray to, but he that is represented by it." The Brahmans have also another way of defending their worship of statues, thus mentioned by the same author:-"That God, or that Sovereign Being whom they call Achar, (inimitable) has produced or drawn out of his own substance not only souls, but also whatever is material and corporeal in the universe, so that all things in the world are but one and the same thing with God himself, as all numbers are but one and the same unity repeated." The Catholic worship of saints, with all its manifold absurdities, evinces the natural tendency of the human soul to recognize gradations of spiritual beings and local tutelar genii, or deities. The grossness and irregularity of their superstitious observances, however, condemn them as monstrosities; not only they create saints for nations and districts, and for crafts or trades, but for diseases; thus the venerial has St. Roche, the falling sickness St. Cornelius, the toothache St. Apollin. Also for beasts,-St. Loy is the horse leech, and St. Anthony the swine herd. Thus the homily of the Church of England reproaches them, "that in many points they exceed the Gentiles in idolatry, particularly in honoring and worshiping the relics and bones of Saints, which prove that they be mortal men and dead, and, therefore, no Gods to be worshiped, which the Gentiles would never confess of their Gods, for very shame." And after enumerating many ridiculous practices of the Catholics in reference to these relics, it concludes with observing that they are "not only more wicked than the Gentiles, but also no wiser than horses, asses, or mules." A less illiberal sectarianism would be content with saying that the vulgar or popular worship of the Catholics was adapted to the senses and affections of an ignorant and undeveloped multitude of human beings, whose imaginations, in their necessity of finding the Divine Spirit in all things, had as yet been but little assisted by the light of intelligence and the criteria of a just and disciplined taste. In this the ancient Pagans, as we please to call them, had much the advantage, since their conceptions of Deities and of tutelar genii were developed upon a system of philosophical analogy, and expressed, in a mystical but pleasing and impressive manner, the facts and principles of natural science as then known to them. It was a most fertile germ, whose beautiful properties THE SUN HIEROGLYPHIC OF GOD. 115 have excited some of our best modern minds to its culture. Darwin's "Botanic Garden" is an aspiration towards its analogical embodiments. When an instinct or tendency like this shows itself so natural, so universal in the human soul, it is the part of wisdom not to attempt its repress, but to regulate and utilize its development, by which the Gods are not, indeed, brought down to the level of mortals, but nature elevated and spiritualized in our conceptions, so that it becomes for us more truly a mediator of divine influence. The Sun explains to us by analogy the nature and action of the Supreme God. For if as the sovereign Sun is to generation, to everything visible and to all visive natures according to the power generative of light, so it is necessary the good should be with reference to intellect and intelligibles, according to a cause productive of truthif this be the case, we must say that the Sun is exempt at one and the same time from visive and visible natures, and must admit that the good transcends the natures that are always intellective, and also those which are eternally intelligible. The Sun not only imparts (says Plato) the power of being seen, to visible natures, but also he is the cause of their generation, increase, and nutriment, not being himself generated. Things which are known have not only this from the good, that they are known, but likewise that their being and essence are thence derived; whilst the good itself is not essence but beyond essence, transcending it both in dignity and power, as the Sun surpasses all visible natures, and perfects and generates all things by his light. Essence and intellect subsist primarily from the good, are filled with the light of truth proceeding thence, and obtain the participation adapted to them from the union of this light, which is more divine than themselves, and which through them affords in beings a similitude to that which is first. For the light which is emitted from the Sun causes everything visible to be Solar-form, and the participation of the light of truth renders that which is intelligible boniform and divine. ATTRACTIVE INDUSTRY OF THE GODS. LET no one however think that the Gods extend such a providence about secondary things as is either of busy or laborious nature. For the Gods do not govern all things either by investigating what is fit, or exploring the good of everything by ambiguous reasonings, or by 116 ATTRACTIVE INDUSTRY OF THE GODS. looking externally and following their effects, as men do in the providence which they exert upon their own affairs; but preassuming in themselves the measures of the whole of things and producing the essence of everything from themselves, and also looking to themselves, they lead and perfect all things in a silent path by their very being, and fill them with Good. Neither likewise do they produce in a manner similar to nature, energizing only by their very being, unaccompanied by deliberate choice; nor energizing in a manner similar to partial souls in conjunction with will, are they deprived of production according to essence; but they contract both of these into one union, and they will indeed such things as they are able to effect by their very being, but by their very essence being capable of and producing all things, they contain the cause of