Chapter XIX: Foreword (2)

"Still another conception of the new knowledge is that of the
vast stores of inter-elemental energy of which we live but on the
fringe--a store of energy so great that every breath we draw has
within it sufficient power to drive the workshops of the world.
Man will tap this energy some day, somehow. * * * But now that
we know, or think we know, of this infinite treasure-house of
inter-elemental energy lying latent for the hand of the future
man to use, it is neither difficult nor fanatical to believe that
beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins
shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and
shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars. * * * 'In
the beginning God created,' and in the midst of his creation he set
down man with a little spark of the Godhead in him to make him to
strive to know--and in the striving to grow and to progress to some
great, worthy, unknown end in this world. He gave him hands to do,
a will to drive, and senses to apprehend--just a working equipment:
and so he has won his way, so far, out of the horrible conditions
of pre-history."

I have been presenting to you in my discourse the words of our prophet. Mr. Bolce represents the professors of our American universities as saying:

"The professors see in man, and in man alone, the consciousness
and power destined to sway the affairs of the world. Professor
Munsterberg insists that the world we will is the reality, and
that the least creature of all mortals 'has more dignity and value
than even an Almighty God,' as that being is popularly conceived.
* * * It is declared by the professors that if divine energy is
divisible and man's spirit inferior to God's, the eternal future of
the soul is unalluring. Christianity so teaches, they say, and is
of all philosophies the most pessimistic. Forever in its scheme man
is to be an underling. Not only that, but uncountable billions of
souls--worms of the dust--are created doomed to perpetual despair;
while a fortunate remnant's highest felicity is to gather around
the throne of a superior and august God and chant his praises."

Then follows this contrast with the above view:

"Opposed to this conception is the new psychology that teaches
that the spirit of man is the highest conscious expression
of the infinite, and that by invoking the powers--the divine
forces--resident in the human, all that humanity desires may be
accomplished."

Thus complete does the divinity of man's spirit appear to these philosophers. Continuing, these views are expressed:

"The colleges in teaching this faith take ground with those who
believe that in the emancipation and fruition of modern thought
greater works than Christ did will be performed. It is, therefore,
to rid the modern mind of this deadening effect of what they deem
to be paralyzing superstitions that the professors attack orthodox
dogmas."

"Far from deriding the forces of the spirit, the colleges proclaim
that the laws of divine energy are the most important study
confronting modern man. The professors take their stand with
Professor Slater of Chicago University whom I heard emphasize with
marked sincerity that the 'name of Jesus is not written but plowed
into the history of the world.' Yet in their determination to
approach the God-idea as scientists, they consider themselves more
reverent than the great body of church people who, they believe,
are indulging in idolatrous prostration and ritual."

In still stronger confirmation of Joseph Smith's doctrine, in language more direct, is the following utterance from Professor Herrick, of Dennison University, who says:

"Focused in the mind of man, therefore, are the dynamic forces of
the universe. Beyond and above our most daring calculation is the
potency of thought! And in the following allegorical words, the
Scientist explained how the mind of man, assuming and asserting
its power may absorb the fire of creative energy. 'The wood
disappears in the grate, but the genial warmth pervades the room,
invades our blood, quickens our pulse, wakens vital action, and
finally is wrought into the history of our life.' If we keep in
mind this picture of an element becoming transfused by natural
processes into human life and happiness, it is not difficult to
understand the scientific interpretation of prayer, of New Thought,
of Christian Science, of the Emmanuel Movement, and similar forces
marvelously transforming our contemporary age. As scientists, not
as communicants at old altars, many scholars have allied themselves
with the forces of spiritual health and healing."

And yet when the Prophet Joseph and the first elders of the Church taught that the world today was entitled to the enjoyment of the same "spiritual gifts," of forces that characterized the Church of Christ in the early Christian centuries, by which the sick were healed, the lame made to walk, and the power of prophecy and revelation enjoyed,--they were classed as presumptuous persons, and generally discredited; indeed one of the complaints against the Saints when settling in Jackson county, Missouri--1831-1833--was that

"These pretended to communications and revelations direct from
heaven, to heal the sick by the laying on of hands, and, in short,
to perform all the wonder-working miracles wrought by the inspired
apostles and prophets of old. * * * They openly blaspheme the most
high God, and cast contempt on his holy religion by pretending to
receive revelations direct from heaven, by pretending to speak in
unknown tongues, by direct inspiration, and by diverse pretenses
derogatory of God and religion, and to the utter subversion of
human reason."

