The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880Various
Religion
The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880
Various
Religion and science -- Periodicals
"The foundation principle of substance is that law of the human mind by
which every quality or mode of being is referred to a substance," or the
consciousness of a cause for every effect. "In everything which we
perceive or can imagine as existing, we distinguish two parts, qualities
variable and multiplied; and a being one and identical; and these two
are so united in thought that we can not separate them in our
intelligence, nor think of qualities without a _substance_." So it is a
self-evident or first truth, that there is a subjective or inner man
which thinks, reflects and reasons, for memory recalls to us the many
modes of our mind; its many qualities and conditions. What variety of
mental conditions have we not experienced? These are all so many
evidences of an internal _substance_ that we call spirit. That spirit is
to be distinguished from thought as cause is from effect is evident; and
also from matter lying in the accident or quality of body, is certain,
from the fact of its being subject to such rapid and instantaneous
changes of condition. Amidst all the different modes, qualities, or
accidents of mind, we believe ourselves to be the same individual being;
and this conviction is the result of that law of thought which always
associates qualities with things.
In the world around us phenomena, qualities or accidents are continually
changing, but we believe that these, all, are produced by causes which
_remain, as substances, the same_. And as we know ourselves to be the
causes of our own acts, and to be able to change, within a moment, the
modes of our own mind, so we believe the changes of matter, which take
place _more slowly_, to be produced by causes which belong to the
_substances of matter_. And underlying all causes, whether of the
qualities of matter or mind, we conceive of one absolute cause, one
substance, in itself persistent and upholding all things in nature. This
substance we are pleased to call spirit; and this spirit we call God. To
deny this is to strike down a grand law of thought, the foundation
principle of substance, and make the testimony of our own consciousness
A LIE! The inorganic forces, about which "unbelievers" have so much to
say are altogether operative in the realm of _substance_; that is to
say, they belong to the _invisible_. Organic and inorganic are the same
as visible and invisible. We know matter by its qualities, and we know
mind by its qualities. These two, in qualities or attributes, contrast
with each other like life and death. One is extenuated and the other
extended; one is invisible the other is visible. Of the existence of
these substances and their laws we have evidence in conscious knowledge,
in that we know that we have no control over the involuntary or
sympathetic nervous system, and have the most perfect control over the
voluntary nerves. The forces controlling are as different as these
qualities themselves. If man is simply a material organism, why this
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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