Geo. W. Warder

“ Everything in the material universe has its origin first in the spiritual concept or thought, and from this it takes its form. The spoken word and the mighty deed spring from the potency of living thought, and life is a tireless swimmer in an ocean of thought. Thought is the conscious energy of the soul, the subtle, invisible force of the reasoning, resistless mind, and, to be potent with life, must be winged with love. Thought is everywhere and surrounds us like the atmosphere we breathe. ”

“ Man is the greatest thing in this world—ah! in the universe next to Deity. He is the offspring of Omnipotence, the Child of the Sun, the inheritor of the universe. All suns and worlds, all life and space are the playgrounds of his activities. He shall dwell in the home of Deity, stroll in the garden of the gods, bask in the radiance of central suns, recline on the daffodil meadows and wander in the elysian fields of paradise. He is at home in the measureless expanse of all ether and space. ”

“ That this is the seed time and nursery of existence preparatory to the harvest of eternal life when he shall drop this overcoat of atoms and be transplanted to the self-luminous bosom and unfading joys of the perfected and celestial sun-worlds. Here he sees incompleteness, fragmentary careers, tragedies, injustice, griefs and farewells, and he hungers for knowledge. His quenchless spirit seeks to penetrate the mysteries of the universe, and comprehend time and eternity, and in agony of soul he asks the age-old question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" ”

“ It is not religion, with its glorious dreams crowned with the promised beatitudes of heaven, though martyred saints and prophets have given their lives to confirm its faith and hopes. It is not literature, with its gems of thought and flowers of divine fancy, which have charmed and inspired mankind from the days of Homer to those of Shakespeare and Tennyson. It is not science, with "learning's ample page," though she has transformed the earth, and produced a Gallileo and a Newton. It is not the wonders of mechanical genius, though we stand in awe before their marvels of grandeur and utility. ”

“ Humanity of the past and present is not final but progressive. Man's marvelous discoveries in science, his aesthetic culture and spiritual growth makes the future of the race the most persistently fascinating question of the age.
Man is not a mere animal, but is one with Deity, and a part of that unseen spiritual power which directs the stars in their infinite courses, gives electric brilliancy to the all-dazzling sun, paints the dawn and the aurora, colors the gorgeous wings of the butterfly, and guides insensate matter to do the will of Omnipotence. ”

“ Electricity is the wonderful medium and agent by which mind acts upon matter and works the miracle of life and growth. This mightiest servant of God and man, this genii greater than Aladdin's lamp, impresses all laws upon nature, and makes the universe obedient to the will of Deity, as man's body is obedient to the dictates of man's mind. This inscrutable word of power from the source of all power is beginning to supply the human race with an inexhaustible force that will revolutionize the earth and link all nations together as one family in a millennium of peace and good will. ”

“ If age and death steal upon you, love! For God is love, and heaven is love, and love is life eternal. This is God's law, this is the law of man's nature, the law of the New Testament, the law of love and life, the law of the universe.
Whatever may be man's misfortune, if he has a love of humanity, a love of literature, art or nature, he has resources of happiness that nothing can remove. With these the poor man is rich, and the rich man can never be poor. For each by love has overcome the world. ”

“ The history of man shows how gross and abject natures are transformed by love. How dull and stolid minds have been guided by it to paths of honor and glory. It is said that fame and science should guard themselves from love as from a dangerous enemy, and that to be a great man one must love their art alone and be wed only to their great ambitions.
Ah! but for one genius killed by love, a hundred owe to it all their greatness and inspiration and the moving force of life, and bless it as superior to fame and sweeter than all the laurels of victory or the plaudits of success. ”

“ That all physical law and life are bound together in an all-embracing whole, whose myriad aspects serve to mark the path of evolution, and to spur each individual member on to progress and perfection. That through the whole realm of nature the one electric life pulsates and stirs the smallest atom and the mightiest star. But above all is the eternal power of Deity and the deathless spirit of man, blended in a stronger unity than that of nature, linked in a joyous and an eternal destiny, sovereigns of worlds, rulers of suns and masters of the universe. ”

“ The Indian saw God in lightning, heard him in the thunder's roar, and viewed beyond the cloud-capped hills his hunters' paradise. And in the perennial hereafter in the all-life-giving sun there are green fields, daffodil meadows, golden light, rainbows that never fade, glorified cities, white-robed innocence, the crown and the palm branch, the throne of serene majesty, the golden harp and the song of rejoicing, and all-abounding happiness, innocent, thrilling, intense and unending. ”

“ There is nothing that is not in nature. Nature is unceasing progress. It is only a few thousand years since terrestrial humanity emerged from its chrysalis state of being. Yet certain spirits have attained transcendent power, and humanity has produced a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Hugo, a Newton, and a Milton. We live in reality among the stars.
We are inhabitants of the skies. Life, light and eternal progress to perfection is the final end and purpose of the universe. Every thinking man feels in his moral and psychic nature that he is linked to justice, truth and Deity. ”

“ This universe was made from nothing—nothing visible, nothing tangible, nothing the human eye could see or the human finger could touch. There was a time when the stars and planets, suns and worlds were transparent ether, as impalpable as the viewless air, and scattered as star dust in the measureless void of space along the forgotten highways of the past eternities. Silence reigned profound in the pulseless regions of the air, where, motionless and dumb, the atoms hung in dark and lifeless space. There was nothing in all this universe—nothing but cold, darkness and silence. ”