This is from a document put into circulation by the Jackson county anti-"Mormon" mob, in the summer of 1833 (_Evening and Morning Star_ for December, 1833). But now we find, according to Mr. Bolce's representation, professors in universities asserting their faith in the possibility of this spiritual force operating at present among the children of men, and incidentally, our author remarks, "These men are not dreamers; they are of solid mental mould."

As a result of man awakening to the consciousness of these indwelling forces, our author says:

"'Human society, for the first time in history, is coming to
itself,' says Professor Edmund J. James, 'and is becoming conscious
of definite ends and purposes toward which it is striving; of the
possibility of setting up certain ideals toward which it can ever
struggle.' And now that man has discovered that there resides in
his nature a spirit of energy that is divine, the colleges say,
and that he can summon it to work his will, the potency and future
operation of this psychic force no man can compute. Science having
found a way through psychology to God, the opportunities for the
race, through invoking in the human consciousness the brooding
spirit that fills all space, are absolutely infinite. Science,
therefore, is demonstrating along new lines, or at least is
claiming to demonstrate, _that man is God made manifest!_"

More than seventy-five years before this utterance of the scientist, however, there went ringing down the corridors of time these words of our prophet:

"The elements are the tabernacle of God; yea, man is the tabernacle
of God, even temples!"

Continuing, Mr. Bolce concludes his article on this theme in the following terms:

"And modern philosophy, as set forth in American universities,
holds this incarnation not as a fanciful and merely beautiful
ideal, but as a working and understandable principle in the soul
of humanity. The professors, therefore, who are digging what they
believe to be graves for dead dogmas, stand as exponents of the
teaching that man is the embodiment and conscious expression of the
force that guides all life and holds all matter in its course. Man
has begun the cycle of that triumphal daring prophesied by ancient
seers, and which appealed so potently to the imagination of Poe.
Not merely in religious rhetoric but in reality the schoolmen say,
is man the avatar of God."

That is to say, man is the incarnation of God, the incarnation of a divine spirit; his spirit is one with the Infinite Spirit, even the spirit and essence of God. Let no one hereafter say, when viewing the teachings of Joseph Smith in reference to the divinity of man's spirit, that his doctrines are merely the utterance of an ignorant, unlettered man, since the doctrines he taught three-quarters of a century ago, now receive this splendid, though unconscious vindication, through the utterances of the most learned men of our country and age.

II.

The Existence of a Plurality of Divine Intelligences--Gods.

The trend of teaching by professors in universities of America is supporting the ideas expressed by Joseph Smith in relation to Deity; not by direct affirmation, of course, but by natural implication, they sustain his doctrines in relation to Deity. Let me call your attention to what the prophet taught on the subject of Deity, by quoting one paragraph from a discourse delivered by him in 1844. I think this one paragraph presents in one view the essential things the prophet had to say about God:

"What sort of a being was God in the beginning? Open your ears
and hear, all ye ends of the earth. * * * God himself was once as
we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder
heavens. That is the great secret. If the veil was rent today, and
the great God who upholds this world in its orbit, and who upholds
all worlds and things by his power, was to make himself visible--I
say if we were to see him today, you would see him like a man in
form, like yourself in all the present image and very form as a
man: for Adam was created in the very fashion, image, and likeness
of God, and received instructions from and walked and talked and
conversed with him, as one man talks and communes with another."

This doctrine met with the cry of "Blasphemy!" even more pronouncedly than the Prophet's doctrine respecting the divinity of man. The general conception of orthodox Christendom in relation to God was that he was an incorporeal being, that he was without body; by which they meant that he was not matter; that he was immaterial and without form. They adopted the old pagan idea that God was without parts, without passions; that he was without quality, as a matter of fact, if these other descriptions of him were true.

What is the inevitable outgrowth of the doctrines of these professors in our universities, from what was said in part II, of this treatise? It is that there is in man a divine spirit: that man is "God manifested in the flesh." From this, the question very naturally arises: Do men as such become immortal? Are there any means by which men may become eternal entities--as spirits and bodies inseparably connected--immortal individuals? If so, would they be any less incarnations of a divine spirit in their immortal state than they are now as mortals? The answer is obvious; and if only it be admitted that man, as man, may become immortal, then the doctrine of Joseph Smith respecting God receives strong support by necessary implication from the aforesaid teachers of the universities; for if it be true, as we now are assured it is by these teachers, that "man is God made manifest;" that "focused in the mind of man are all the dynamic forces of the universe"--then truly it is that such doctrines cannot be far removed from the bold announcement of Joseph Smith, that "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens." To make complete the support of Joseph Smith's doctrines from the teachings of the universities, it only becomes necessary to say that the individual man persists; that he becomes as man, body and spirit, immortal. Let these declarations be made: The spirit in man is divine--he is an incarnation of God; man will become immortal. Say this and then the whole doctrine of Joseph Smith, both as to man and as to God, receives perfect support from the trend of university teachings, as represented by Mr. Bolce's papers here being discussed; and there is no escaping that conclusion. Hold to the first proposition, namely, that the spirit of man is divine, then the question resolves itself merely into this: Is there such a thing as resurrection from the dead for man? The Christ answers, Yes; and proclaims himself to be the "resurrection and the life;" and the "first fruits of the resurrection."

