Erastus Snow

“ And if any have been inspired a little ahead of them, or have been favored with one idea in advance of their own, they, in their pride and bigotry, rise up and resist it. Thus it was when Galileo whose mind had been susceptible to the inspirations of the Almighty, revealed to the world that the earth moved upon its axis. "Blasphemy!" they cried; and the power of the Romish Church was brought to crush the boy. And so it has ever been when prophet, seer, revelator, philosopher, or sage has given utterance to inspiration beyond his fellows ”

“ And the fact of this prevailing sentiment of mankind and the universal necessity of doing homage to a superior, however crude and indefinite this idea is, and however varied in the minds of men in the different nations of the earth, yet, taken as a whole, it is the impress of Deity upon all that bear his form in the earth, recognizing him as Deity; as a Superior Being. With many Christian sects of our time, and for generations past, the idea of Deity has seemed to be very undefined.—Many philosophers and divines have attempted to describe Deity. ”

“ I believe man that is born is as much created as the thing which is made in a mould and turned out to dry, which we call an adobie. It matters not whether it takes a few minutes to make it, or a longer period—it is created or made. And the term create I understand to be synonymous with the verb to make, and what is made is created, and what is organized is formed. And when it is written that God formed man in his own image and likeness, it does not describe the time or manner, but simply the fact of having made or created man in his own image. ”

“ As Job says, "But there is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." It is the candle of the Lord, and his spirit lights it. Proud, haughty, self-conceited men, do, often ignore this source of knowledge, and when they are recipients of his grace and inspiration, their hearts are too proud to acknowledge it. ”

“ If we believe there is any truth in the writings of Moses, the Patriarchs, Prophets and Apostles, and the teachings of Jesus, if we would indeed be consistent Christians and receive the writings of the fathers, and believe what was said unto them, we must believe that man is made in the image of God, and consequently that we are of the same species as the gods. However child-like and feeble we are in this condition of mortality, we are nevertheless descended from the gods, made in their image and after their likeness. ”

“ Giving does not impoverish him, withholding does not enrich him. He is able to impart that which he possesses, if we are capable of receiving, and as fast as we are ready to receive, he is abundantly able to impart; he is not impoverished, while we are enriched; while we have waxed greatly, he has grown no less. And this he has ordained for those whom he has formed in his image and likeness. But, says the world, "These are things we cannot comprehend." Very true, we cannot see the end of it ”

“ He makes all the elements within his reach subserve his purposes, and he invents the means by which he controls and handles them. I use the word "invent" because it suits the pride and vanity of a man a little better; but the more appropriate term, I should say is, inspiration, for no great truth was ever revealed to man that was not an inspiration. And when Watt's, watching the trembling of the tea kettle lid, caused by the power of steam, conceived the idea of utilizing that power, was it invention or inspiration? ”

“ We may stand and look upon the chain, revolving and endless, and as it turns we may count the links, but we cannot find the end of it, neither can we tell the beginning. But we see the links, and it is a matter of very little importance to us whether we know or not how many links compose the chain, as long as we see that the eternal is one eternal round. ”

“ The idea of a Deity that cannot be located anywhere, that has no form or substance, or materiality, and described as a spirit! It is the best definition, to my mind, of nothing at all, like the quaint familiar phrase, "a footless stocking, without a leg." ”

“ Though there are many of our own species before us, that are advancing, that are climbing onward and upward in the scale of intelligence and power, and we are striving to follow after and learn of them, yet the inspiration of the Almighty is the only true source of knowledge. ”

“ There are a great variety of ideas and notions prevalent in the world at the present time, pertaining to the origin of man, and attributes of the Deity. There seems to be an instinct in man everywhere among all nations and peoples to worship a superior being. In this particular Christian nations are not an exception. True, in heathen countries, a variety of images, representations of Deity are set up for the people to worship, or to pay some deference unto them, as unto Deity. ”

“ We have it set forth in many Christian catechisms and articles of faith. God was a being without body, parts or passions. This, for many generations has been taught by the Established Church of England, and by most of the Protestant sects, both in Europe and America; Deity is described by them as "a spiritual immaterial substance." This word substance is used in connection with the word "immaterial." A spirit immaterial, and yet a substance! I have never yet found a philosopher that was able to describe a substance that was not material. ”

“ You can think of this as you please, whether he was created or born, or whether a man, because he is born, is not created. I do not understand the term creation as meaning something suddenly made out of nothing. ”

