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LETTER V.
On The Formation Of The Union
Of The Congregations Of
Israelites In The United States.
(Exposition Of The Divine Plan
For The Government Of Man,
Continued.)
Genesis.
The object in creating this
earth, was obviously to stock it with myriads of
beings to whom their Creator would dispense his
bounties, according as He should capacitate each of
the recipients to partake of them.
To man, as the chief of those
beings, was to be allotted, not only superior
enjoyments and happiness here; but a higher and more
blissful hereafter was to be proffered to him, for
which the other creatures appear to have been
neither qualified nor intended.
In order to induce man to
become a candidate for that higher state of
existence, the divine attributes were made known to
him, that through witnessing their beneficent
operation on the creation, as doubtless was
explained to him, he might be awakened to, and
impressed with a sense of those sublime elementary
truths and principles that form the proper aliment
for his soul, and which are inaccessible to any but
a spiritual nature.
The emotion the display of so
much goodness would create in his breast; the
swelling notes that struck his ear, as the feathered
choristers poured forth their morning song, as of
thanksgiving; and the other evidences that presented
themselves of the dumb creatures even not being
totally unconscious of a Benefactor to whom they
owed their pleasurable feelings, would no doubt
incite the first man likewise to adore the great and
good Author of all he saw and felt, and dispose him
to devote his time wholly in meditating on his
beneficence.
But as, during his sojourn
here, the attending to his earthly wants would
preclude man from being able to employ his thoughts
solely on ethereal contemplations, the seventh day*
was already set apart, sanctified as the Sabbath,
or day of rest, and specially consecrated to the
<<204>>holy, pleasurable, and soul-sustaining
occupation of dwelling on the divine attributes, and
preserving the remembrance of the revealed unity of
Him who had created the heavens and the earth.
There remained yet another want
to be supplied for enabling man fully to perform the
part assigned him when made in the likeness of his
Maker.
By contemplating the
beneficence extended to the creatures below him, he
comprehended, that he, too, must mercifully and
beneficently use the dominion given him over them;
but, though a grateful duty to perform, this was far
from being sufficient to satisfy his cravings for
objects upon and for whom he might exercise the
faculty conferred upon him, and dispense higher
degrees of beneficence than those creatures were
capable of appreciating.
The first man was solitary in
his kingdom! He had no kindred nature to whom he
might impart his joyous sensations, when meditating
on the immeasurable goodness of his Creator. He
wanted a companion on whom to lavish loving-kindness
and tenderness; one, over whose happiness and
well-being he might unwearingly watch; who could
sympathize with him, and reciprocate his feelings,
hold sweet converse on heavenly things, and join him
in daily offering the flowings of a grateful heart
to the Source of the gushing happiness he
experienced. “But for Adam there was not found a
help meet for him.”*
This want, which had been
foreseen, was speedily supplied;† and when
presented with her whose company rendered all that
in nature was beautiful to appear yet more
charming—enhancing tenfold his previous blessings,
he perceived at once, how well sorted was her nature
to his, and he rapturously exclaimed, This is,
indeed, a help meet for me! a second but far fairer
self!
From the lips of Adam, the first mother of the
human race would learn all that he himself had been
taught. Conducted by him,
the wonders and beauties of the creation are pointed
out to her. Her admiration excited, expresses itself
in her sweet musical tones, renewing in him the
sensations he felt when first receiving the
instructions he was now imparting to his fair
partner.‡ Traversing the extensive precincts of
Eden, they reach the midst in which are placed the
tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil.§ There the husband relates the divine
permission to eat freely of every tree of the
garden, <<205>>the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil alone excepted; with the warning, that on the
day he eat thereof he should surely die.
At the conclusion of Letter
IV., this command was adverted to as being given to
test the obedience of the first pair, as the fruit
of the education they had received. It had, however,
the farther object of instructing them on things
that, as yet, had not been taught them.
Up to this point, the divine
attributes and their beneficent operation, had been
fully disclosed, for the purpose of awakening the
soul to the beauties and harmonies of the creation,
and to a sense of the benevolence that actuated the
Creator in calling the whole into existence.
