If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter (PARA-KLEETOS—Teacher, Advocate,) that he may abide with you forever. The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive.” John 14th, 16-17. He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”—John 14—26. “He shall testify of me.”—John 15-26. “If I go not away, the Comforter (Advocate) will not come, but if 1 depart. I will send him unto you. He will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment.” He will glide you into all truth, for he shall not speak of himself but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak.” John 16-7-13.
IF the question of spiritual light, were satisfactorily settled, there would be but few religious controversies in society. From the lowest fetishism of Africa, to the highest inspiration of Rome, the controlling power, is the god of feeling; and from the depths of German Neology, French skepticism, and English Transcendentalism, to the heights of American revivalism and spiritualism, the divinity of the passions, the “god within,” is the great object of adoration. True philosophers, profess to be enlightened by the “divinity within” and what they call, “pure reason,” is their only acknowledged light, The scoffer, and infidel Voltaire, proclaimed as the inalienable right of man, the unlimited gratification of the sensual appetites; the abandoned Roseau said, “I have only to consult myself, concerning what I do. “All that I feel to be right, is right to me.” These are the word’s of renowned teachers!
We are in the habit of rejoicing that, we live in an enlightened age, amongst a progressive people, and that we have but few conflicts with skeptics, infidels and open enemies to God. Most of our controversies, are with Protestants, with an earnest, cultivated intelligent people. We are satisfied that, we are at war with denominations in which, God has a people. It is true, they are in con- fusion. but the Majesty of heaven says, “Come out of Babylon, my people that, ye be not partakers of her sins.” Our main controversy is with Calvinists. Armenians, Quakers, Shakers, and modem spiritualists, regarding the work of the Holy Spirit. They unite in preaching, a direct and perpetual revelation of the Spirit, in conversion; and maintain that, the only evidence of their pardon, regeneration and salvation, is an immediate, revelation of the Spirit in their hearts.
Thus, the modem revivalist, proves, direct conversions by the spirit, before faith, and in order to produce faith; and the converts, have the revelation of feeling that their sins are blotted out. If our contemporaries are mistaken, myriads are clinging to a fatal delusion; with a sincerity that should be commended. This, we regard as an error of sufficient moment, to require the fullest examination, If the doctrine is false, the error may be fatal. It should not be considered unkind to say that, all persons under the influence of these real, or imaginary revelations, are wholly unqualified for listening to the revelations reported in the Bible; or for relying upon the facts of the Bible, as the ground of their faith. No one led by dreams and visions, can believe through the divine oracles.
The doctrine of direct revelations, to every particular person, as professed in the protestant denominations, unhinges the mind universally, in reference to the truth and power of the Gospel of our salvation; it “Breaks the main spring of the mental world,” and throws it back into the state of moral chaos. It renders uncertain, every criterion of right and wrong, of truth and error. It sets aside all rules by which we learn, and reason and judge. “It breaks down every barrier of correct thinking, and lets the fancy loose to play her wildest freaks, and most delirious dreams.” “It fills the world with continual impostures and delusion, and leads honest minds into the most dangerous excesses.” If the Bible is true, these immediate revelations, are both needless and superfluous. They are neither suitable to the majesty and honor of God, or to the ends contemplated in the scheme of redemption. Their tendency is to weaken confidence, in all the appointments of the New Testament, and lead their advocates, to despise the laws written by inspired men. Hence, the absolute importance of carefully examining the whole question of spiritual light. The magnitude of the subject, demands systematic treatment.
DEFINITION.
By spiritual light, is understood, the light which we have in reference to God, and his dealings with the universe. Of course, we should include, his attributes, so far as they are revealed; the creation of the heavens and the earth, the origin and mission of spirits, angels and man.—the character and mission of Jesus Christ; all that is known of His kingdom, requirements and promises,—including spiritual wickedness in both high and low places, and spiritual life with the immortality promised. Whatever pertains to the invisible world may be considered spiritual light. Moral acts and moral characters must be placed amongst things spiritual. It is true, we have many books written on moral philosophy, in which the authors attempt to define moral conduct—what is moral evil and what is moral good—but we lack evidence that there is room for what is generally termed moral science. It has not been proved that writers on moral philosophy, have brought to light a single new truth, or thrown any light whatever, upon moral duties. If asked, why have not moral philosophers advanced in spiritual light? it might be answered, that such discoveries are beyond the sphere of man’s labors. If these things are true, we can but conclude that spiritual light, is beyond the reach of scientific researches. But not to be prolix, spiritual light is that, which teaches us the origin and nature of sin, its tendencies in this life, and its direful consequences in the life to come. It instructs us with reference to the meaning of all spiritual obligations, the purport of religion in this life, and the consequences of a religious life in the world to come,
THE ORIGIN OF SPIRITUAL LIGHT.