“ No mother that has produced from her womb twins, however near they may approach each other, was ever at a loss to discern some difference by which one could be distinguished from the other. Nor even in the vegetable kingdom can we find this law of endless variety violated, nor yet in the animal kingdom. ”

“ We need not to try to find the end, we cannot do it, nobody ever did, and nobody ever will, simply because there is no end. And if you want to know which pumpkin produced the first seed, and which seed produced the first pumpkin, we say that neither you nor anybody else can tell, they cannot point to the time when there was either one or the other. ”

“ We see an endless variety in the creations before us, variety in every species of animal life, and in every species of the vegetable kingdom, and the same may be said of the heavenly bodies. And so far as man is concerned, though evidently of a common origin, yet the variety is almost as great as the number of individuals ”

“ Philosophers and astronomers have not lived long enough upon this earth, or kept a record of the heavenly bodies long enough to make any calculation of the length of this period. There is, however, one saying of Apostle Peter which reads—"Be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." But whether that has any reference to the days that Moses speaks of, in which the Lord was engaged in the formation of this earth, we are not told. ”

“ It is a fact that the earth exists, and that it has its sphere in which it moves, and that it is appointed for the abode of man, and that we are here, and the fathers have told us we have descended from the Gods. ”

“ Until our earth assumed its position among the planets, and began to perform its revolutions, and the earth was so far completed as to assume its position among the heavenly orbs, and perform its revolutions as now, present modes of reckoning time could not be appointed to man—either our days or months or our years, all of which are determined by the revolutions of the earth upon its axis, and the moon around the earth, and the earth in its orbit around the sun. ”

“ But they are like other school-children; they make a great many mistakes in reading. What they read correctly is correct; what they read incorrectly is incorrect. "It is as it is, and it can't be any tisser." And it is folly for geologists, or any other class of scientists, to assume that they know it all, or that they have read the Book of Nature from beginning to end, and comprehend it through and through. ”

“ But it is enough for us to know that it has been done, and that somebody has done it; and we might as well say the railroad iron had no creator, nobody to design it, or command the elements to go together, as to say there is no God, because we have not the privilege of going right straight into his laboratory to find out how he commanded the elements together. ”

“ The women they marry they take truly to their bosoms, and love, honor and cherish, and sustain and bless them, instead of secretly stealing around, more like low, crouching brutes than men, to seduce the fair daughters of Eve ”

“ But say you, "That is not enough for us, we want to know where and how the first pumpkin was produced." That is something we cannot tell, nor any other mortal being; you might just as well ask, when the last pumpkin will be produced. It is something that is absolutely incomprehensible, because their [there] is neither beginning nor end, it is beyond the reach of human ken. But we accept the effect; we are here; the creation is a reality. We see a variety of solid rocks, and ask, How are they formed? ”

“ Now, would not a man be as senseless to say, there is no God, as to say, there is no shipmaster that guides the course of the vessel, and no shipowner that controls them. Their periods are appointed by him who lists to direct them. So with man. ”

“ When Newton, on seeing the apple fall from the tree, by questioning in his mind why it should fall downwards, why not fly upwards, or to the left or right, his mind was being led on from this simple observation to the comprehension of one truth after another until he was able to give to the world the laws of gravitation ”

“ And yet our own observations should teach us that there was somebody that directed them, their movements were not the work of chance, but of design; that others perform their work and somebody has purposed it. And although we may not be able to measure the distance of the heavenly bodies, nor comprehend the extend [extent] of their revolutions, we see and know enough to convince us that they are all regulated by and subject to law ”

“ But the thinking portion of all these nations who encourage these various representations of Deity, do not for a moment admit that these gods, as they are sometimes called, made by man's hand, of wood and stone, or other material, are really gods, or that they are worshipped as gods ”

“ Darwin, and a kindred school of modern philosophers, would fain try to impress upon us their theory of evolutions, and would have us believe we are descendants from, and only a little in advance of our ancestor, the monkey ”

“ And they will tell you that the period alluded to in Moses, in the history of Adam, and to the creation is scarcely a cypher compared with the period in which these elements of the earth have been coming into shape. What is all that to do with the great grand principle. We will say that the component parts of every implement formed by the ingenuity and labor of man are far older than the implement itself. A lady who makes a pound-cake, does it perhaps in a few hours ”

“ And the geologist will take you to the hills or along the beach and point out to you the evidences in nature of the long periods that must have elapsed since the formation of the sedimentary rocks, to say nothing about the primary rocks. ”