George Henry Dole

“ It never would have been imagined that there is a God, if the Word did not teach the "I Am." Nothing other than that nature created herself would have been possible to conception, if it were not declared in the letter of the Word that "God created the heavens and the earth." We never could have had any other idea than that the creating power is the "inherent aptitude" of atoms, if it were not declared in the letter of the Word that Divine truth is the creating power. "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of His mouth." ”

“ Law Is In The Creator.
First, is law the Creator, or First Cause? Law itself is but a mode of action, and implies something back of it that acts. It can not be said that laws create, but rather that creation is subject to law. Law is not a power, but a rule according to which power acts. Consequently law alone is not the Creator, for a mere principle is essentially nothing; that is, a principle abstracted from its subject is without substantial existence. Yet there is nothing that escapes law. It comprehends every particle of matter as well as the universe. ”

“ Nothing can pass the door either way that does not become there a fixed part of the human organization. Its abiding form, on the one hand stamping our evils upon us in perverted forms that close the door against the Spirit of God, and on the other weaving forms receptive of the holiness and love of God, says to us auspiciously, "For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess." The uses of the Limbus show religion to be not merely a theory, but sound, wise, and righteous, daily thinking, loving, and living. ”

“ The assumption that there was added to a lower animal superior or internal parts, and from this man was evolved, is itself a contradiction of the possibility of Evolution, for if such a special act occurred in the final creation of man, why could it not occur at each variation? Evolution as defined and the theory as promulgated by its inventors and advocates, forbid any such infraction. Neither is it reasonable to suppose that the Creator worked by natural laws, evolving species approaching man, that the law failed Him, and that He then resorted to a special act of adaptation. ”

“ It would be simpler to create man outright than to create an animal, and then add higher parts to an already formed brain. It is impossible to conceive of such an arbitrary expediency. It is purely conjecture, introduced in the hope of amending the fatal errors of Evolution. It requires greater credulity to accept a theory that necessitates such imaginary importations, than to accept what it attempts to disprove. It is more rational to believe in special creation pure and simple than it is to conceive of a blending of Evolution and special creation. ”

“ Religion itself is the science and philosophy of religion, together with a life according thereto. Dogmas, fanaticism, and sectarianism have been called religion, and well has the science of this day remonstrated. But such religion is practically of the past, and science and true religion must eventually be found united, as the works of God must be, in perfect concord and mutual service. Religion in its broadest sense is commensurate with Divine truth and life, but for convenience we may speak of science as appertaining to nature, and religion to God. ”

“ Force, which in every instance is substance in motion, or the effect of the activity of substance, has its primary origin in the vital action of the Divine Organism of the Creator. He is omnipotent, not that He can transgress His own laws or act against His own nature, but because all power in its beginning resides in Him, and there has its origin. The activity that is in Him is of so complex and high a character that every kind of force, natural or spiritual, unfolds out of it. Force in the Creator is infinite Love. ”

“ Gravity is the activity of a substance having still more subtile and more universal power. Nothing eludes its grasp. Acting in matter it gives bodies forces that draw them together after the similitude of affections that draw minds together. The affection that exists between material objects, or the force with which they affect one another, is called gravity, and is the measure of weight. Though so subtile as to escape our grasp even more effectually than ether, for it is a purer substance, it is most substantial because it operates the most interiorly and primarily upon all material things. ”

“ It has already been shown that God, the Creator, is a Divine Person, The Man, in whom are all human elements in their infinitude. To account therefore for the life of the soul, it remains only to say that as the body ascends from the dead skin to the sensitive fluids of the nerves, which respond to the activity of affection and thought, so the spiritual body ascends from its grosser substance that lies next to nature to its organism of most pure and sensitive substances, called the Inmost, that are sensitive and responsive to the vital action and power in the Creator. ”

“ That the Word is God is asserted in the Word. Because God reveals Himself through the Word, it is God, and the fountain-head of all enlightenment, the foundation of civilization, and the everlasting source of wisdom and love from God, the Lord. The Word ascribes its own origin to revelation, and proclaims all knowledge, even from the beginning, to have been obtained "as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began." Materialistic science has demonstrated to the truly rational man the infallible truth of this. ”

“ Since law characterizes every created thing, it is conclusive that law is an attribute of the Creator; but as creation itself is more than law, for it has a substantial being, so must be the Creator. If the Creator were naught but law, there would be no way to account for the power inherent in matter and in material forms that manifests itself according to law. Nature is more than law, for it has a substantial existence. The Creator is greater than the thing created, consequently we may know that while law is an attribute of the Creator's acting, the Creator, like nature, is more than law. ”