An elaborate volume might be written on this subject. Many volumes have been composed to defend favorite theories, and no doubt, many more fruitless efforts will be put forth in support of the divers speculations afloat in the world, regarding the imaginary sources of Divine light. The great question is, how came the idea of God to exist in the mind of man? How have we been so deeply impressed with the idea, that God is our Father? That he loves us as his children? and that he has made provision for our endless happiness, in a world to us yet unseen, and unknown to mortals? Whence did we receive the impression that to God, we owe allegiance—our undivided service in time—and that it is upon the sole condition of our undivided loyalty in this life, we are to enjoy endless bliss in the life to come? These are questions which should be satisfactorily answered, in order to realize our true position before Heaven and earth. It will be proper, to notice a few of the assumed sources of spiritual light. All classes of philosophers and speculatists, even including atheists and deists boast of what they denominate, “the light of the world—the perpetual revelation—which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Robert Owen and coadjutors, maintained that we derive our idea of God, and things invisible, from “imagination When we admit the truth of this theory, we must admit also the existence of a most unsteady teacher—one that teaches different ages and nations directly opposite. Deists, such as Mr. Paine, maintain that, something they call nature, reveals the existence of their deity, and affords a perpetual revelation, by which all can walk in safety.
The very astute French philosopher Victor Cousin, gravely teaches that, there are various and different proofs of the existence of God; that these various proofs, have different degrees of strictness in their form; but that they all have a foundation of truth, which needs simply to be disengaged and put in clear light, in order to give them an incontrovertible authority. “Every tiling,” he says, “leads to God, there is no bad way of arriving thither.” The difficulty however, is to catch the first rays of light? A people, who have been brought up under the civilizing influences of the nineteenth century, can see God in everything; and can say with Pope, who from the depths of popular pantheism penned the soul destroying doctrine, which says,
“All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God, the soul,
That changed through all, and yet, mail, the same,
Great in the earth, is in the eternal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze.
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,”
While God is all and in all, when we rob Him of the honor of creation, of his only means of communicating his existence to us, and of revealing his parental regard for us, we dishonor Him in attempts at praising Him. A god who is merely the soul of nature, is not that personal and Almighty creator, who spread out the heavens to warm and refresh us, and established the earth as our present home. But Cousin, understanding well the professions of the learned upon the subject of sources of spiritual light, finally concludes that, “In general, all the proofs of every sort, of the existence of God, are comprehended under two great classes, namely; proofs a posteriori, and proofs, a priori.” Inasmuch, as very few persons study matters spiritual, in this technical, and philosophical style, and I write for the masses, who know nothing of the terminology of the schools, it will be my ambition to define if possible, terms and propositions, in a style that will enable earnest people to understand the subject under discussion. Our author defends the former mode of proceeding thus, viz: “I give myself, aided by my senses and consciousness, to the observation and study of the external world, and of my own existence; and simply by a knowledge, more or less profound and extended of nature and myself, after sufficient observations, and inductions founded upon them, I arrive at a knowledge of God, who made man and the world.” This is called the demonstration a posteriori, of the existence of God. In the more common style of society, “It is reasoning from nature up to nature’s God.1′ The theory is built upon the supposition that, we can look out upon the world, upon the stars, and upon ourselves, as effects, and determine there is a first Great Cause—a Creator, and with equal facility, we learn our duties to Him. It is the leap from the natural to the supernatural—inferring spiritual from earthly, and is called, “the argument from effect to cause.”The argument, a priori, is defined by Cousin, thus, viz: “I may neglect the external world, and fall back upon myself, in the entirely interior world of consciousness, without engaging in the study of the numerous phenomena, I may derive at once from reason, an idea, a single idea, which without the aid of experience, in the hands of that same reason, becomes the basis of the demonstration of the existence of a God. This is called the demonstration a priori. It is usually denominated the argument, “from within,” and is built upon the presumption that, man possesses within, ample ability to discover directly, without aid, God and all spiritual truth. These doctrines, we feel in duty bound to briefly examine. They, indeed, govern in both the learned and unlearned world. The deist, whether among the tall sons of science, or the degraded of earth, claims that nature—the outward world, is a safe teacher; and the philosopher, and the meanest African, agree in declaring that their divinity “within, “ never errs.
