--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - N. L. Nelson collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 8 number: 8 published: 1905-06 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'N. L. Nelson, "Heaven versus Nirvana. II," *Improvement Era* 8, no. 8 (June 1905): 579–598.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0808unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0808unse start_page: 579 end_page: 598 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1905-06) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0808unse publication_year: 1905 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1905, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Heaven versus Nirvana. II * : HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. BY PROF. N. L. NELSON, AUTHOR OF "SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF MORMONISM." [The ideas in this second paper came like a bolt out of a clear sky, and it took nearly fifteen minutes before the members of Dr. Hall's Seminary could warm up to the discussion. Dr. Hall was the first to speak. He commended warmly what he called the freshness and vigor with which this new philosophy was presented, then turning said "Here is a man, broad-minded and a vigorous thinker, who believes in science and all the enlightenment of the day, yet whose voice fairly tingles with faith in a personal God, in heaven, and in immortality. Come now, ril wager that not three among you all will confess faith in these great concepts of religion. It is certainly refreshing to hear from one who really believes something with his whole heart and soul." He then proceeded to agree and disagree with various of the ideas set forth. We are told that the discussion which followed was beside the question at issue, and turned on the value of the author's confession of faith, whether the Bible had any authority worth respecting, whether people nowadays cared a fig for immortality, etc. One doctor confessed that he would be utterly bored by another life. Another said his feelings on the questions discussed were as strong as the writer's, but he hadn't landed as yet. Only one man spoke strongly in favor of immortality, while nine-tenths were profoundly silent, some refusing to commit themselves when called upon. In the meantime, the * Read before Dr. G. Stanley Hall's Pedagogic Seminary, Monday evening, April 16, 1905. — readers of the Era will find an hour's vigorous and refreshing reading; in what follows, besides much food for thought. Editors.] I once heard of a recluse who, after years of meditation, came forward with a world-theory one prominent fact of which was that the comets are fiery chariots in which the Lord moves about through space, visiting his various creations. When smiled at by his auditors he would retort: "Well, one thing at least is certain: no one will ever be able to prove that it isn't so." This, it seems to me, expresses what must be the ultimate self-defense of every philosopher from Confucius to Schopenhauer: the negative satisfaction of having created a system which no mortal shall ever live long enough to disprove. The subject matter of any cosmogony must necessarily be of so profound and shadowy a nature, that the mind of man, even were its power of flight a million fold more effective, will never be able to wing its way around it, and return to tell us whether Buddha is now in Nirvana, and Fichte still an ego creating his own universe, or whether the systems they wrought respectively have reality outside the imagination of their authors. But if one cannot disprove the ultimate facts of a philosophy, one can always refuse to accept them. On what basis, then, must one judge any system? On the basis,, it seems to me, of one's own native perception of eternal consistency, and not another's. Another's perception may become one's own, if studied attentively and conscientiously; and therein lies the justification of Paul's injunction, "Try all things." But it can really become such only as one rediscovers it for one's self; that is to say, one cannot have it laid down in one's mind ready made by another. It must grow, it cannot be plastered in by authority of some great name, if it is to become part of one's life. "Try all things," said the apostle, "and hold fast that which is good." But "good" here can mean nothing else than fit, and as to the fitness of any doctrine to coalesce with the soul, not even the angels of heaven can decide for any man. The supreme and final test is always an individual one. Millions may hold a system of thought true, yet to me still comes the question: "Is it digestible? HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 581 Does my soul assimilate it? Or is it loaded upon my helpless mental stomach by the spoon of authority? If the latter, then I am a spiritual dyspeptic, however robust seems my dogmatism; a mere starvling parasite that does not feed upon truth direct, but must draw his feeble life at second hand from another."