Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/65

 It is essential at the outset to distinguish different degrees of truth as well as of substances. There is earth, air, and ether illustrative of successively higher degrees. There are scientific truths, civil truths, and spiritual truths. The truths of natural science are the lowest, for they appertain to the earth, matter, and material forms. If man lives in harmony with natural science, it will be conducive to health. Civil truths are of a higher order for they govern the relations of men. If all live according to these, there will be added to health liberty, peace, and the profits and pleasures of social intercourse. Spiritual truths are still higher, for they govern motives, and cleanse the mind from injurious thoughts and desires. They bring, in addition to health and the profits of orderly civil life, purity of mind and heart and the consequent deeper and sweeter joys of life. Yet in no way are scientific, civil, and spiritual truths antithetical. Indeed, they are mutually helpful, one augmenting the other; for one can not exist in any degree of fulness without the other. They serve one another as do the bones, the muscles, and the nerves in the body. The science of religion, in the. broadest and most complete form, embraces all these kinds of truths. The philosophy of religion may be properly considered as composed of all degrees of truth