The a posteriori, argument takes for granted that the five senses, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling, are quite competent, by their unaided exercise to infer with the certainty of demonstration from the observations of nature, existences which are supernatural, or above nature. It is true, if there is anything in nature that we could without doubt, class as an effect, we might infer an adequate cause; but the idea of a supernatural or spiritual cause, could not be inferred from natural phenomena. The bound is too great. This startling conclusion has been correctly disposed of by Immanuel Kant, in his “Critique of Pure Reason,” in what he calls “The ontological proof of the existence of God.” He says, “the inference from a given existence (to something superior,) seems to be correct and undeniable, but the conditions of the understanding, refuse to aid us in forming any conception of such a being.” This is equivalent to saying, that our capacity is not sufficient to penetrate the invisible world, by conclusions from what exists. This is Kant’s conclusion in attempts to reason from man up to God.
In his “cosmological argument,” or the argument from the existence of the natural world to the existence of the world Maker, he says; “the attempt to demonstrate the existence of the Supreme Being, is illusory and inadequate.” If we would but examine the failures of the world, in arriving at correct conclusions in attempting to reason from nature to natures God; from things earthly and sensual; to things which are heavenly and divine, we could but acknowledge our utter incompetency to arrive at truth. The Greeks and Romans deified almost every object of nature, and certainly entertained very incorrect ideas in regard to the true God. But even the wisest nations of antiquity, unaided by light divine, could never have originated the idea of an Invisible Being. Man left to himself, with nature to teach him. has in no age, risen even to the level of the idolater. False ideas of God. merely demonstrate that there are correct ideas on the subject, as counterfeit notes, prove the existence of notes not counterfeit. But as papers not known to be notes prove nothing, in regard to Bank bills, objects not clothed with the ideas of divinity , give no demonstration of a Divinity, Hence all superstitions, give evidence of the existence of true worship, as the ideas of false gods, are only the straggling rays of correct light in regard to the true God.
Left to ourselves, with all our senses in the greatest perfection, and with the best means of observation, we would be as some were in the days of Paul—“without hope and without God in the world.” We conclude then that, nature with all her richest stores, leaves our race shut out from the knowledge of the true God, and from all spiritual guidance. Nations of the earth, as the Siamese and others, have been found in total darkness, as regards The knowledge of God and moral obligations. They had not even an idea, or single conception, as to moral obligation. A few years since, an intelligent Christian gentleman from North Carolina, who was deaf and dumb, and was educated after he grew’ to manhood, in answer to the question, “did you have the idea of God—of a Divine Father in your youth? or the feeling produced by the thought? testified that he had no conception of a Creator till he learned it in School, and the day on which he received the idea that he had a Father in Heaven, was the happiest of his life.” When we refer to the Bible, we can have no doubt but every good thing or thought comes from above. Hence, Paul asks, “what hast thou that thou didst not receive?” But the same Apostle says, “the animal, (Psuchikos) man, receives not the things of the Spirit,” and “the world by wisdom knew not God.” We may be told, that there are other scriptures which teach that men by observation, learn that there is a God. If the Bible teaches that, the world by wisdom knew not God; and again; that the world does know God by wisdom, the scriptures are contradictory, and should not be believed. Were we to attempt an examination of all scriptures quoted to prove that nature reveals the Divine Author of the Universe, much more space would be required than we can spare, and therefore, I will notice but few passages. I respectfully suggest, that all our translations were made by men under the influence of the dogma, that the light of nature is quite sufficient to reveal the Author of nature and our duties to him. If the theory were true, it would prove too much. It would indeed prove the a priori argument unnecessary and false, and the Bible itself an utterly useless production. If nature is sufficient for light and guidance, we need no more.
