Chauncey Giles

“ The Lord gives to every substance, every plant and animal, a form of its own. He gives it the power to be itself and not another. He individualizes. The perfection of every plant and animal and of every human being consists in its becoming more fully and distinctly itself. Grass is not evolved into wheat and forest trees. Its perfection consists in preserving its own form and improving its qualities. The perfection of a grape does not consist in becoming a peach, but a better grape. Its evolution does not consist in becoming something else, but in the perfection of its own qualities. ”

“ Heredity secures the solidarity of the human race. It prevents it from degenerating into a merely animal condition, and it secures the means of combining individuals into a race. Every human being is something more than himself. He is a part of a larger being. There is a life common to a nation and to the race which differs from that of the individual, as the whole human body differs from any organ or part of an organ which composes it. This life is richer, fuller, more various, and is shared by all. There is no isolation in the universe. ”

“ They can be endowed with sensation, gifted with consciousness, and become the instruments of thought and affection. We are now prepared to consider the principle of heredity in man.
God is love. Man inherits the power of loving, or that quality of his mind which we call love or affection from Him. This faculty was not evolved from the animal; it does not come from below him it comes from above him. Love in its essential nature is life; and it is a higher form of life and possesses finer qualities than can be bestowed upon matter. It is of the same nature as the Divine life. ”

“ The infinite may be comprised in the smallest space. By the infinite is meant that which has no limit to the power it can exert, the forms and qualities which it can assume. Now look at the material creation and see if you cannot find a hint at least of the infinite in it. Is it possible to assign any limit to the number or varieties of vegetable or animal life? Can we say that only a certain number of human beings can be created, and when that number is reached, the Lord must cease to create? There are no two things exactly alike in all respects in the universe. The Lord never repeats Himself ”

“ It is power, and it is in the constant effort to communicate itself and to set all things in concordant motion. It is attractive: it tends to draw all beings into conjunction and communion with itself. It contains, as a quality of its substance, the capacity of communicating the most exquisite sensations of delight, joy, happiness. It is in its nature creative: it tends to draw all substances and forces into its service, and organize them into faculties which it can employ to communicate itself to others. We all know how an intense love moves us to speech ”

“ We are not emerged into other beings. We are not an unconscious part of God though we live and move and have our being in Him. We are personalities distinct from God, and from every other form of being. Such being the nature of life, the more largely we become the recipients of it, and the more perfect the qualities of the life we receive, the more distinctly will be our personality. In this way we inherit from the nature of God the grandest of all our faculties, the power of becoming, in ever-increasing fullness and distinctness, personal beings. ”

“ Now let us consider the bearing of this origin of substance upon the doctrine of Heredity. As all substances are derived from life they are capable of being moulded into the forms of life. It is native to them. They are of a homogeneous nature; they yield to the forces of life, and can be employed as the means of embodying and expressing the qualities of love. ”

“ The individual, however free and independent he may seem to be, is but a filament in the thread of influence. We are all woven together in one web, and this web has an inner and invisible surface forming an organic part of the whole, composed of those who have thrown aside their material garments and have passed from our consciousness, but not from their power to influence us. ”

“ On the contrary, is it not by the supervision of man, who is endowed with the power of seeing the relation of means to ends, and is able to provide means suitable to secure these ends? Does instinct ever provide means for the improvement of its species? It requires but little observation and knowledge of natural history to see that evolution is effected by intelligence; by the operation of mind upon matter; by spiritual, not by natural selection. Matter does not effect it. Intelligence causes it by means of matter. Matter is the clay, and mind or spirit is the potter. ”

“ He does not inherit these supreme human qualities from his animal nature. They are not a quality of that nature. The natural mind was made to be the servant of these pure human faculties, and to find its happiness and perfection in serving them.
I ask your attention to only one more quality of life which man inherits from the Lord. He, as I have stated, is life in Himself. It comes from no source without Him. He is substance, power, consciousness, intelligence, love. It is, therefore, of their nature to carry with them the power of giving to every human being the feeling that they are his own ”

“ The perfection of the universe consists in the number, beauty, and excellence of the variety of objects which compose it, and not in the predominance of one form or one quality, however excellent it may be in itself.
We have so far considered the universality of the law of heredity in the lower forms of the creation, and we find some of the Divine attributes faintly shadowed forth in all things. Even the rock and the ground have inherited some qualities which exist in their infinite perfections in the Lord. ”

“ The infinitesimal forms of life have power to act in the circuit of their nature. So has every animal. Man has powers not accorded to the lower orders of creation. He has mental and spiritual power capable of unlimited extension. The universe is penetrated and imbued with it, and men and animals can use it as their own. But it is not their own in the sense of being inherent and underived. It is a constant inheritance; it comes in a constant stream from the Almighty.
God is infinite; but it is of His nature to finite and make everything distinct in form and quality from every other thing. ”

“ But this law, so grand and beneficent in its scope, and so essential to our progress in life, and even to the continuity of the human race, operates in a most fatal way when man becomes the organized form of evil. ”

