Key to the Science of TheologyPratt, Parley P. (Parley Parker)
Religion
Key to the Science of Theology
Pratt, Parley P. (Parley Parker)
Latter Day Saint churches; Latter Day Saint churches -- Doctrines
Let us pause, and contemplate, for a moment, such a being taking leave
of the confines of the earth, and sea, and clouds, and air, with all
their dark and gloomy shadows. Behold him as he speeds his way on the
upper deep, and launches forth in the clear and boundless expanse
bespangled with millions of resplendent orbs.
He calculates his distance, and regulates his course by observing the
relative position of those most familiar to him, and soaring upwards
still, his bosom swells with an unutterable and overwhelming sensation
of the infinitude of his own eternal being, and of all around, above,
below him, till unable to contain his gratitude, and joy, and
exultation, he breaks forth in the language of a celebrated British
poet, and sings as he flies--
"Heavens broad day hath o'er me broken,
Far above earth's span of sky!
Am I dead? Nay, by this token,
Know that I have ceased to die!"
Planets will be visited, messages communicated, acquaintances and
friendships formed, and the sciences vastly extended and cultivated.
The science of geography will then be extended to millions of worlds,
and will embrace a knowledge of their physical features and
boundaries, their resources, mineral and vegetable; their rivers,
lakes, seas, continents and islands; the attainments of their
inhabitants in the science of government; their progress in revealed
religion; their employments, dress, manners, customs, &c. The science
of astronomy will also be enlarged in proportion to the means of
knowledge. System after system will rise to view in the vast field of
research and exploration! Vast systems of suns and their attendant
worlds, on which the eyes of Adam's race, in their rudimental sphere,
have never gazed, will then be contemplated, circumscribed, weighed in
the balance of human thought, their circumference and diameter be
ascertained, their relative distances understood. Their motions and
revolutions, their times and laws, their hours, days, weeks, sabbaths,
months, years, jubilees, centuries, millenniums and eternities, will
all be told in the volumes of science.
The science of history will embrace the vast "univercoelum" of the
past and present. It will in its vast compilations, embrace and
include all nations, all ages, and all generations; all the planetary
systems in all their varied progress and changes, in all their
productions and attributes.
It will trace our race in all its successive emigrations, colonies,
states, kingdoms and empires; from their first existence on the great,
central, governing planet, or sun, called Kolob, until they are
increased without number, and widely dispersed and transplanted from
one planet to another, until, occupying the very confines of
infinitude, the mind of immortal, eternal man, is absorbed,
overwhelmed, wearied with the vastness, the boundless expanse of
historic fact, and compelled to return and retire within itself for
refreshment, rest and renewed vigour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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