Legend
What May Be Known Of God*
Our object as a Theosophical Society is to inquire, and mutually to aid each other in the search after Divine knowledge. As theosophists we begin and end with Deity. If we seek for any special spiritual knowledge or power which we believe has been given to earnest and devout minds of every age, we acknowledge with them that all wisdom is the gift of God, who imparts it for divinely-human uses only. Our society wisely comprising students of various systems of theology, it would be out of place for me, here, to bring any of the statements or doctrines of my special creed before you, as evidence of the existence or revelation of the nature of God. Happily the former evidence of the Divine existence is not required, for in the third statement of our rules we declare our faith “in a great first intelligent cause, and in the Divine Sonship of the spirit of man, and hence in the immortality of that spirit, and in the universal brotherhood of the human race.” We need desire nothing better or more comprehensive than that statement as a basis for our inquiry into the nature of God and the destiny of man.
The spirit of man, or man in his essential being is the Son of God, and therefore as immortal as the Father. All humanity, throughout the universe, is one brotherhood because the parentage is one. He who affirms the common brotherhood of man, not admitting its common Fatherhood, may speak from the instinct of the heart, but assuredly not from the understanding. He was not far wrong who wrote that, “Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human mind, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.”
If we examine the manifestations of life in the realm of nature, we find that its first visible form, whether vegetable or animal, is a simple cell which is only discernible by the aid of the microscope. Every such cell has an individual life; it moves through the water appropriating and assimilating its proper food. The next advance in the scale of existence is the union of two or more cells, which form a composite body, but without any distinct organisation that can be seen by the highest optical power. They seem merely homogeneous specks of jelly. In higher stages of life digestive and assimilative organs become visible. Then organs of sensation, as hearing and sight, giving the species so favoured a sensible relation to external nature. No privation can be experienced by lower forms of life of the powers of those more developed. Thus the bivalve mollusca have no eyesight, because none is required in their condition. The rank of organisms in the scale of being may thus be determined by the extent of differentiation in the parts of the body. In the lowest forms of plant and animal every part has the same structure and performs the same functions as every other part. As organic life ascends, there is not only a difference in the external form of the organs of each individual, but also in the parts of each organ. Thus the highest life has the most complex unity. The greater the diversity and speciality of parts in an organic whole, the more perfect is the unity of its body. This fact applies to all kinds of life, political, moral, and Spiritual. A Robinson Crusoe has to be all trades and professions in one. In a village one man has to perform many kinds of service which in town is the work of separate individuals; and in a large city not only has every man his own special trade or profession, but each work is divided and subdivided, that the whole may be more speedily and efficiently performed. A country surgeon has to do the work of all branches of his profession, which are specialised in London, that each may do the best for humanity in his particular department. The skillful occultist is the steward of humanity in all that relates J to the eye, his especial knowledge and skill becoming I the property of the whole body.
I am, happily, not called upon at this time to adduce any proof of the Divine existence, otherwise I would urge the best proof I know, which is the j existence of the belief in God among all nations of the earth at all times. That faith is subject to growth or development just as is organic life. It may require very clear and close vision to discern evidence of its rudimentary forms, and when found I they may, to superficial minds, seem most repulsive. Doubtless there must be as great a difference between the first beginnings of apprehension of Deity in the unformed mind of humanity, and perfect knowledge, as between the protoplasmic cell and a philosopher; but shall we deny the existence and Divine origin of all life not organised in its highest form? Faith id in all degrees of mental and spiritual progress is as much a self-evidencing fact as life in every stage of manifestation. As is the difference of mode of living which obtains in the various stages of organic existence, so is the variety of worship, or striving after union and communion with the Father by the human soul in the varied stages of its educational progress. Even the hardly conscious seeking after the invisible as the supreme need of the soul is the sign of the Divinity within, the response of the child to the faintly heard word of the Father.
The most unphilosophic word I ever saw or heard has been brought prominently before the world as adopted, if not made, by a deservedly eminent philosopher respecting Deity. “God,” said he, “is b not only unknown, but unknowable.” I marvel how such a word ever got into any language. The bi word “unknown” is very useful, but only when one speaks for himself. Many things are to me unknown which are known to my neighbour; but “unknowable” is a most immodest, not to say unphilosophical word, even when used as regards the speaker’s individual capacity. It assumes not merely that he has gauged with unerring measure the utmost capabilities of his own mind as to its present and future state, but that he has fairly estimated the mental power of every other mind in the universe now and for all time to come. What know not is, and must ever remain, unknowable.
Consigning this word of conceited haste to the limbo of oblivion, let us inquire what we may know of God, and truly affirm of His nature on ground common to the faith of all members of our society.
We affirm the Divine Sonship of the spirit of man, <... continues on page 10-60 >
* A paper read at a meeting of the Theosophical Society, Sept. 2nd, 1879.
Editor's notes
- ↑ What May Be Known Of God* by Farquhar J.W., London Spiritualist, No. 370, September 26, 1879, pp. 151-54
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 370, September 26, 1879, pp. 151-54