Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/244

218 takes in new views, in which nature becomes Spirit; and Spirit is God, and God is good. Science unfolds the fact that Deity was forever Mind, Spirit; that matter never produced Mind, and vice versa.

The visible universe declares the invisible only by reversion, as error declares Truth. The testimony of material sense in relation to existence is false; for matter can neither see, hear, nor feel, and mortal mind must change all its conceptions of life, substance, and intelligence, before it can reach the immortality of Mind and its ideas. It is erroneous to accept the evidence of the material senses whence to reason out God, when it is conceded that the five personal senses can take no cognizance of Spirit or of its phenomena. False realistic views sap the Science of Principle and idea; they make Deity unreal and inconceivable, either as mind or matter; but Truth comes to the rescue of reason and immortality, and unfolds the real nature of God and the universe to the spiritual sense, which beareth witness of things spiritual, and not material.

To begin with, the notion of Spirit as cause and end, with matter as its effect, is more ridiculous than the “grin without a cat;” for a grin expresses the nature of a cat, and this nature may linger in memory: but matter does not express the nature of Spirit, and matter's graven grins are neither eliminated nor retained by Spirit. What can illustrate Dr. ——'s views better than Pat's echo, when he said “How do you do?” and echo answered, “Pretty well, I thank you!”

Dr. —— says: “The recognition of teleology in nature is necessarily the recognition of purely spiritual personality in God.”