Art Magic

The Fall of Man is but the shadow of a still diviner truth, the substance of which is - The Fall of Spirit. All existence originates in Spirit. As the curious mechanism of the clock, the ship, the steam-engine, are all creations first of the mechanical mind, in which their several parts are contained ere they can become reduced to a material expression, so the clockwork of the sideral heavens, the worlds which sail through the oceans of space, and the mechanism of every organized form, from the rounding of a dewdrop to the complicated structure of a man, must have had their origin in mind. Since mind is but an attribute of Will, and Will is Spirit, we cannot escape from the conclusion that the creation of the physical universe is but the expression of a spiritual idea. The creation of a physical man is no more, no less. The human race is the external expression of a spiritual idea, because ideas must originate with spirit ere they can be expressed in matter. The watch, the ship, the steam-engine are as much genuine creations of the soul before as after they are modeled out in matter. Should they never be thus incarnated, they have been, and are, and ever will remain, in the imperishable realm of spiritual entities.

Matter creates nothing. It is only the mold which Spirit uses to externalize its ideas for the sake of external uses.

The things which will appear as new inventions, the methods of science which will take their places as new discoveries on earth in ages yet unborn, are all in imperishable existence now and ever have been in the eternal realms of spirit. Can man be exempt from this universal law of procedure?

Man, who is the microcosm of being, the conservator of all forms of force, all varieties of matter - can he be the sole exception to the all-embracing order of Divine procedure? Only in the superstitious and unscientific belief of the bigot, or the scarcely less unreasonable blindness of materialism. Man was a spirit ere he was born into matter.

In the primordial conditions of planetary life, creatures so finely organized as man could not be sustained, hence long ages of preparatory growth were essential to fit this or any earth for his reception.

When matter had been sufficiently laborated by the successive births and destructions of millions of generations of organized beings in the vegetable and animal kingdom, the earth awaited the advent of a still higher and nobler creature than any that had yet appeared; one who should in its perfection and microcosmic powers finish the work of creation, cap the climax of animated being, and close up the succession of mortal forms by the introduction of an immortal being. The earth called for a man, and he came. He was already an immortal existence, a spirit; not a perfected, self-conscious, individualized entity, but a bright, luminous emanation of the Divine mind. He was the Divine idea in the shape of the man that should be. Angelic in essence, spiritual in substance, he lived in a paradise appropriate to him, pure and innocent, but still wholly lacking in those elements of love, wisdom, and power which can be perfected alone through incarnation in a material body, and progress through probationary states.

That man existed as a pure spiritual being, a sinless paradisaical unit, previous to his incarnation in a material body, is not only the opinion of those sages of antiquity who studied from the original books of life, rather than from records made and altered to suit the purposes of successive generations of interested priests, but it is the witness of the human spirit itself ere it became bent and perverted by theological myths, or its memories were dimmed by time and the more vivid impressions of mortal experiences. In every primordial condition of the human family the belief in a fall or descent of the spirit from heaven to earth from purity to transgression, is an unquenchable element in man's nature. Belief it can scarcely be called; it is a memory, growing fainter and fainter as it receeds from its source, but still an indestructible link of connection in that chain of destiny which has finally incarnated the soul in a mortal body.

We shall close this section by citations from some few out of the countless host of authoritative minds who have favored the opinions herein announced as the rationale of the first act in the Divine drama of human existence.