“ For man in himself is a little universe wherein the greater universe is represented in each particular by some power or faculty. The rock and the sand, the lamb and the lion, the dove and the vulture, the earth and the heavens are all in man. Man's person includes all that there is in the material creation, but on higher planes. In the Creator are man and creation in the still higher planes of the Divine Human. Now when we have assigned to the Creator in infinite degree all that there is in creation, we can not conceive of more. ”

“ Let us illustrate how the forces of Love in the Creator are converted into natural forces. Suppose the case of one desiring to be at a certain place. His affections form the will to go. He loves; that is he desires to effect a bargain, to view a landscape, or to see a friend. Suppose he chooses to go by boat and oar. His desire to be at a certain place leads him to go. Desire propels the oar. Desire or love in the soul acts within the mind. The activity descends, and operates upon the fluids within the brain and nerves of the body. ”

“ The influx from one plane to another is not like water flowing over a succession of terraces, nor like wheat falling through a series of sieves in a fanning-mill; but each plane receives according to its form and genius, and passes on the influx as from itself, transformed and accommodated. ”

“ If we forgive others God will forgive us, becomes to us a spiritual truth when we see that it is true because God is pure love, and that the only thing that exists between us and God is the grudge in our own hearts, which shuts out God's love, and that when that grudge is removed then love from God flows into us, and fills us with tender compassion where there was hatred toward our enemies. In a sentence, the spiritual sense of the Word, which is spiritual truth, forms the spiritual plane of the mind when we learn it, love it, and obey it. ”

“ It is the light of the understanding. All natural sight is from the understanding. The eye can not see of itself; nor can the ear hear, the hand feel, the nose smell, or the tongue taste of themselves. ”

“ There are forces that form the vegetable kingdom, and preserve its uses; forces that form the animal body, and endow it with instinct; forces that form the human, and gift man with wisdom and love. Since these forces transcend the capacities of matter, and as there is no force without a substance from which it comes, it is certain that there is a realm of substances superior to those of nature, and that they come down into nature, and produce effects there. Call that realm of substances and forces what one may desire, cause-world, supernatural world, mind-world ”

“ It is upon such fallacious evidence that Evolution entirely rests. The theory fails not only in its ability to account for the distinction between protoplasm and the moneron, which are supposed to be the same except that the latter is imbued with life, and between the highest animal form and man, but there are as many missing links as there are genera. Suffice it to say here that though many truths, or rather facts, are woven into the theory, the theory itself is vitally defective, the facts, when rightly construed, proving the reverse of Evolution. ”

“ Evolution may be regarded as a substantially correct presentation of how the supernatural force appears while operative in nature; or in other words, Evolution is the apparent truth, as is the statement that a stick is bent upon immersion in water, or that the sun rises and sets. It is the apparent truth that has given Evolution its present credence.
Since the science of to-day is forced to the conclusion that it can not discover or explain any interior or supernatural cause, we are next led to consider revelation, the origin of all knowledge of interior causes and of genuine philosophy. ”

“ If influx into nature is disregarded, and matter alone is taken into account, there is no other resort than to believe that nature of herself has power to form and create from inherent force. Reason unassisted by an intelligence superior to itself looks to the senses, and follows downward to nature, the plane of effects, and away from the true source of causes and of higher intelligence. Consequently things superior to nature can, in the first instance, come into thought and become known only through some form of revelation. ”

“ A knowledge of the uses of the Limbus provides the explanation of the relation between the life lived in this world, and what it must be in the other, and a beautiful philosophy of the relation of the soul to the body. By the Limbus existence here is made possible, as well as in the hereafter. In it lies the fixity of human character and the preservation of our identity through the countless ages in the spiritual world. A knowledge of its uses also presents the serious side of life by showing how our failure to fulfil life's higher purposes here must bear its effects forever. ”

“ Thought is nothing other than the form in which affections act. Then since thought is affection's action, the life of the brain may be reduced to one primal element, that of affection or love. From a higher standpoint, therefore, love, or affection, is the life of the brain, while thought is its form of manifestation in the understanding. Having observed that affection and thought are properties of a high substance, we may name that substance itself love. ”

“ These laws, together with the method of enforcing them, constitute the science of government. There are causes for having such laws; namely, that the arts and sciences may be cultivated; that schools and moral institutions may exist where people are trained for mutual use; that the form of advancing civilization may be preserved, and love and wisdom bless all with the fulfilled purposes of creation. These things are of the philosophy of government, and constitute the causes of it. The laws according to which the cause operates or is executed constitute the science of government. ”