Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1886-10-26
MAN MADE DEITIES.
The Sermon of the Rev. Mr.. Carroll,
Delivered at the NJ. E. Church
on Sunday.
lie Chooses For His Text: "Canst Thou
by Searching Find Out GOdl"
And "The World by Wisdom Knew
Not God" An Interested
Audience.


choosing for his texts job III, "Canst
Thou by Searching Find Out God?" and
Cor. lei. "The World by Wisdom
Knew Not God"
The speaker said that the intellectual
achievements OF the past decade have
been so great that intellectual pride had
resulted, and many men arrogated to
themselves powers and capacities above
the ability OF man. lie would not yield
to any one in admiration oil the wonder
full intellectual conquests that man had
made in the domain OF nature.
He had accomplished so many seem
ingly impossible results that we begin to
admit his ability almost to do impossible
things.
We certainly may find enough to adj
mre in him without attrbuting to him
power that he does not possess and
never will possess while mortal.
Mans intellectual as well as his
physical capacities are limited. There
are splendid fields that he may enter and
win profitable success there are others
where his efforts will meet with inevita-
BILE and often, alas, disastrous defeat.
Some will assume to decide, by their
own unaided Judgment, that this or that
portion OF the Bible is to be accepted as
true or rejected as false; thus claiming
superior wisdom to the inspired author,
OF this incompatible book. Some con-
Tess that the Bible is superior to any
other books, but affirm that God did not
inspire its writing; thus deciding what
God would or would not inspire His SER
wants to write, having found out the AL
mighty to perfection. How modest
Others that Christ is not Divine, be-
cause they cannot understand how Deity
and humanity can be united in one
being OF course they cannot under
stand how out of the black slime of the
pool nature produces the lily; but this is
beneath their high abilities; nothing less
than Infinite problems are worthy OF
their genius.
We do not condemn free, Independent
thought; only those who think are men.
But let the thinkers remember the
errors of the ages and be modest; and
let not men who are not even acquainted
with the rudiments OF history decide
what Christ has done for humanity.
Men have been perpetually engaged in
| formulating conceptions OF Deity; when
us that if God is Infinite finite mind
cannot comprehend Him, though he may
be made aware of His existence
He is so far above us as to be our
Creator. Can anything that man can
create understand or comprehend man?
Some, discovering design in nature,
and the existence OF systematic order,
have thought to construct therefrom the
idea of Deity. Thinking, in their foolish
pride of intellect, from Gods half oblter-
ated footprints in the clay of nature to
develop the idea of Deity as easily as
from footprints in the rocks, biologists
reconstruct the monsters OF the pre-
Adamic world.
One Investigator tells us all things are
fortuitous, they occur by chance.
Another that all things are regulated
by fixed and fated laws that Mature lin
the language OF one acts with fearful
uniformity. Stern as fate, absolute as
tyranny, merciless us death. Too vast
to praise, too inexplicable to worship,
too memorable to propitiate. 1t has no
ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no
arm to save"
OF those who seek conception OF God
from the remains OF the lost image OF
God in the soul, some conclude there is
no God others, in the language Of Schel-
ling, that "The souls OF men are but the
innumerNble individual eyes with which
the Infinite would spirit behold himself. "
The nature OF the question and the in
ability OF man have rendered all such
efforts fail lures.
The sadness OF 50 many wrecks and
ruins should warn us to avoid their folly
and seek knowledge OF God through His
| an 81, II
your attention to the results OF investiga-
ton by great minds unaided by the
Word
Greece has taught all the rest of the
world in some department OF tn linking,
even in the 10Th Century
Hear the Greeks say what is God.
the speaker here showed that men
may create intellectual idols as well as
idols OF marble and bronze and gold.
He described somewhat at length the
Greek conceptions OF Deity given here
only in word.
Thales said that water was the univer-
sal and highest principle. Another after
him denied this conclusion, and affirmed
that air was the supreme principle.
Pythagoras said that it was number.
Number one WIS Deity, number three
righteousness.
Heraclitus that fire was the eternal
and supreme.
But the Materialists concluded that fire
air, earth and water were together print,
tive and supreme
The Stoics that God was the soul of the
world and the world the body OF God.
In this the Brahmin and Greek agree
can things come out OF and go back to
Brahm, the absolute"
The spectators in this domain, who
have had the Bible and discarded it, have
hardly improved upon the conclusions OF
the old pagans.
Spinoza said the absolute is all things,
produces all things, absorbs all things.
Comte said that knowledge of the
phenomena OF nature was mans highest
wisdom, and man himself the highest
deity" and ended his speculations by
calling upon Frenchmen to worship Il
woman OF questionable reputation.
America has had few original specua-
tors in this field, but she has had imita-
tors OF every school
Parker, rockingham and Potter follow
the Germans; and Emerson, with some
originality and much poetic genius, does
the same.
1t has been left lor the people called
Mormon to originate a conception OF God
Christian in name but pagan in fact Il
huge, passionate, brutal polygamist, who
has no mercy for women, and counts
children rs the farmer does his cabbages.
The Mormon God is hardly more like tie
Christians God than Moloch was like
Jehovah,
Unaided reason and pretended revela-
tons have both wrought the ruin Of
myriads OF souls, and with the examples
OF the ages before us, let all take warn.
ing