production in their unenvying and exuberant will. By what busy energy, therefore, with what difficulty, or with the punishment of what Ixion, is the providence either of whole souls or of intellectual essences or of the Gods themselves accomplished, unless it should be said that to impart good in any respect is laborious to the Gods? But that which is according to nature is not laborious to anything. For neither is it laborious for fire to impart heat, nor to snow to refrigerate, nor in short to bodies to energize according to their own proper powers. And prior to bodies neither is it laborious to natures to nourish, generate, or increase; for these are the works of natures. Nor again prior to these is it laborious to souls; for these indeed produce many energies from deliberate choice, many from their very being, and are the causes of many motions by alone being present. So that if indeed the communication of good is according to nature to the Gods, providence also is according to nature. And these things we must say are accomplished by the Gods with facility and by their very being alone. But if these things are not according to nature, neither will the Gods be naturally good. For the good is the supplier of good just as life is the source of another life, and intellect is the source of intellectual illumination. And everything that has a primary subsistence in each nature is generative of that which has a secondary subsistence. APPENDIX ON SOLAR RELIGIONS. 117 I feel that this is delicate and dangerous ground, and I know how prone is the human mind in its reactions from superstition and authority, to rush into equal absurdities of philosophical self-conceit and shallow materialism. But Jesus Christ has too thoroughly identified himself with the aspirations of the human heart, and not only his precepts and example, but his personality, and the mystic communion of the Spirit world into which he initiates us, are too dear, too necessary, too much facts of our interior consciousness, and too exclusively his own, for me to fear doing mischief by earnest awkwardness in stating natural truths. I aim not to diminish the faith of hearts in Jesus, but to amplify and deepen religious sentiment in its associations, with natural science, productive labor and man's function, as the harmonist of his planet; therefore I strike at spiritual sentimentalism and clerical dollbabyhood, whether it assume the Christian dress or any other, convinced that it would be regarded with supreme disgust by Jesus himself, who was so earnest and practical in his beneficence and self-devotion. The need we have of Christ arises out of the lacerating experiences of our social discords. Children, of whom He himself said, Of such is the kingdom of heaven; as long as they love and are loved, and are not outraged in that optimism, by which they invest common things with charm; find Nature full of God, and have no need of other mediation than that which, perhaps, their angels sustain, so quietly and so continuously, as to escape their consciousness. "The Babe by its Mother lies cradled in joy; Glide the hours uncounted; the Sun is its toy Shines the peace of all Being without cloud in its eyes, The proper life or world of persons, in which Christ is the Saviour, come afterwards, in the struggle, when the tares sown by an enemy in the night have come up, when the boy's cup of life has been drugged, and with sadness and madness, the man-child's head been turned. Then, amid conflict and disappointment within and without, when the unity of the Spirit with itself has been broken, and its harmony with nature marred, when society appears as a monstrous blunder, and personal destiny only a bad joke on the part of Providence, by the cruel deception of our instincts and attractions; then we ask for something more humane and sympathizing than the Sun, who calls into being, with the same smile, the nightingale and the crocodile, the rose or the upas; and then the claims of Christ, who lived and died for his race, and who seemed to live so near to the heart of the All Father, come home to us with grateful mediation. MAGIAN MAXIMS AND PARABLES. THE FATHER HURLED NOT FORTH FEAR, BUT INFUSED PERSUASION. NATURAL WORKS co-exist with the intellectual light of the Father, for it is the Soul which adorned the great heaven, and which adorns it after the Father, but her horns are established on high. The Soul being a bright fire, by the power of the Father remains immortal, and is mistress of life, and fills up many of the recesses of the world. For the fire which is first beyond did not shut up his power in matter by works, but by mind, for the framer of the fiery world is the Mind of mind. For in the whole world shineth a triad, over which a monad rules. The Paternal Mind hath sowed symbols in the souls. Having mingled the vital spark from two according substances, Mind and Divine Spirit, as a third to these he added Holy Love, the venerable charioteer uniting all things: Filling the soul with profound love. The soul of man will in a manner clasp God to herself: having nothing mortal, she is wholly inebriated from God, for she glories in the harmony under which the mortal body exists. O man of a daring nature! Thou subtle production! Since the soul perpetually runs and passes through all things in a certain space of time, which being performed, it is presently compelled to run back again through all things and unfold the same web of generation in the world: as often as the same causes return, the same effects will in like manner be returned. The most mystic of discourses informs us that the wholeness of the Sun is in the supramundane orders; for there a Solar world and total light subsist, as the oracles of the Chaldeans affirm. |