The foundation thus laid, for
inspiring love, creating faith, and instilling a
proper fear, as grounds for inducing a cheerful
obedience to the commands of his Maker, had prepared
man for the next and most important step in his
education.
The tree of life; the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil;* the serpent’s
seducing Eve from her duty;† the sentence pronounced
upon the man and woman, and upon their deceiver,
even when taken literally, convey lessons not to be
misunderstood by the meanest capacity. For they
plainly inculcate the obligation of unhesitatingly
obeying whatever our Maker commands, without
stopping presumptuously to question their propriety.
It warns us, likewise, of the fatal consequences
attending the deviating from the strict line of
duty, however plausible the reasons we give
ourselves for doing so.
Divine wisdom is apparent, as
having inspired the recording of so instructive a
lesson in terms suited to the comprehension of an
infant’s mind; yet, we are not forbidden to
endeavour, in a proper spirit, to sound the profound
depths of this most important portion of the
revealed divine economy; and if, in treating it,
resort be had to the considering of the principles
it involves as clothed in allegories, a mode
frequently used in the Scriptures for similar
purposes, the same conclusions will, nevertheless,
present themselves as though the whole had been
taken literally.
The life led by the first pair,
while in a state of innocence, was doubtless
calculated to give them a foretaste of heavenly
bliss; but that this could not be the universal nor
constant lot of any portion of their progeny, with
which the earth was to be replenished, could not but
be foreseen by infinite Prescience.
It has been already noticed,
that, in the creation, good and evil,<<206>>
physical and moral, are mingled; the former,
however, greatly predominating.
The contrasts continually
presented by this constitution of things, appear to
have been ordained, in order the more strongly to
impress man with the sublimity and beauty of the
elementary truths and principles that form the
attributes of the godhead. For this, probably, was
the faculty given to man, that, through the free
will bestowed on him, he might, if perversely
disposed, deviate from the straight line of his
duty,—might inflict evils on himself and on his
fellow-men! whence, when collected together in the
social state, contests and struggles would arise
calling for their energies, and preventing life from
stagnating;—giving occasion, too, for appeals to
Heaven’s justice, as the sole remaining hope to
obtain redress for wrong committed upon each other;
thus affording a powerful incentive to keep Him in
remembrance who reigns supreme over all flesh.
Be means of these contrasts,
man becomes more vividly impressed with the value
and beauty of the principles founded on the divine
attributes; for justice is more accurately
appreciated by its reverse, injustice, being
experienced,—vice appears more hideous by the
contemplation of the charms of virtue,—purity of
thoughts and conduct more loved by being compared
with impurity, as exhibited in the disgusting forms
accompanying man’s moral degradation.
Thus the soul, even here, would
imbibe and become disciplined in the elements of
that purity and holiness which fit it for a
spiritual existence.
Again, in the uncertainty of
seasons,—the war of the elements,—the throws of the
earth, threatening by earthquakes to shatter it to
atoms,—the hostility of animals, one kind preying
upon another,—though all framed in wisdom, and on
the broad basis of universal benevolence and
justice, are more especially intended to warn man,
that, notwithstanding his supremacy on earth, he is
himself dependent upon and accountable to Him who
has so distinguished him above all other creatures;
to remind him, that He, who from nothing had called
a universe into existence, could again reduce it to
its original nothingness; that, dispensing his
bounties was a prodigal hand, He likewise can, and
does frequently, withhold them, in order, that when
perishing, body and soul, for want of his
countenance and support, we may be preserved from
presumptuously imagining we can live apart from Him,
or dispense with his care and guidance.
The possibility of man’s
falling into this, to him the most fatal of errors,
had not been overlooked by his Maker. It was
foreknown that <<207>>the freedom of thought and
action conferred upon him, would, when perverted to
ill uses, not only produce his misery here, but
likewise cause his spiritual death. Hence the
parental solicitude evinced for imbuing him with
faith in the wisdom and goodness of God, as man’s
most effectual safeguard against the committing of
so serious an error; for, holding fast by faith, he
would, through love and fear unitedly operating upon
him, adhere to the commands and instruction of his
Maker,—avoiding all acts, and even thoughts, that
would compromise his happiness here, and his soul’s
existence hereafter.