* Let my teacher direct his efforts toward opening my eyes, unstopping my ear?, and quiclcening my understanding, and he shall have my gratitude; but him not obtrude himself between me let -and my universe. Moreover, let him beware how he sets up a fetich of his academic understanding, be it "pure reason" or what not, with which to limit my perceptions; for I, too, am a seer, to the extent that my soul remains naked to the universe. Nor is the mystery of being something to be unravelled by the syllogism: it is to be felt as well as reasoned about. Indeed, I should rather trust the intuitions of the poet than the logic of the philosopher, to guide me along this dim "Milky Way." Neither let my intellectual guide set bounds to what man may know or how he may know it; as if he had sounded the depths of that infinitude, the human soul! For over two thousand years deductive analysis has been busy with the origin and destiny of human life. Scores of philosophic systems have been erected and abandoned; and today the problem is confessedly no nearer solution than it was in the time of Plato. And yet during all these years, while doubt and despair respecting the hereafter have all but paralyzed the philosophers, faith and hope have buoyed up their very footmen with an unfaltering trust in immortality. "Blissful ignorance," has ever been the comment of these learned universe-builders from the cold heights of their intellectTiality. But is such trust to be called ignorance? Is it not rather a real possession of every normal soul? A possession lost to the pure intellectualist through the atrophy of powers usually scorned and ignored by him. Be this as it may, I boldly challenge the doc- * Let me not be misinterpreted, in this .strong passage, to discredit the authority of scripture; but even here, blind belief is but a poor crutch, especially since the Power that reveals truth through the voice of a prophet, is eager to reveal to me personally that the prophet has -spoken truly, if I will but ask in faith for such a testimony. . 582 IMPR YEMEN T ERA trine that "knowing" is purely a process of intellection. Hitherto, if measured in reference to the great enigmas of life, the Whence, the Why, and the Whither, it has brought only confusion to the world. In vain have men struggled to reduce the terms of this infinite problem to defiaite mental concepts. Their efforts have resulted at best only in the logic-mill, grinding away upon mere verbal symbols without corresponding thought content. However true and useful a guide in mathematics and in purely mundane affairs, reason has proved utterly inadequate as an anchor to the soul tossed on the ocean of infinity. Is not this because reason is but a fraction of the mental life? The old faculty psychology proved untenable as a scientific classification; but we still divide mind into intellect, feeling and will. Is it not time to recognize that there are truths which can be apprehended only by the undivided intelligence? Such truths, for instance, as the origin, meaning, and destiny of human life; the nature, being and attributes of God, and man's relationship to him; and other questions of pure ontology? At any rate, such will be the point of view of the discussion which fallows. As set forth in part one, the purpose of this paper is to examine the rational sanction for Heaven and Nirvana respectively; taking the latter notion to stand for individual extinction and the former for individual immortality. The thesis was there developed that all noteworthy systems of metaphysics, from Buddha to Fichte and his followers,— not even excluding Christian philosophers, however different their intentions, — supported the notion of human extinction; the negative sort, like that of Buddha and Schopenhauer respectively, culminating in extinction by anninilation; the positive sort, like those of Plato, John Scotus Erigena, and Hegel, in extinction by absorption into the being of God, considered as the only reality. Now, as was pointed out there, since individual immortality is the central doctrine of Christ's religion, a doctrine, moreover, which is taught dogmatically today from every Christian pulpit, the Church fathers should have been the last to entertain ontological concepts which render eternal life an impossibility for man. There was no need to make that compromise with Plato and the Greek dialecticians, which injected into Christianity a contradic- HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 588 tory system of thought, placing the head and heart at war, and leading to that species of souV-stultification which seeks to bridge alldilemmas by calling the intervening chasms "divine mysteries." There was no need, I repeat, to call in heathen thinkers to expound the "Mystery of Godliness;" for, though unamplified, there are, in the sacred writings, the norms of a philosophy which is entirely consistent with the common sense interpretation of the natural world, and which supports, step by step, the doctrine of immortality for man. Such a system of thought it becomes my pleasure to point out here, though necessarily in a very brief and fragmentary manner. Take first the idea of God as revealed in the Bible, From the first chapter of Genesis,. where he is represented as "walking in the garden in the cool of the evening," throughout the entire volume of Holy writ, to the last chapter in Revelations, where he is pictured as seated on the great white throne, he is everywhere set forth as the prototype of man. In his image man was created, and it is of him that Christ said, "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect," — an injunction which would be meaningless in view of pantheism. It is, in fact, hardly open to question whether any writer of scripture had other than the purely anthropomorphic idea of God the Father. Theologians affect to find in John's words: "God is a spirit," the transition from the localized Jehovah to the concept required by the Platonic philosophy; but such an interpretation is contradicted by numerous other references. For instance, in blessing little children Christ observes: "In heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven;" and to Philip who said, "Show us the Father," he replied: "Who hath seen me hath seen the Father." Paul, in commenting on this likeness between Father and Son, says of Christ that he is the "brightness of his Father's glory, the express image of his person," so that when the great apostle speaks of "one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ," he has by no means in view the pantheistic conception, but is thinking of Jehovah, the "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," in fact, of two beings sustaining a relationship to each other precisely like that of Abraham and Isaac. Passages which refer to God as an infinitely extended essence, are plainly referable to the Holy Ghost; as, for instance, one in . 