“ Nature is Deity, thinking in visible thoughts of beauty and power, and speaking in visible tones of life, motion and harmony.
All things in nature combine beauty with utility and while full of change are constant and enduring. The same electric laws, force and substance which gives luminous brilliancy to countless suns, and paints the aurora and the rainbow the rosy hues of dawn and the crimson glories of sunset, give color to the ruddy cheeks of youth, and red corpuscle to the arterial blood that brings health and strength to human forms. ”

“ He will cease to regard creation as vast constellations of burning spheres whirling through frigid ether. He will look upon it with wonder and inspiration as a vast self-controlling, life-evolving, varied but unchanging unity, a perfect whole—a vast electric organism of omnipotent power and eternal existence. He will regard electricity as the finger touch of Deity that makes the world go round, that marks out the orbits of suns and the pathway of constellations, and guides them in their mysterious courses to their eternal and inscrutable destiny. ”

“ With powers commensurate with the photographic powers of light, a human soul could stand upon a distant star and follow this wonderful vision and gaze on a succession of events from the beginning of time to the present moment, and read the history of every sun and planet in the rays of light from its own atmosphere. And with poised wing in limitless space or on some far-off sun, read the mighty events transpiring on this little earth in the distant rays of light from its own atmosphere. ”

“ At last all thoughtful men are being brought face [Pg 297] to face with that creative electric energy controlled by Omniscient Spirit, which is felt in the magnetic sunshine, seen in the falling rain, the dew-drops, the white-robed lily, the blushing rose, and the joy and gladness of life itself. But above all things else there is bestowed on humanity the spiritual power and loving benediction of the Great Spiritual Father, who spread out the heavens as a curtain, lifted up the mountains and started suns and worlds on the eternal pathway of their inscrutable destiny. ”

“ Electricity is the right hand of Deity, the tongue of the Spirit, the Word of Omnipotent power, the protean cosmic force and creative machinery of the universe. At the divine fiat it seized all atoms and space, it shook the ether into nebula, the nebula into worlds, the worlds into constellations, the constellations into a universe. It shaped planets and rounded suns and hurled them forth to circle in the chorus of the singing spheres. ”

“ These are the golden rules of the New Testament, written in the reason, conscience and experience of men, as God's living book of wisdom and truth.
Every action has its rebound or echo. Others will return your love or hate as the mountains return an echo, and by the same law. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The hate you send forth will return to you, the love you gave will come back to you, for it is an immortal part of you and a part of Omnipotent Deity. ”

“ Even the soil of our earth maintains life because it is living matter itself. And some forms of life will exist without light or soil. This is the electric universe in solution, the life-giving sea of all form and substance.
Oh, what a miracle of wonders! From this marvelous reservoir of life, force and substance each created thing draws the elements of its growth and existence. ”

“ The rare and radiant physical beauties of heaven we cannot describe, but it is a place where no guilty step enters the gates of pearl, in the city of God; no polluting presence flings shadows on the golden streets of the New Jerusalem. It is the dwelling place of angels and just men made perfect, and spirits of saints in celestial glory. There is no darkness, envy, hatred or slander, no gold mixed with dross. No bleared and blighted crowds, degraded out of the semblance of humanity, crawl, like singed moths, around the flaring house of multiplied temptations. ”

“ He will find it in the returning verdure of spring, in the unfading light of the eternal stars, in the ever-changing beauty of the bending skies, in the mysterious impulse of the untaught birds of the air who start on their vast migrations from the frozen seas of the north to the summer-lands of the sunny south; in the tropic fish, who seek their spawning nests in the clear, cool rivers of the north. The bear and lion, the tiger and elephant, the bees and the insects of a summer day, all have the longings of their natures satisfied. ”

“ It is a swift and continuous band, an endless chain, a mighty ligament of light and life and power constantly passing between heaven and earth, and earth and heaven, between sun and planet and planet and sun. These are the countless pathways between suns and stars, the mighty and everlasting highways of eternity which God hath built to span the silent ether of space between suns and worlds, and bind the universe in one harmonious whole. ”

“ Wherever an atom vibrates or an electric current thrills, there he is the monarch of spiritual power, and can command the electric force that tosses suns upon their course and plays football with the stars. Man is no worm of the dust, he is the darling of the skies, the ruler of suns, the cherubim of celestial destiny clad in terrestrial ether and winged with the spiritual power of Omnipotence. ”

“ It was a universe in solution as viewless as ether, and as intangible as mind. The electric energy of space was yet unstirred by the divine fiat or shook into vibrating force by the word of Creative Power. Other suns and worlds and a universe of universes shone forth in the realms of space when the Creative Word was spoken that lit this newer universe into being. ”

“ All men should realize the fact that anger turns the natural juices of the body into poison as the vibrations of thunder sour the sweetest milk. And every fit of anger is an electric trip-hammer that drives a nail into the coffin of life and shortens human existence. All nature reveals the law of "natural selection and survival of the fittest," and demands in man the highest perfection of love, beauty and self-development. ”

“ These same electric laws, force and substance hold their sceptre of power through all the universe. Under electric law atoms and molecules embrace each other and evolve visible forms of life; and suns glow with warmth and light, and keep their appointed distances in the circling mazes of the sky. And by the grasp of electric energy these life-giving suns carry their family of life-bearing worlds upon their mysterious voyage through the realms of measureless space. ”

“ But the most pitiable and unfortunate of the one-sided scientists are those who would banish logic from the realms of physics, and who regard a deduction or a theory as an enemy of science; who heap scorn on analytic reason—the highest gift of Deity to man—and who deem the tabulation of dry facts without causes the only purpose of science. Who want science fenced in with a stone wall and separated from religion and philosophy, and the earth cut up into sections and labelled astronomy, chemistry, geology, and so on ad infinitum ”