To Adam, instruction upon these
high truths might have been, and probably was,
conveyed in terms similar in substance, but
infinitely superior to any in man’s humble power to
command, for explaining this important portion of
the divine economy.
Taking the relation given in
the Scriptures as figurative, Eden may be supposed
to represent an epitome of the earth, with its
inhabitants, of all kinds, collected together, and
constituted, from their origin, as they are now
found to be. The beneficence of the Creator would
there be made manifest to the first man, in that
which was evidently good, as in that apparently, and
by short-sighted mortals, deemed evil. The planting
of the tree of the knowledge, of good and evil, in
the midst of the garden, implying, that in the
beautiful and more extensive Eden—the world—evil, in
accordance with the divine plan, is an ingredient
necessarily mixed up with good.
Holding fast by faith, man,
when contemplating the discrepancies that on all
sides presented themselves, would never, for a
moment, question the wisdom and goodness that had so
willed them. As soon as the thought entered his
mind, that the creation might have been constructed
upon a wiser and juster plan,—so soon as he
foolishly and querulously finds fault with that
which it has pleased his Maker to establish, that
instant is he spiritually dead! He has separated
himself from his God, by thinking unworthily of
Him,—and ends, by even hating Him that formed him!
Hence, he will neither desire, nor be capable to
hold communion with his holy spirit, by which he
commits spiritual suicide.
The greater firmness of texture
in Adam’s frame, might have preserved him from
falling into errors of so fatal a nature; the weaker
and more susceptible nature of his partner, rendered
her more liable to it. Her native sensitiveness
would occasion her to feel acutely the apparent
evils that entered into the divine plan; she may
have become perplexed at witnessing discrepancies,
upon the general bearing and <<208>>beneficent
effects of which the very tenderness of her heart
would preclude her exercising a sound and
dispassionate judgment.
Eve was not sufficiently strong
in faith, and, reasoning as many too often do at
this day, she fell! Not only does she herself eat of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but,
insinuating into her husband’s mind the doubts that
had perplexed her own, he also took and eat
thereof.*
The death denounced as the
penalty of man’s disobedience, could have had
reference to no other than a spiritual death; for we
do not find that immediate corporeal death followed
the act. The Hebrew text is, literally, and as we
think it ought here and in similar passages of the
Scripture to have been rendered, “Dying, thou shalt
die,” as meaning to convey, that on dying the death,
to which man’s organization subjects his body, in
obedience to a law common to all organic matter, in
order to make room for other beings, Adam should
cease likewise to exist in respect to the spiritual
nature given to him when created; for by another law
affecting the spirit or soul of man, unless while
united to the body, it became awakened, sustained,
and kept alive by its appropriate nutriment, it
would, on the body’s dissolution, lose all
consciousness of a pre-existent state.
Matter, so long as it may
please God to uphold it, is not destined to utter
annihilation, though constantly changing its form;
and this is the case likewise with man’s corporeal
frame. The spiritual principle may have been
subjected to some such law; once called into
existence, it may, like matter, be intended to exist
after separation from the body, in perfect
consciousness of identity, if, while united to the
body, it had been kept alive by the aliment
necessary for qualifying it for a spiritual state or
world. If not so qualified, then to be at the
disposal of its Creator, who, it may reasonably be
supposed, does no more utterly annihilate this finer
principle, than He does the comparatively gross
constituent elements of bodies after destruction of
their form, but uses it for his beneficent purposes:
into which, however, we are forbidden to inquire.†
This doctrine will be found to
solve many difficulties connected with the nature of
the soul of man with that principle which enables
all animals to evince a faculty to think, and even
to reason in a limited degree, and to the subject of
rewards and punishments in a future state.
(To be continued.) |