584 IMPRO VEMENT ERA the 139th Psalm: "If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, —even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me." Another reference in point is the oft-quoted passage from Paul's speech on Mar's Hill "In him we live, and move, and have our : being." It is, in fact, the Holy Ghost which, as I shall try to show later, answers to the Go^ required by the idealistic philosophy. In order to maintain the Godhood of Jesus Christ, it becomes necessary to maintain the thesis that God is a Person. Moreover, all the observances of religion require the Father to be an incarnated being like unto man. It is only in this way that we can conceive ourselves as his children. The Lord's prayer is emptied of vital content, if addressed to a pantheistic deity. Indeed, prayer of any kind soon becomes perfunctory, where the mind, while praying, is contemplating an infinitely extended being, thinner than «ther, and "with centre everywhere and circumference nowhere;" for the motive of prayer is either gratitude or else an appeal to Providence. Gratitude to whom? By the pantheistic conception God is in you, —he is you!— just as he is also in yonder waving tree and flowery green sward, and is both tree and sward. Unless God is a being distinct from man, and can enter into relationship with him, even as one man with another, gratitude is meaningless. And so in like manner all the ideas surrounding the notion of Providence, as well as all the imagery and circumstantial detail which make up our notion of the life hereafter, become unthinkable, without the Christ- type of being for the eternal Father. And for this reason, no doubt, it happens in all live religions that, be their esoteric doctrines what they may, the objects of worship remain for the masses what the pages of holy writ portray them to be. Indeed, without such externalizations there could be no religion for ninety-nine men out of every hundred human beings; for, as Paul says: "He that coraeth to God must first believe that he is, and also that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." In other words, the Father must first be a Reality, not a metaphysical abstraction; and next a sympathetic HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 586 Reality, a rewarder, a providential help in time of need, or who would draw near unto him? But, on the other hand, there will probably also be in every religion certain wise (!) men,— philosophers, mahatmas, or whatnot, — who have "advanced." These, from their assumed spiritual heights, will concede, with pity and commiseration, the need of thus appealing to the naive understanding of the multitude. "My philosophy," exclaims Fichte, "is not common sense, if that is what you are seeking. I am dealing with pure reason." Hitherto such disdainful opinions of the common understanding have been suffered to pass at their own valuation, as the superior sneer is apt to. Let me, at least, record a vigorous protest against this high-blown pride of the so-called "pure reason." The really diseased understanding — if disease there be, — is in this eerie, impalpable upper story of the human race. The man who gets beyond the naive way of looking at the universe,— beyond that aspect which is presented to common sense,or the senses of the millions, — is very likely self-deceived. If the problem of existence is to get and to ke&p in touch with the universe, then he has evidently lost his hold; whether to grasp a higher reality, or merely to float about in a speculative atmosphere of his own creating, remains for time to unfold. In the meanwhile, life is too short to invest much in theories so vague and far-fetched. While in actual contact with mundane realities, through the medium of all his senses, it is plainly man's duty to make the most of this contact. The only time for progress is the here and now. Let this world of phenomena, this show- — world, if you please, be of what consistency it may, in its ultimate essence; the fact that it persists by definite laws, proclaims its use in the psyhic destiny of man; and the means whereby it may react upon his intelligence to the uplifting of his soul, is precisely this naive understanding, this endowment of common sense, and not the gossamer dreams of the idealist. Now, in the personality alike of the Father and the Son, a fact not only proclaimed by scripture, but sustained by the common sense of mankind, we have the fundamental norm of a philosophy of immortality. "Let God be true," exclaims Paul, "even though it make every man a liar." Let this fundamental fact stand, how- ; soever it ma}" clash with metaphysical theories. A concept held not only by every writer of the Bible but by Jesus Christ himself, ought not to have been torn out of the foundation of Christianity, by those who presumed to build the speculative superstructure. These half- converted pagan builders, ambitious to turn the world inside out, and disclose once for all its ineffable mysteries, were, however, manifestly nonplussed at so obvious a limitation of Deity. This man-God might indeed serve to stay and gather up the wonder of the unthinking multitude; but how predicate of him any of those infinite attributes which reason demands in the Creator of heaven and earth? We shall see presently how this notion of Deity works out in relation to the larger concepts of ontology; at this stage it will be well to point out its most far-reaching implications. If we accept the fact that the Father is the prototype of man, we cannot well escape the conclusion that he is likewise the apotheosis of man; in other words, that God and man belong to the same divine race, precisely