The Indianapolis journal., 1885-05-26


knowledge of the thing meant There must be
lome similarity to God developed in the con
sciousness before the mind can understand the
inspired annunciation respecting Gods character
and design.
Consider the efforts of men to build con-
ception of God from the physical side under
these great laws and their operations. defni
ton of natural law was the nearest that
they came to in the earliest endeavors to
construct a divinity Every force In nature
was regarded as a separate deity. In their
lower stages men believed that every force
that was operating was god force. Inc
attempt to develop the dispositional elements
among idolatrous people. the next step on to the
existence of gods, was tho clothing or gods
with attributes, disposition character. and they
did this by transferring, as every ono or us
must do in our knowledge of God, some knowl-
edge that was before US, whether simple or In
combinations. We must make up IN our mag
ination and reason conception OF God derived
from our knowledge of certain admirable quail
ties We are god builders. AS he is our char
acter builder, So in a limited and hguratiye
sense, it must be said that every man creates IN
himself his own notions of God.
Now antiquity, and yet cotemporaneous ma
tions construct their character gods by trans
ferring that which they know il themselves to
their deities, only they construct them from
their animal side
The pride, envy, selfshress, cruelty and
grosser passions were exalted, and were and are
made part of the conception of divinites among
idolators. With all the poetry about them, the
diviTiities of mythology, with few graceful con,
ceptions, would not be permitted to walk abroad
in our land Their temple would be our State
prison.
At length a race appears that struck the true
fath--so far we know, the only race. For
everything that constitutes superior religion we
are indebted to the great Hebrew lawgiver 1t
is remarkable that the Christian world to-day
have set their faces and hatred against the peo-
pie that gave them all they believe, from Genesis
Il - -~r...~ kt~;~
feet on, or their tongue, which is flthier still.
But this nobler example has also been subject to
the great divine law of unfolding, of evolution.
God, as known to US, was not known to antiquity.
Before Zion there was elemental knowledge, but
the knowledge held at that epoch would be con-
sidered now scarcely elemental, so great has been
the development since.
Out of the sky. at one sweep, under the in
spration of the Hebrew people, went all the
swarms OF vicious gods Jehovah is proclaimed
the one God. The Old Testament assertions of
The unity of God have nothing to do with
the philosophical questions of the trinity
which came in afterward. That is
question of the interior structure of the
God. whereas the unity of God was the declara-
tion of unity in thought, feeling and control, as
contrasted with the heathenish notion of poly
theistic gods. That grand first step is really the
key and measure of value of those first chapters
which describe the steps of creation. Modern
science has disowned these chapters, but the
grandeur of them is in this, that, contrary to all
notions of the older world, in them we have the
declaration that all things are in the hands of
one God. And it were worth the collecting of
these legends to have got that established in the
early day--there is but one God.
Gradually great nations, gathering moralties
and increasing virtues through generations,
learning partly by experiments that brought
mischief partly from the observations and ex-
periments that brought peace and harmony,
learned what were the conditions by which the
individual soul could live at peace with its fell
II - e
finding cut For it is to be remarked, that no.
where IN all the Scripture history Is there any
evidence that there any instruction
given to mon prior to this gradual find
ing out by human experience or that
any instruction was ever given in
regard to the most important elements of life.
1t would have seemed that men would have
been told of the nature of the ship in which
they were sailing. The nature of food and
fruit, the nature of poison was never made
known. Men died by thousands, with the very
roots under their feet that would have restored
them. Nature never lisped word of instruc
tion Not till very recently did men ever know
that the heart was pump and that the blood
circulates. There was no knowledge that the
brain was the seat of intelligence. Such knowl-
edge men groped for centuries to find out for
themselves. 1t the same in regard to the
moralites. They had to be found out in the
schooleof trial and experiment So as they
came TO some knowledge or these things. there
was the condition by which to construct an idea
of the one God giving universally to ideas of
which they had partial experience. God is that
circle into which human consciousness
and experience has poured all the
qualities proved by the race to be above re-
proach. He is the sum of ali things excellent in
the conception and experience or humanity.
And, doubtless, there are multtudes of things
gathered from it now, not whence known; it
may be tenants of other systems than the earth.
But our God is the result of all the findings out
of the human family through the intellect and
the higher moral developments of the race.
Thus gradually grew the conception of God.
Gods truth holiness, justice and love became
comprehensive only when the alphabetical
FERNS of these elements had been developed
somewhat among men. And the progress Of our
thought and knowledge of divinity is to 60 on
until the fuliginous doctrines of an unending
conscious torment are swept away out of the
great heavens where love shines and where JUS
tice hates cruelty.
The development of God-not in himself-we
do not suppose that God grows; the idea of
change and growth is inconsistent with perfec-
tion; but the development of God in the thoughts
of men is one of the striking facts in Scripture.
For, If all have said is true, and it is more
widely true than I have time to make apparent
then we should expect to find in Scripture the
initial developments of the divine nature in the
thoughts and records of men, We do Jehovah
marches through the ages glowing with increas-
ing light. until the funess of time had come
and the veil was rent, and God commanded light
to shine out of darkness, to shine into our
hearts. to give the light of the glory of Ged in
the face of Jesus Christ We rise step by step.
Through the earlier periods we have an imper
feet disclosure of God AS we advance, the Su-
preme Being is comprehensively repre-
sented. Grander elements are evolved, larger
moral influences made to flow from the divine
existence. and finally Jesus was born, and that
which we before had been gathering up from
fragmentary elements evolved from human con-
sciousness and experience stood before us per-
soni6ed in the one man, absolutely perfect in
body in health, in wisdom, in all social excel
lence, in all moral qualities, the one fit NANTES
tation of God, so far as He could be made known
to human intelligence. During the dark periods
and ages the work had still gone on, for while
the idea of God delayed to shine, the great mill
was grinding pigments that were to set forth his
portraiiure, and what were called dark ages
Oftentimes were ages of preparation, until at
last the Christ was born