Paul most eloquently argues for the reality of the resurrection from the dead; indeed, his whole ministry had this as its foundation. You will remember how he argues the question in the 15th chapter of First Corinthians; wherein he masses the Christian testimony for the resurrection of the Christ; and after massing it he then declares that if Christ was not raised from the dead then the faith of the Saints was vain, and men were still in their sins, and were without hope in the world; for it is 'only through Christ that men might hope for the resurrection from the dead. Not only does the Christ and Paul argue for this great fact yet to be realized in man's experience, but you will find very many Christian philosophers who are contending today for the same truth. Among these is one who is among the first scientists of the English speaking people of today, Sir Oliver Lodge who, in speaking upon the subject of the resurrection, in his recent work, _Science and Immortality,_ says:

"It is clear that Christianity, both by its doctrines and its
ceremonies, rightly emphasizes the material aspect of existence.
For it is founded upon the idea of incarnation; and its belief in
some sort of bodily resurrection is based on the idea that every
real personal existence must have a double aspect, not spiritual
alone, nor physical alone, but in some way both. Such an opinion,
in a refined form, is common to many systems of philosophy, _and is
by no means out of harmony with science_."

That is the declaration of one of the foremost scientists of our day. Continuing he says:

"Christianity, therefore, reasonably supplements the mere survival
of a discarnate spirit, a homeless wanderer or melancholy
ghost, with the warm and comfortable clothing of something that
may legitimately be spoken of as a "body;" that is to say, it
postulates a supersensually appreciable vehicle or mode of
manifestation, fitted to subserve the needs of terrestrial life;
an ethereal or other entity constituting the persistent 'other
aspect,' and fulfilling some of the functions which the atoms of
terrestrial matter are constrained to fulfill now. And we may
assume, as consonant with or even as part of Christianity, the
doctrine of the dignity and sacramental character of some physical
or quasi-material counterpart of every spiritual essence."

In other words, Sir Oliver evidently believes in something equivalent to the resurrection of man; that there will be some sort of quasi-material substance that shall form the future clothing of man's spirit, suitable to the future states of its existence and experiences.

Now, my friends, the point is this: If our professors, as we see they do, insist that there is incarnate in man a divine spirit, and we get men through the veil of death, and they become immortal men, possessing immortal tabernacles, what have you here but the "superman" of the professors, or the "exalted man" of Joseph Smith's doctrine? And if we postulate for these immortals, as both Joseph Smith and the professors do, a limitless opportunity for progress and development, then indeed it is not impossible that man may approach, somewhat even to the excellence of his Father, and of his elder brother, Jesus Christ.

This brings me to the consideration of another thought in connection with Joseph Smith's doctrine, namely, the doctrine that there is a plurality of divine intelligences in the universe--"Lords many and Gods many," as Paul would say.

It was supposed that Joseph Smith was guilty of great blasphemy when he announced to the world that in the great vision of God, given to him, he beheld two personages, each resembling the other, and that they spake to him; and one said to the other, calling the prophet by name, "This is my beloved Son; hear him." Since Joseph represented that there were two divine personages--Father and Son--separate and distinct, one from the other, he was charged with having uttered a great blasphemy. Such a statement was at variance with the orthodox conception of Deity. It had been held in the creeds of men--notwithstanding they professed belief in God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit--that somehow or other the three persons of the Godhead were but one essence or substance; were but one entity, and not three separate and distinct personages or individuals. But if the doctrine considered in part II of this treatise be true as to the spirit in man being divine; and if that spirit goes through the resurrection and becomes an immortal personage--still divine--what is the result? The result must be that there are a multitude of divine intelligences; which is only another way of saying with Paul, and Joseph Smith, that there are "Lords many and Gods many." And so the inevitable result of the teachings in our universities leads to the support of this doctrine that was announced to the world by the Prophet Joseph Smith, that there are a multitude of divine intelligences in the heavens--spirits and angels and arch-angels; and Gods who meet in solemn councils--David's "congregation of the mighty," where God "judgeth among the Gods" to generate the wisdom that is present through the universe that has been brought from chaos into cosmos by the wisdom and power of these divine intelligences. But as "pertaining to us," there is one Godhead appointed to preside from among these intelligences--the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And this Godhead, or grand presidency, does preside over our world and the spheres that are associated with it: with our earth and its heavens.