as the tei-m "Father in heaven" would lead us to believe; and coHsequently, that what man now is, God once was ; and what God now is, man may become. Christ teaches such a doctrine expressly, when he bids man become perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect; and if his own interpretation of his life and mission may be trusted, he shows both by precept and example, how one man born of woman, a man as truly human — — which really means as truly divine as you or I in fact, our elder brother, not by grace of metaphor but by bond of eternal law; —how one man actually attained to the rank of the Father. Accepting the Bible concept of the Father and Son thus involves the correlated concept that mankind constitute the royal race of the universe; that for man creation bodies forth out of non-creation, and sinks back again when its end is served; that all things are as they are, directly or indirectly, with reference to his psychic evolotion. Contrast with this optimum view of man the estimate placed on human nature by the pantheistic theology. Here, for instance, is a thesis for a sermon on man's essential vileness and depravity as quoted by Austin Phelps, in his Theory oj Preaching: "Man, until HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 587 regenerated by the Almighty God, is absolutely einful; wholly an enemy to God, in all the faculties of his being, distorted, depraved, guilty and corrupt; so that no remnant of spiritual life remains in him, but he is dead in trespasses and sins, and an object of God's utter abhorrence." Water, it is said, tends to seek its level; man also, with thig difference: that man's level is a question of his ideals. Let him believe truly that he is a child of God, and given an eternity for growth and development, he will uplift himself to the level of his Eternal Father. But inspire him with such a conviction as that set forth in this quotation, and he will probably rest content when his mud stream reaches the level of the ooze-pond from which he believes himself to have originated. If any doubt should exist that this doleful estimate of man is a concomitant of pantheistic theology, we have only to look to the orient to discover a like self-abasement, resulting from similar ontological ideals. Nor does the dolefulness stop with man himself. Nature becomes vile, and society a thing to be shunned like pestilence. Picture St. Anthony, for instance, living for fifty years in a cave, and boasting that water had never touched his body, nor had his sheep skins been changed, save as they rotted and dropped off him. Then imagine this creature of a mistaken theology, with burred and matted locks, claw-like nails and encased in the grime of ages, dodging hither and yon on his journeys, lest his holiness should be polluted by a woman's eye! Returning to my theme, I may remark that this relationship between God and man as set forth in scripture evidently implies the eternal existence of the latter as of the former; in other words, each indivdiual man's co-existence with the universe. This fact is repeatedly affirmed in holy writ respecting the Father and the Son; who are themselves, by our hypothesis, only links in an eternally lengthening chain of perfected psychic beings. "Glorify thou me with the glory I had with thee before the world was," prayed our Savior, just previous to his crucifixion. So, on the eve of its "return to the God who gave it," might every soul pray in respect of a lesser glory of pre-earthly intelligence; for,respecting the existence of man prior to his earthly career, the scriptures are by no means silent. "For instance, Christ is called the 'first born among manybrethren,' (Rom. 8: 29) also the 'first-born of all creatures.' Manifestly, a first-born implies a second born, and if a second-born, then a millionth-born. Whence we draw the conclusion that Christ is our elder Brother; a conclusion further strengthened by Paul's remark, 'For both he that sanctifieth (Christ) and they who are sanctified (mankind) are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.' "This relationship between Savior and saved is made clearer by other passages. For instance, Paul says: 'Furthermore, we have had fathers in the flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence, shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?' (Heb. 17: 9.) And Christ taught all men to pray, 'Our Father, which art in heaven;' and lest there should be any doubt as to the significance of 'our' he says on another occasion: 'Say unto my brethren, I ascend to my Father and your Father; and to my God and to your God' (John 10: 17). Other passages might be quoted to sustain the common fatherhood of God, and the equal brotherhood of man with Jesus Christ. If, therefore, Christ had a pre-existence, it is fair to presume that his brethren and sisters also had one. "This latter fact becomes more than a presumption when we consider passages like this: 'Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying: Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou camest out of the womb, I sanctified thee and ordained thee a prophet unto the nations' (Jer. 1: 4, 5). Is it possible that such a commission could be made and the recipient not be in existence? John the Baptist was likewise chosen before his body was conceived upon the earth. So also was Ishmael; and so -well was his character as a spirit known, and the character of the spirits alotted to his lineage, that the angel said: 'His hand shall be against every man's hand, and every man's hand against him' (Gen. 16: 1) — a characteristic to which his race are true tothis day. "Nor is Jesus Christ the only being called Son of God. Adam is equally sonamed (Luke 3: 38). John says, moreover: 'Beloved, now we are sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be iike him; HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 5S9 for we shall see him as he is' (I John 3: 2); thus emphasizing the essential kinship of Christ and mankind. "Consider next the remarkable passage: 'Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy man, for I will demand of thee and answer thou roe: loins like a Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding.' "Job was evidently in existence at this — time a time when the earth was still in chaos — just as we have seen was the case with Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Ishmael and Jesus Christ. That the rest of mankind were also in that primeval state, is made plain by one of the next questions put by the Lord 'Or who laid the : corner-stone thereof, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?' (Job 38: 1-7). "Who could the sons of God have been other than the spirits begotten by our Father in heaven during pre-existence? — the very beings called sons of God afterward in their earthly estate. By no possibility of interpretation can the passage be made to at)ply to mortal beings; for the simple reason that the million (or billion) year epoch, represented by the genetic history of the earth, was just beginning. The figurative expression, "morning stars,*^ — would imply advanced spirits spirits brighter or more intelligent by reason of longer existence in the organized spiritual estate. The fact that Lucifer was called a son of the morning, gives additional color to this interpretation."* But the birth of the spirit into pre-mortal life was not the beginning of man. Indeed, there was no beginning; for as Jehovah described his own eternal nature in the words, "I am that I am,' so, if man belongs to the same divine race, we must assume that he is co-eternal with God. In a philosophy of individual immortality, it will be seen how strong is the concept that the essential principle in- man, the ego, had no beginning. "Strong," says the objector, "it is not only strong, it is the whole question: prove * Quoted from my book, the "Scientific Aspects of Mormonism," p. 325-327. that man's ego is eternal as to beginning, and it is but a change of words to say that man is immortal as to the end." This objection is not quite true; all that we can affirm from the assumption that man's ego had no beginning, is that it can have no end. But the ego is not the all of man. Let us discriminate seven stages (not Shakespeare's) in his psychic evolution. There is first primordial man, the naked ego, or a state of selfconsciousness devoid of power; second, the spiritual man, oi the ego born into a spiritual body. This is the state of pre-existence referred to in scripture, v/herein, by virtue of incarnation, man becomes a child subject to the "Father of spirits," as in the passage just quoted from Paul. Third, the mortal man, a temporary estate wherein the ego, plus its spiritual tabernacle, is incarnated into the body with which we are familiar. Fourth, the disembodied man, or the ego, plus its spiritual body, plus such changes in texture as mortality has wrought upon it. Fifth, the resurrected man a state resembling that of the risen Christ, who said: "Handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bone, as ye see me have." Sixth, the heavenly man, or the state of salvation, in which the €go with all the powers thus added to it, shall have eons of opportunity for psychic evolution, growing in the powers of Godhood by coming into creative relationship with all the works jf the eternal Father. Seventh, the divine man, or the state in which Christ's injunction shall be fulfilled: "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect;" having attained to all the powers of Godhood, such as are involved in the creation of a solar system, like our ow-n, and the peopling of a world with beings like ourselves. It will thus be seen how vastly different in quality is the immortality of the ego, which follows from assuming that it is coeternal with the universe, —and the immortality of man considered as having advanced to any of the stages beyond the first; for the primordial state is evidently one of colorless existence; it cannot be called life. It involves merely self-consciousness or the ability to say, This is I, this is not I. Whereas, the salvation of man at any stage after he becomes a child of God, means the immortality of the ego, plus its investment of the ever-enlarging powers of Deity, ranging in degree from the impotency of the naked ego, to the omnipotency of Godhood. On the other hand, his damnation HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 591 at any stage above the primordial, means the stripping from him of those powers to which he may have attained, and his reduction again to the primordial state. After that, being eternal, nothing in the universe can touch him further. Gathering up now the threads of this Bible philosophy, we see, first, that God and man belong to the same divine race; second, that at one extreme is God, the perfected man, endowed with creative powers, or omnipotence; third, that at the other extreme is man, an tternal, self-existent ego, endowed with the embryo potentialities of Godhood; fourth, that salvation signifies the movement upward from one state to the other, through the gradual accretion of psychic power. We are now face to face with the question of how the transformation from unembodied ego to Godhood takes place. If there be truth in this philosophy of progress, we may fearlessly appeal, for answer to this question, to present life experiences; for in the here and now are to be found all the elements of experience which stand for psychic growth, whether past, present or future. Looking around us, then, we find an environment which collectively we term the natural and the social world; this environment is vitally related to our intelligence on a physical, intellectual, a