“ Whatever any individual in this vast chain of being had gained by the influences of its environment, its own action and relations to other forces and beings, was incorporated into its nature and transmitted to its offspring. By this process through many ages there has been a gradual improvement in the forms and qualities of matter. Dead matter has become organized and gained sensation, -consciousness, and the power of locomotion. The senses have been formed, instinct has been acquired, and finally all the intellectual and moral faculties and qualities of men and women have been gained. ”

“ The earth is composed of substances which existed in intense activity in the sun. But it is not taken directly as a solid body from the bosom of the sun. The sun's heat and light, which are its substances in intense action, lose their power as they recede from it. They become less active, more concrete, and finally they rest in solid forms, in rock and earth, which can become the basis on which a new and higher creation, as that of plants and animals, can rest.
Now, it is evident that a tree or an animal could not be created directly from the substances of the sun. ”

“ We are as unconscious of it from any sensation as the machine is that its power of motion is constantly derived from steam. We seem to ourselves, therefore, to be independent beings, though every particle of life is constantly derived from the Lord. We gain our moral and spiritual freedom from this quality of life to give itself wholly away to those who receive it, though we are dependent upon it for every faculty we possess. ”

“ Heredity gives a sufficient degree of certainty to human employments. The husbandman knows that he will reap what he sows. If he plants corn he has an undoubting confidence that he will harvest corn. If he plants a vine he will gather grapes of the variety he planted. If he engages in sheep husbandry he is perfectly sure that the product of his flock will be sheep. This is the universal rule. But suppose it were not. Suppose there was no certainty about the product of any seed. Would it not destroy all confidence in nature and all motives to industry? ”

“ Scientists declare that a knowledge of God is impossible, because, if there be a God, He must be infinite. But that is absurd. If we cannot know anything about a stone, or a sheep, or a woman because we cannot know everything about them, we might in truth declare ourselves to be agnostics in every respect, and take our place with stones and dust. But we can know something about every object or principle, and there are no limits to the truths to be learned even about a stone. ”

“ It is true that everything was created out of protoplasm, or a first substance. But we must go back much farther into the past eternity than the common nettle, or the elements of matter, for the substance which contains within itself the promise and potency of every form of life. ”

“ On the contrary, those qualities which constitute his human nature can only be gained by means of his physical nature, and by keeping it in subordination to his spiritual nature. By evolution or development man cannot become Divine. He cannot be evolved into a god. ”

“ Every taint of evil leaves its stain, every perversion of heavenly order is transmitted, until posterity becomes the embodiment of the evil tendencies of former generations. This was the way man fell from his primitive perfection. ”

“ Every substance, form, quality, motion, and sensation is derived from. the Lord, and, in its measure and degree, inherits from Him all that can be predicated of it.
In the process of creation the first step necessarily consists in providing the materials of which it is to be made. God is substance itself in its purest and perfect form. He could not, therefore, create the material universe directly from that substance in its intense and inconceivable activities. It must become modified; it must part with much of its power and life. ”

“ Man's inheritance falls to him by an immutable law which has its origin in the Divine nature, and is enacted in every organic form in the creation. That law is called in modern science the law of Heredity. The principle of the law is: like always tends to produce like. ”

“ Will the limit of variety ever be reached? That is impossible in the nature of things, because new influences are constantly operating upon men, which must change the qualities of character and consequently the form of the face. Here, then, we see the nature of the infinite in one direction, and can understand it as well as we can anything else.
People often mystify themselves upon this subject. They think the infinite is incomprehensible because they cannot see its boundaries. ”

“ The substances in the ground, and those which come from the sun in the forms of heat and light, are of such a nature that they can be evolved into these beautiful and useful forms. The forces from the sun and the matter upon which they act are perfectly adjusted to each other, and they can co-operate with each other to effect this beneficent end. ”

“ Plants contain the same elements as minerals, and yet animals cannot live on minerals. Life gives to dead elements some quality, imbues them with its own substance, or by some alchemy unknown to man fits them to become the basis and instruments of a higher degree of life. ”

“ We ought to see some change going on by which lower things are rising to higher forms and uses. As a plant is perfected it ought to be more like an animal. As the breed of sheep, or cows, or horses is improved, they ought, by the theory, to be becoming more like human beings. ”

“ The creation of organized forms requires rest as well as motion; it requires a substance devoid of life, as well as the plastic forces of life. The first step in the creation of conscious and intelligent beings, therefore, was necessarily the provision of substances sufficiently at rest to remain passive under the action of the creative forces, and permanently retain the forms given to them. A cup cannot be made out of water, an engine cannot be formed out of steam or gas. Matter must become solid, tenacious ”

“ They have not inherited life, but their substances are of such a nature that life can use them to organize forms in which it can dwell, and by means of which it can manifest some of its more excellent qualities. Life can extract from dead matter substances and imbue them with qualities which will sustain higher and more precious forms of life. ”

“ According to the same principle heredity is the basis of the family and of domestic life; The child inherits the natural qualities of the parents. There is, therefore, some similarity of nature between parent and child which is the ground of parental and filial affection. Parent and child are bound together by. innumerable ties which grow out of a common nature. They can give and receive affection; they can know and understand the same truths ”