The first passage of scripture to which I call attention is, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy work,” Ps. 19-1. The Hebrew word, Sah-phar, translated declare, literally means, “number,” or “recount,” the glory of God. The same word is in Isaiah, 43-21, in regard to God’s monumental people, the family of Abraham. “They shall show forth my praise.” Neither do the heavens or Jews reveal God to the world, both stand as fixed monuments of His power and glory to the spiritually enlightened, but not to the man of nature. When the light of day is excluded, the most beautiful works of art, make no impression on our senses; but let the light reach the eye, and we rejoice at each object of attention. Animal men whose eyes have not been opened by Divine rays from above, see not God in nature; but when the soul is raised to heaven by the touch of inspiration, we sec God in every star, in the tiniest blade of grass, in man and all the creations of the Divine Father. Again, the translators have manufactured from Paul, and given to the world as the revelations of the Spirit, “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse;” Ro. 1-20. The intention of the manufacturers of this scripture, and of all who support the dogma, to prove that the spiritual matters which, from the beginning of time, had been invisible, were clearly revealed by nature in the days of the Apostles, and consequently, these revelations of nature, now’ leave the unsaved without excuse. If it is true, that nature has brought to light the invisible things of God, a revelation by the Spirit could be of no service. If nature was able in the days of the Savior, to bring to light the invisible things of God, why was not this same nature, equally capable of making known the truth, at any time from the creation to the coming of the Lord? If the book of nature could make known the hidden things of God, the mission of our Lord, added nothing to our stock of spiritual light: and even his death was in vain.’ The revelations of nature place all without excuse.
I venture that Paul had not nature in his mind, when he wrote The passage, and that it never entered into his heart that the works of nature revealed anything of a spiritual character. Let us read The connection fairly. The Apostle said. “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for therein, (in the Gospel) is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; for the wrath of God is revealed against all impiety and injustice of men. who (restrain, hinder,)—make void the truth by wickedness. Because that which is known of God, is manifest to them (to men) for God
has revealed it to them, (in the Gospel.) For the things of him, invisible from the creation of the world, are clearly understood by the things done, (tois poieemasin) even his eternal power and divinity, that they should have no apology.” Ro. 1: 16-20. Hence, the idea of Paul was that, the things which had been invisible, were brought to light by the things done, under the administration of the Savior, were revealed in the Gospel; and therefore, men could have no excuse for rejecting the truth by unrighteous conduct Let unprejudiced scholars decide the translation. The makers of our version could not see the truth, neither can others, who rely upon nature to reveal God and spiritual obligations. It would be a work of supererogation to examine other scriptures, which are supposed to teach that nature reveals God and religious obligations, and consequently I call attention to the argument, a priori. This, in plain English words, is the argument from cause to effect. It has been constructed, upon the supposition that in every one, there is a divine spark—a divinity—called by some, reason; by others, conscience, of ample capacity to reveal God and all moral obligations. This, is, “the inward light,” or “inner light,” of Quakers, Shakers, Mormons, Modem Spiritualists, Modem Revivalists, German and French Neologists, Transcendentalists, of every degree; Africans generally, and all throughout time, who are, or have been governed by the inspiration of their fleshly desires. This god of feeling, is the mighty god of all who are led by their animal passions.
It may be affirmed that, if this monstrous dogma is true, all light from without, from above, from God is useless, and the book we call the Bible, is absolutely a hindrance to the progress of the “divinity within,” with everyone who comes into the world.
The history of the world gives us no evidence that men have possessed capacity to construct governments, or systems of religion, adequate to our wants, or best calculated for our highest improvements, and when we examine the sacred records, we learn that, “It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” God made him dependent, and claims the right to direct him as his servant; and yet upon his fidelity to truth revealed, he promises him immortality and eternal life. I have considered the simple statement of the supposed argument, a prion, quite sufficient for my present purpose, and suggest that while it should be regarded as the most dangerous of assumptions, its refutation requires no tedious process of argumentation. A plain statement of the question, as to whether, or not human beings universally possess within a sense of feeling, able to direct into all truth, is quite sufficient. Wherever the doctrine has prevailed, the sacred scriptures have been virtually rejected, and passion has ruled without opposition.
Before closing the remarks, intended for the first number of the RELIGIOUS HISTORIAN, upon this very important subject, it is due to the attentive reader to say, that nothing short of a full and plain revelation of the Spirit of God, is sufficient to direct a lost world in things spiritual.