social, a moral, and a spiritual plane; that is to say, there is attrition between the ego and its environment along these various directions. This attrition yields power or lassitude, according as the will forms correspondences of superiority or inferiority toward it. Take, for instance, the physical environment. Summed up in its relation to man, we call it the science of physiology and hygiene. Whoever discovers the laws of physical vvell-being,and conforms his habits thereto, will be rewarded with vigorous health and perfect physical powers. Nor will this physical "^volution cease, till man's body shall be perfect as that of his Maker. But such physical growth implies a keen intelligence to apprehend law, and a dynamic will to live in accordance therewith. It involves, in other words, a ceaseless warfare against the drift tendency, the inertia, which at all points of our being tends to drag us downward. On the intellectual basis, to take another instance, this inertia makes it easier to read another's thought than to think for one's self; easier still to lead a mere vegetative existence. Here^ too, then, power is dependent upon victory over environment. In the social world it requires no less a ceaseless struggle with reactionary tendencies, in order to be decent and manly, to use Roosevelt's favorite phrase; while on the other hand, the path of the roue or debauchee is easy. Morally and spiritually, the world presents a magnificent environment for self-denial and altruism; but how hard are the approaches to godliness along these lines, —how easy the byways to selfishness, dishonesty and infidelity! Summed up, then, psychic evolution, or the approach to immortality, means two things: (1) the discovery of law as it affects man's well-being, either physically, intellectually, socially, morally, or spiritually, and (2) the resolute, unswerving obedience to the law so discovered. We may confidently aflirm that suiih was the law of progress previous to the present stage of life; such will be the law of progress in all future stages. Moreover, given eternity in which to study the harmony of the universe, and to conform thereto the order of our lives, we may with equal confidence aflSrm our ability to become perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. But this, our present world of trial, the only ladder by which we can rise, is no accident: it came here with us, and was probably provided for us; moreover, in the language of Job, we "shouted for joy" on that far-off morn of creation, in view, no doubt, of the use we should make of it. How account for this splendid environment, then? Science affirms the probability that there was a time when the solar system was not; which fact means, among other things, that the so-called universal law of gravitation was not at work, previous to a certain date, in that sphere of space now bounded by the orbit of Neptune. Who or what set moving this master wheel of creation, and fitted into its giant cogs, by ten thousand subsumptions of power, the forces great and small, which we now call the laws of nature? It is as Creator of our solar system, as Maker of the universe which immediately affects us, that we have need of the concept of God. Our sun, with its retinue of worlds, is practically the only universe which need concern us. And once upon a time this was not. Then it came, and since then exists by well-marked, orderly laws. Chance is at once eliminated from the problem. The ex- HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 593 planation of idealism seems to me equally fantastic. Until in the experience of mankind, some local cube or sphere of pure space shall exhibit the invention and execution involved in an act of creation, it will be but wild speculation to assume that an infinite cube or sphere could have set going our solar system. Whereas, the sum-total of man's experience in matters of creation, points to an Intelligence, infinitely beyond man's in degree, perhaps, but still, like his, an embodied Intelligence, and an incarnated will, as the efficient C,T,use of our present world. Such a Being answers to the Bible concept of our Father in heaven. We have thus the answer as to who provided the enviroment fitted to our present psychic needs, and also a hint as to why it was provided. Let us stop a moment to sense the significance of this tremendous fact, viz., that perhaps nowhere else in the universe is there just that adaptation of the objective world, which would be fitted to call out or evolve the potentiality of Godhood within us. It means that we are now in the highest heaven for which our present spiritual evolution fits us. Such, indeed, is the Here and Now of any stage in progres3,when rightly understood. The laws discoverable in our enviroment are thus seen to be expressions of the will of God towards us his children. Philosophy, therefore, brings us face to face with the Bible doctrine, that salvation comes by keeping his commandments. But how vastly enhanced by this conception is the content of that word! Instead of a few desultory injunctions of holy writ, we have now, beside these, the whole of nature and life to study and obey as his will. The motive for creation being thus set forth, it remains to say a word about the method. Space is taken for granted a : spaceless universe is inconceivable, idealists to the contrary notwithstanding. The material for world-building, be this what it may, in its ultimate essence, is also assumed to be self-existent, eternal and indestructible, just as the law of the conservation of energy demands that it shall be. Required, then, an infinite medium impressible by the divine will, here to shape world-material into a blazing sun, there to form a dew-drop, or fashion the diatom which shall live in it and multiply before the sun comes out to re-absorb its evanescent fluid. Such