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CHAPTER X

SEARCHING FOR TRUTH

Time, place, chance and symbols have been responsible for the obtuse nature of works on this subject. In undertaking to get light on so abstract a theme, we must be mindful of two unalterable facts. One is that we cannot make an absolute statement in human words. The other is that time, place, chance and symbols are no part of truth. These statements must not be passed by with indifferent notice, neither should they be treated as trite, high-sounding or sophistical. They mean just what they say in so far as human words can express anything. Unless we understand this we cannot be lucid ourselves, and neither can we elucidate the meaning of others. Remembering this, we are careful to take into consideration the thought of the reader and how a statement will appear to him as well as to ourselves. Saying something in a way or to the effect of satisfying our senses is nothing more than entertaining our own egotism. If we have not illuminated a point or convinced someone, we have not said anything; we have merely repeated words. Probably there has never been such an exhibition of this vanity as in the number of creeds, doctrines and hypotheses that have been read into the Bible. All of them cannot be true, and if one of them were true, and if such a thing were possible, kept free from the reading into it of human opinion, it would destroy all of the others.

There is a limited meaning to every human word and as a result of this limitation all attempts to express what

has been gleaned of the Infinite has been limited to the measuring power of the human words expressing it. This is the channel through which confusion creeps into every discovery of truth. If there is a Universe of Principle, and there is no doubt of this, we have no words to convey to another a discovery of this principle; indeed it would have little meaning when put into words unless, perhaps, to a limited circle. In this work it has been our effort to call attention to the activities, natural, human and Absolute, and explain their relation and operation whereby the attention is directed to the activity instead of the symbol of uncertain meaning. In fact, much of the material we have used has been connected in some measure to the idea we have tried to express. Science, as the word is generally understood, has never attempted to explain anything except the system of nature, while on the other hand, religion has attempted to explain both. Science has proved, much to the chagrin of religions, that many of the religious explanations of nature were wrong. Rather than admit this, religions have insisted that science was wrong; yet in spite of this, science has gradually driven religion out of the natural world.

In this battle for supremacy in the consciousness of men, nothing has played so important a part as "time.” The chronology of events and the attempt to adjust them to the desired fulfillments of prophecies have been the vulnerable points in the fortress of religious systems. And while this has been temporarily embarassing to religions and productive of agnosticism, it is having a salutary effect on them. The refutation of an established belief is productive of doubt in the minds of many as to the worth of other teachings by the same school or sect.

The refutation of what has been termed the Jewish chronology was responsible, as we all know, for the reaction against religious teachings in modern times. And the sad part of it was it cheated the agnostic out of the very good his work was uncovering to him, had he but known it. This chronology was nothing but an assumption without foundation. When the teachings of the prophets are understood it will be learned that they never taught a chronology of material events. They taught of a "kingdom that is not of this world" and man has, in spite of this declaration, attempted to give it material significance. The Kingdom these seers referred to with its Absolute laws is no part of this world, and a knowledge of it gives one power to overcome the world and its laws. To each of us individually the world is made as we become conscious of its phenomena. It will be destroyed as far as we are concerned, when we cease to behold its beauties, if we have learned to see them, its joys if we have learned to feel them, and its sorrows if we have made them real. This does not, however, alter the relative fact that the earth has its time of growth, its period of vegetable and animal life, as well as its period of denudation, decay and senseless silence. Natural science explains the mutable, but there is an immutable which must explain itself. The attempt to synchronize time, place and change with the immutable is responsible for the contradictions and inconsistencies which have collided with growing intelligence. In proportion as religion has surrendered these fabrications it has become purer. When science has cleared away all of the inconsistencies which have grown out of the attempt to harmonize the cruel system of nature with the Creator, we

will be able to understand and learn the nature, essence and availableness of the God we have heard so much about.

We read in the first chapter of Genesis: "In the beginning God." If, instead of attempting to give this the significance of a personal God beginning to create the material earth in mortal time, the effort had been made to determine the meaning of the words the defenders of the writers would have been saved much humiliation and the world much suffering. If, instead of giving this the impossible significance of a human period of time the word "beginning" had been given the significance of describing God, the whole course of human events would have been changed. If, instead of trying to put God into matter, they had turned to the contemplation of Him and His creation in its correct sense, they would have conceived Him as a beginning God. As a result of this, they would have turned away from matter forever to the contemplation of God as Spirit and the evolving of his spiritual ideas which constitute His universe. Matter in all of its varied manifestations has never yet revealed an enduring substance or a noble attribute. This being the case, how can it be regarded as having an Infinite or Divine sanction? We have never yet been able to locate a trace of an enduring substance in matter. Such a law as cohesion, which is the law of the existence of matter, is not in matter. The purest and most enduring substances known can be made, by agencies known to man, to pass beyond the range of the senses, but the cohesion has not been disturbed. However, in whatever form matter is arranged or manifested, the law of cohesion 1 Bible-Genesis 1:1.

is there to hold together these manifestations. This being the case, it must be universal, like the law of mathematics. Whenever or wherever we wish to avail ourselves of it, it is there. While such laws as contraction and expansion seem to be contingent on matter and only exist where matter exists, it is not so with cohesion.

It is the deceptive nature of matter and its expressions that have deceived the searchers for truth. The human mind being unable to conceive of any other intelligence is certainly well qualified to deceive itself. Could we think of a more interesting phenomenon than something without intelligence attempting to explain itself? Yet this is just what it has done and moreover is responsible for the theological contradictions of all times. It is this deception that is responsible for the statement that man was made out of the dust of the ground. But man, the vital principle and activity of life, was not made out of the dust of the ground. In studying man we consider intelligence which is the only man. Natural Science accounts for matter—the mutable outline called manbut the intelligent activity, which is man, must be found in the immutable laws of the Absolute, Immaterial—Intelligence. Being unable to see this vital substance apart from the body some versatile zealot attempted to account for the obvious by formulating the theory that God breathed into the nostrils of a mud man the breath of life. This image is still uneffaced in spite of the warning of Isaiah to: "Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils for wherein is he to be accounted of." Breath is no doubt a part of the natural science of the body and it may be an expression of life, but it is not

1 Bible-Isaiah 2:22.

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