This doctrine of the existence of a plurality of divine intelligences has further support by a very eminent professor--no less a personage than Professor James, late of Harvard university. Within the year, his lectures before Oxford university, England, have been published, and this work bears the title _A Pluralistic Universe._ The outcome of Professor James' learned discussion of all the questions involved in this subject is to the effect that instead of the universe being, as he satirically speaks of it, when referring to the monistic view of it--"a solid block," it is a pluralistic universe. One of his passages runs as follows:

"I propose to you that we should discuss the question of God,
without entangling ourselves in advance in the monistic assumption.
Is it probable that there is a superhuman consciousness at all, in
the first place? When that is settled, the further question whether
its form be monistic or pluralistic is in order." (page 295).

This question as to their being a "superhuman consciousness" the professor decides in the affirmative as at least probable; and then he announces that the only way to escape from the inconsistencies of other theories "is to be frankly pluralistic and assume that the superhuman consciousness, however vast it may be, has itself an external envelopment, and consequently is finite" (page 311 ).

"The line of least resistance, then, as it seems to me," he adds, "both in theology and philosophy, is to accept, along with the superhuman consciousness, the notion that it is not all-embracing, the notion, in other words, that there is a God, but that he is finite, either in power or in knowledge, or in both at once. These, I need hardly tell you, are the terms in which common men have usually carried on their active commerce with God; and the monistic perfections that make the notion of him so paradoxical practically and morally are the colder addition of remote professorial minds, operating _in distans_ upon conceptual substitutes for him alone" (page 311). Professor James also explains that present day Monism carefully repudiates complicity with Spinozistic Monism, "in that, it explains, the many get dissolved in the one and lost, whereas in the improved, idealistic form they get preserved in all their manyness as the one's eternal object. The absolute itself is thus represented by absolutists as having a pluralistic object. But if even the absolute has to have a pluralistic vision, why should we ourselves hesitate to be pluralists on our own sole account? Why should we envolve our 'many' with the 'one' that brings so much poison in its train?" (Page 311.)

Addressing himself directly to Oxford men on the movement of late towards pluralistic conceptions of the universe, professor James says: "If Oxford men could be ignorant of anything, it might almost seem that they had remained ignorant of the great empirical movement towards a pluralistic panpsychic view of the universe, into which our own generation has been drawn, and which threatens to short-circuit their methods entirely and become their religious rival unless they are willing to make themselves its' allies" (page 313).

The professor also insists that by taking the system of the world pluralistically we banish what he calls our "foreignness"--by which I understand him to mean our apartness from the world (_i.e._, universe).

"We are indeed internal parts of God, and not external creations,
on any possible reading of the panpsychic system. Yet because
God is not the absolute, but is himself a part when the system
is conceived pluralistically, his functions can be taken as not
wholly dissimilar to those of the other smaller parts,--as similar
to our functions, consequently. 'Having an environment, being in
time, and working out a history just like ourselves, he escapes
from the foreignness from all that is human, of the static,
timeless, perfect absolute. * * * * No matter what the content of
the universe may be, if you only allow that it is many everywhere
and always, that nothing real escapes from having an environment,
so far from defeating its rationality, as the absolutists so
unanimously pretend, you leave it in possession of the maximum
amount of rationality practically obtainable by our minds. Your
relations with it, intellectual, emotional and active, remain
fluent and congruous with your own nature's chief demands." (pages
318, 319.)

We may not here and now, of course, enter into all the explanations and arguments that Professor James enters upon in treating this subject, but the purpose of his whole work is to establish the idea that the unity one discovers in the laws and forces of our universe, grows out of a "free harmony of individual entities;" that the absolute reality is a system of self-active beings forming a unity; and hence, he concludes the world to be "a pluralistic universe." With this view Professor Howison, of the University of California, if I understand him aright, in his contribution to a volume on the _Conception of God,_ largely agrees.