a medium is the "infinite and eternal energy" of Herbert Spencer, or the Holy Ghost of the Bible. Out of either, through differentiation, comes, by the will of the Almighty, all the forces, psychic or physical, which can touch or shape the soul of man; whence we may regard them as one and the same infinite reservoir of life or mother essence of creation, though looked at from different points of view by prophet and scientist respectively. What stirs this primordial ocean of force, so that systems of worlds shall rise therein, with all their manifold variations of the one eternal unity? The answer is Godhood, or the power that constitutes our Father in heaven God. In what, then, by this philosophy, does Godhood consist? In just that completed accumulation of power of which mortal life furnishes us a small arc; in the full fruition of that psychic evolution of which the physical evolution of science is but the development of the husk or shell. Godhood is the causative or creative principle of the universe; an entity as absolute, eternal, and unfathomable as being itself, or space and time, the concomitants of being. Without this power, God, the perfected man, might indeed invent a solar system, but he could never objectify it. On the other hand, as before observed, without the mind and will of God as originator and executive, the power itself would slumber in the bosom of space inert throughout eternity. The two combined constitute God the eternal Father, Creator of our earth and all that dwells upon its bosom. Moreover, it follows that man, as a child of God, begins already to approach Godhood to the extent that he is creative, or thought compelling; bearing in mind, however, that as yet his utmost endeavor reaches no higher than the reshaping, into dead forms, of materials already drawn out of the formless universe by the Creator. In the heaven to come, we shall by no means be occupied in singing psalms and thrumming upon golden harps, any more than we are so occupied in the heaven of the here and now. But as in this life it is the form of things mainly which is open to our investigation, so in that to come the soul or life of things will probably form the subject of our studies. Immortality, as already pointed out, is for ceaseless endeavor toward psychic perfection; which endeavor, as we have seen, stands for the discovery of law. HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 695 and the conforming of our lives thereto; the first leading to scientific work such as we can scarcely conceive of here, and the second to that gradual accretion of personal character and power which is at any given moment, the measure of our status in the universe. Such, then, is the rehabilitation of Jehovah, who, thanks to the labors of the "higher critics," occupies in the philosophic literature of today the undignified plane of Yaveh,the mere tribal deity of a people who lived adjacent to ancient Israel; such the real meaning of a Bible concept which, because it does not coincide with the vague, attenuated notions of modern idealism, is spoken of apologetically by even the devoutest of so-called advanced Christians. Small wonder,where pantheism is held up as the ultimate standard of religious ideas, that historical scholars make short work of the Bible and all its concepts, from the limited personal Creator of the world, and the equally limited personal Savior of mankind, to the doctrine of salvation by individual immortality. And yet had the early Christian thinkers been true, in their philosophizing, to the norms of Christ's religion, the work of the modern scriptural iconoclast would have been very much narrowed. For instance, it would not have availed to hold that Christ was not divine because he was so palpably human ; for to be truly human is to be normally approaching the divine. Nor could the inspiration of the sacred writings have been successfully questioned, because they are manifestly not free from the imperfections incident to the minds which reflected that inspiration. In like manner, critics would find it hard to level logical objections against the efficacy of prayer, or the doctrine of divine providence in the affairs of men; for by this Bible philsophy, our faith may rationally return to those numerous records concerning God, which the "higher criticism" is fain to make us class among "hallucinations." We may, for instance, believe that God talked with Adam, as one man to another; that he gave directions to Noah for building an ark; that he wrote with his finger the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone; that he instructed Moses how to build the Tabernacle in the wilderness: that he spoke to the High priest once a year out of the Ark of the covenant; that it was his real voice which spoke at Christ's baptism that the resurrection of Jesus was an actual- ; ity; that the vision of Stephen, the first martyr, was real and objective, when he beheld the Father, with Jesus standing on his right hand; that Paul actually saw a light and heard the voice of the risen Redeemer; that the visions of Isaiah and Daniel, Peter and John the Revelator, corresponded with objective realities, either actual or symbolical. In short, we may still believe in the Christian religion, with its gospel of communication between God and man, and its hope of immortality, if we can again believe in the Christian cosmogony; for in a philosophy where God, angels, and men represent but varying degrees of psychical evolution of one and the same race, there the objections no longer hold, which have all but reduced the religion of Jesus to a vague, thinly- diluted spirit of charity supervening upon life in general; instead of leaving it, as Christ intended, a virile scheme of salvation, co-ordinating, vitalizing, and directing the development of every activity of the human soul, whether physical, intellectual, social, moral, or spiritual, to the end that man may be fitted for the only social order that can endure throughout eternity. We come, then, to the question. Will reason permit us to hold such a philosophy? If every man is a potential Creator, then we are driven to the conception that the number obtaining this power may be infinite, which means that there is neither beginning nor end to the chain of individual being.. Space will not permit of developing this aspect at length. Sufl^ce it to say that as our conception of the universe must ever be that of unity,so we must conceive the psychic power which calls the formed and limited out of the formless and limitless as no less one, eternal and absolute. How then can such categories be predicated of a being like Jehovah, or Jesus Christ?