The herald., 1896-07-13
Delivered Last Evening by DR..
N. F. de Clifford
THE CONCEPTION OF GOD
From the Standpoint Of Teacher Of
the Cult
All Things Proceed from q Universal Divine
Principle and Within Which All Shall
Be Absorbed at the End

Following is a synopsis Of the lecture
delivered by Dr. N. T. de Clifford at the
Theosophical headquarters, 35s South
Broadway, last evening:
Any man gazing up into cosmic
space of a glorious summer night will
see myriads of starry worlds rotating
upon their axes. shining with glory
incomprehensively grand, each and ev-
cry one moving in rhythmic harmony
along their allotted paths, according to
the law governing these glorious stellar
worlds. He will not only be impressed
with the grandeur of their movements,
but he will recognize that this planet
of ours sinks into comparative insignifi-
canoe when compared to those glorious
orbs refulgent in the vault above; and
he will begin to realize that that they
are not moving by chance. that their
motions are not at random. but that
! each and all is part of the divine
| whole, and that they ell perform their
various motions according to divine idea
! tion. or that divine principle that dem
| onstrates to a man that there Is some
! thing-an incomprehensible cause that
directs and controls the motions of these
| planets in the spatial depths around
him. Then will he dimly sense the di
I vine III tIitll IllOtlOllS anu llAc iliC pOM
with awe and reverence before this di-
vine and incomprehensible principle a.
! knowledge of which passeth all under
| standing.
Every human being, no matter how
| low in the chronological scale of humani-
ty, no matter how degraded and brutal
! he may be. no matter how deluded by
| superstition and ignorance, in the 81
| lence Of the night, surrounded by the
| grandeur and harmony of nature and
| impressed by the sublimity of the un
| derlying ideation that permeates 1t, is
most assuredly capable of forming for
| himself some abstract conception of 4
| deity whereby to account for the sub
lime grandeur and glory of nature in
| all her differentiations and wonderful
| manifestations which an anthropomor-
| phic God could not logically explain.
| He sees around him a world vibrating
with life and harmony. He secs in
every fronded fern and flower an ex-
preston of the divinity. He sees
! world cycling along it's orbit performing
! it's various motions in space with an
exactitude seemingingly incomprehens-
BILE. He hears in the mountain stream
as it foams along Ger its rock bed the
voice of his maker and he hears it echo
in the songs of the birds and the drone
of the bees, and in the hum of insect
life, as they revel in a glory of life and
and hesitation he never loses complete
ly the consciousness of divine possibili-
ties, and will dimly sense the halloWed
touch of his Heavenly Father in these
sublime and glorious manifestations.
This potential sensing of the divine is
| most assuredly the true difference be-
| tween men and the superior animals.
| 1t Is this distinctive power in man that
! lifts him far above the level of his re-
| tarded brethren in evolution-the ami
! mails, and justifies his claim to having
| latent within him the potentiality of be-
coming the highest being in natures ev-
| olutionary processes.
The celebrated formula, "Cogito ergo
sum-" I think therefore I am, may be
widened out into: 1 think outside the
limitation of my personality therefore l
am a man and not brute.
Every man conceives of Deity ac-
cording to the dictates of his own con-
science and expresses it in accordance
with that conception. For instance, the
red man that roams in semi-civilized
condition the mountains and plains of
this continent defies the forces of nature
that he does not understand, and yet in
the depth of his heart makes his devo-
tions to the Great Spirit" that is just
as incomprehensible.
Go to the Chinaman and he will teach
you the law of love that was taught by
Loa-tZe long centuries before Christ was
born, and yet these same truths are to
be found in your own creed.
Go to the denizen of Central Africa or
the aborigines of Australia and you will
find them impressed with knowledge
of this divine principle.
Civilized men of all nations formulate
special Gods to suit their own particular
spiritual needs, and endows them
| with the peculiar attributes that are
simply the personiflcations of the gem
eral characteristics of the worshipers
themselves, for with them the desire
creates the belief, and they make gods
in their own image and worship them
with an extraordinary devotion.
| The voice of the divine is one and the
same whether coming fbm the Indian,
| Chinese, African, Australian or civilized
white man. The new teaching is like the
| old, if we only understand, for the under
| lying truths of all religions, all philoso-
phies, all sciences, are identically the
same, and no common-sense reasoning
man that Is capable of thinking for him
self will ever deny this fact.
The so-called Atheists and Agnostics
are in open revolt only against the at
| tributes more or less fanciful and erron-
eous, with which sects and creeds de-
scribe their respective and exclusive
gods, not so much against divine prin-
ciple per Sc, but only in the absurd way
in which the various gods are repre-
sented.
Voltare derided and scoffed at the
churches and creedS, dogmas and priest
craft and those who believed in them, as
well as what he called their mummeries
and sophistry, ridiculing the bishops and
clergy, yet notwithstanding, he wrote:
"If God did not exist it would be neces-
sary to invent one"
Today Ingersoll the foremost and ag-
gressive agonstic of the age we live in,
brings forth the power of his wit and
eloquence against abuses and errors
born of ignorance and fanaticism. He
attacks all religious forms of faith and
practice with the keen unphilosophical
weapons of satire, obloquy and WITH
cism. Readers of his best efforts can feel
vibrating between the lines a deep true
reverence for the unknoWable, uncon-
ceivable, self-evident divine principle.
Goethe says: "Certainly there does
not exist a more beautiful worship of
God than that which needs no image,
but which arises in our hearts from
converse with nature" BY it We arrive
at the sublime, pantheistic idea of the
unity of God and nature.
The followers of Zoroaster claim that
"God had neither face nor form. color
nor shape, nor fixed place. There is no
other like him. He is himself, singly
| such a glory that we cannot praise Him
| nor comprehend Him..
The ancient Egyptians worshiped the
| sun as Cod as the cause from which all
things were created.
The cardinal doctrines of the Kab-