To this may be added also the views of Arthur Kenyon Rogers Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy in Buttler College recently expressed in a book entitled "The Religious Conception of the World," "An Essay in Constructive Philosophy," 1907. On the particular point in question, "the nature of the unity of God and of lesser conscious beings," he says:

"The modern world is coming more and more to feel that if there is
to be any real body and permanent satisfaction to the spiritual
life, it will have to be carried back in large part to the sort of
experience that we get concretely and verifiably in our every-day
human and social relationships. * * * * Now here also in the social
realm there is a verifiable and significant sense in which we may
talk of identifying ourselves with others. But it distinctly is not
to merge our conscious lives into a single and inseparable whole of
conscious content. Rather it is to work for common interests and
care for the same things, to feel a concern each for the other's
welfare, a respect for his character, a regard for the essential
individuality of the other. Two things in this situation--and these
two the most fundamental--are wholly foreign to an absolute merging
and absorption. Love, as human love, presupposes necessarily the
self-identical and independent consciousness of the one toward whom
it is directed. And the moral life, about which some of the deepest
values cling, in its turn involves alike a personal autonomy which
absorption would destroy, and an extra-personal, an outgoing and
unselfish concern for others, for which no converging of all
reality to a single self-conscious centre could find a place. * * * *

"We have only, then, to extend this conception a step farther, in
order to pass from what is merely an account of the social order to
a philosophy of the universe. The ultimate way for understanding
the universe _is not self-consciousness, but a society of selves._
But in this community there is one member who occupies a quite
exceptional position. For God, as the inner reality of what we call
the world of nature, stands clearly somehow in a special way at the
centre of things, as human selves do not. In him there are summed
up the conditions which are needed to account fully for the lesser
world of our own more immediate social experience, since the lives
of men confessedly have their roots in nature. In him therefore
we may suppose the unity of the whole is directly reflected, and
there are gathered the broken threads of the universal purpose as
it appears in our partial and limited human experiences. But none
the less, if we are to follow the conception, is he still only one
member of the community, and not the whole sum of existing things.
He exists as one whose nature needs the positing of other lives
which do not come within the same immediate conscious unity as his
own. He also is a social being as men are, and finds his life in
social co-operation, though the complete conditions of his life
may be eternally present to his consciousness as they are not to
ours. But while his knowledge thus may cover all existence, the
inclusion will be one of knowledge simply. My conscious life will
still be mine alone, which no one else in the universe can directly
share, not even God himself. No one else feels my feelings or has
my sensations. * * * *

"And this is the position which has already been argued for in
a preceding chapter. In other words, God does not create us by
an arbitrary choice of his, so that our nature as human selves
is merely secondary and derivative. _This nature of ours is
an ultimate fact of reality._ It is implicated in the deepest
constitution of the universe, in the nature of God himself.
_Reality is a confederacy of free beings;_ and no one of these
is ultimately responsible for the others, since each alike is
essential to the whole with which reality is identified."

From all this, then, it appears that the doctrine of a plurality of divine intelligences existing in the universe, as taught by our prophet, is receiving confirmation by the works and the philosophizing of some of the foremost learned men of our country, and, for that matter, of the world.

Perhaps you will be putting to me the question: What of all this? Why discuss questions of this character? What spiritual or moral force may one gather from a contemplation of such themes? Well, in the first place, to Latter-day Saints, those who have faith in the dispensation of the fulness of times and in the Prophet Joseph Smith--does it mean nothing to you to find the inspirations of God in this man confirmed by the conclusions of plodding philosophers who come trailing in seventy-five years after the words of the prophet have gone forth to the world? After he has been denounced as charlatan, as false prophet and deceiver, for advancing the truths we have been considering--does it mean nothing to you to find that the truths which he stood for are permeating the philosophies of men and are receiving the sanction and approval of the learned? It means much to me; it gives confirmation to my faith; and I rejoice in the triumph that the truth is achieving. Then to all, whether Latter-day Saints or not, it seems to me that to have fixed in the mind, in the consciousness, the thought of the reality of things--the reality of God, the reality of the divine in man, the consciousness that this spirit within us is of a divine nature, and that it is capable of attaining to something really good and great--to something really worth while--to goodness, power and glory, to have that thought present to consciousness, as we go about the duties of life--to feel that "for a wise and glorious purpose God has placed us here on earth," and has merely "withheld the recollection of our former friends and birth"--to be conscious of all this, I say, is to gather strength for the battle of life. To feel that we, in the essence of us, are one with God, and that he envelopes us closely about by spiritual influences that we can call to our assistances--to be conscious of the fact that our life is part of God's life--to be conscious of this is to banish from us the thought of failing in life. We gather spiritual strength, and force and power to meet the responsibilities and duties of life, by contemplation of these high themes. This is the practical effect of these doctrines--we know that our life touches the life of God; that our life is one with God's life, and this inspires to noble efforts, out of which may grow the highest and most glorious results possible in human existence.