* The answer is, that they are true of Godhood, and therefore true of God, the being who attains to Godhood. It is thus that the One and the Many are reconciled. The One is the infinite power or essence, co-extensive with the universe, which, if left to itself, must remain inertly homogeneous throughout eternity, hav- * For a full diseussion of this question, see seven chapters beginning on page 232 in Scientific Aspects of Mormonism, which go into all the objections that can be urged against the Bible idea of God. HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 597 ing no creative invention nor power of initiative. The Many are beings like ourselves, but psychically perfect; that is to say, beings who have come into perfect harmony with the One, or into a unity such as that which is predicated in the scriptures of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is among such beings that creations originate— beings whose minds command matter; and to one such being, Jehovah, and one only, that man owes allegiance as the Creator and sustainer of our world and all that live upon it. Or as Paul puts it: "We know * * * that there is no God but one; for though there be that are called Gods, whether in heaven, or on earth— as there are Gods many and Lords many—jet to us there is but one God. the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him." And now as to my conclusion. I am well aware that the philosopher must not ground his system on any ipse dixit whatever, even though it be a text in scripture, and assume thereby to have reached a finality; for however much a scriptural foundation might appeal to faith, it must stand entirely on its own merit in respect of reason. Let us, therefore, briefly compare the validity of the premises underlying this philosophy of immortality with those underlying the systems which culminate in individual extinction. By Buddha's system, the final essence of the universe is Nirvana, the negation of existence or nothingness; or by the more positive interpretation of his concept, it is the negation of phenomenal existence. Plato's ultimate reality is Thought or Idea divorced from all phenomenal expression. Spinoza's finality is Absolute being, which makes itself finite by two attributes, thought and extension. Berkeley's notion was that God is the All-in-all, the Noumena behind all phenomena. Fichte regarded the universe as absolute Mind, which in order to create must become self-conscious, thereby positing the ego and the non-ego. Hegel's absolute is Reason, which, through the upward movements of nature, becomes self-conscious in mind. Schopenhauer found the moving entity of the universe to be Will. Observe that the premises of all these systems are assumptions, pure and simple. Being ultimate notions, i. c, the largest wholes capable of hypostasis, they are necessarily beyond the range of experience, and therefore problematical, to say the least. Spencer reduces them all to one negative term, the unknow- — able. Idealism may thus be said to proceed by assuming some fact concerning an entity beyond comprehension, and then spinning out its web of thought till, in some fashion or other, it enmeshes the facts of the phenomenal world. Now, the philosophy so hastily sketched in this paper reverses this process. Instead of proceeding from the unknown (not to say unknowable) to the known, it grounds its fundamental concepts in experience. God the Father may be regarded, from the purely philosophic point of view.as the apotheosis of man, and heaven and immortality are merely extensions, by known laws of evolution, of conditions actually in operation here on earth. In short, it proceeds by the methods of science, in so far as demonstration will carry it, then judges of the darkness beyond by the laws of analogy. Does it not seem reasonable that, if man cannot, from the arc of earthly experience, construct a philosophy which shall satisfy his hopes and aspirations respecting the rest of the circle of being, he is deluding himself to philosophize at all? But the premises of this philosophy are superior in another respect. Setting aside the question whether they gain in authority by reason of divine sanction, it will at least be admitted that they represent the consciousness of a mighty people. Not only did the Hebrew nation so conceive the norms from which we may reason to immortality, but in some form or other they persist in the naive understanding of every people on earth, not even excepting those countries where the speculations of Buddha are common as table talk. Whereas, on the other hand, really to apprehend the premises of idealism requires a power of mental involution which practically leaves the system a profound mystery for the masses. By how much the one cosmogony is more an ethnic product than the other, by so much may its premises be the more safely trusted. Which last thought brings me again to the attitude taken in the introduction to this paper, viz , that life, in its larger relation to the universe, is not something to be apprehended by pure rea-