NOTES TO PROPOSITION IV.

NOTE TO DEMONSTRATION: NOTE A.

"The Supreme Being finds eternal rest and satisfaction in himself. The well-springs of his happiness are in his own nature: even his infinite understanding can conceive nothing greater and more excellent; and of everything external he is so independent as not to be affected by its existence or annihilation. In the possession of his own resources, he is consummately and permanently blessed; and hence the Scripture calls him the happy God, the happy and only Potentate, the Being who has in himself an inexhaustible store of felicity."-Dick: Lecture xx. vol. i. p. 363.

NOTE TO DEMONSTRATION: NOTE B.

"Had not the Divine nature been communicative, God would have remained for ever alone; but now he beholds from his throne a scale of beings, ascending from the insect and the worm to the seraph and the archangel, all rejoicing in conscious existence, and partaking of the riches of his liberality. The eternal fountain has overflowed, and the universe is refreshed and gladdened by its stream. It is the saying of a heathen philosopher, that when God was about to make the world, he transformed himself into love.”—Dick: Lecture xxv. vol. i. p. 431.

NOTE TO DEMONSTRATION: NOTE C.

"The preservation of all things”—our Dr Dick informs us—“has been called a continual creation. The idea intended is, that as their existence is dependent, it is prolonged from moment to moment by the same power which created them at first."-Lecture xxiii. vol. i. p. 419

NOTE TO DEMONSTRATION: NOTE D.

"Love is the same with benevolence or good will, a desire for the happiness of others giving rise to the use of due means for accomplishing it.”—Dick: Lecture xxiv. vol. i. p. 444.

NOTE TO DEMONSTRATION: NOTE E.

A friend, who has an extremely delicate perception in many spiritual matters, has directed my attention to a place in The Divine Comedy, as containing thoughts in unison with matter occurring in several of the sections in this demonstration. "Tis, I allow, adjoining immortal verse to mortal prose to use the great Italian Poem in this connection. The lines referred to occur in the 28th Canto of the Paradise; and they shall be produced as mauled and mangled in the blank verse of our British Cary. No blank verse, perhaps, could meet the exigencies of that poetry in the terza rima, and the translator into English, without rhyme, must frequently expose the inadequacy of his organ.

Every orb,

Corporeal, doth proportion its extent

Unto the virtue through its parts diffus'd.

THE GREATER BLESSEDNESS PRESERVES THE MORE.

The greater is the body (if all parts

Share equally) the more is to preserve.

Therefore the circle, whose swift course enwheels

The universal frame, answers to that

Which is supreme in knowledge and in love.

Thus by the virtue, not the seeming breadth

Of substance, measuring, thou shalt see the heav'ns,

Each to th' intelligence that ruleth it,

Greater to more, and smaller unto less,

Suited in strict and wondrous harmony.

NOTE TO DEMONSTRATION: NOTE F.

Such places as John v. 20, may be considered with reference to the point at which, for the moment, we stand. The passage specified well deserves to be weighed in connection with the statements made, not omitting the mere hints dropt, in the text. A train of more than usually deep thoughts is likely to arise in the mind of the attentive reader; and, during the course of his reflections, the profound, and eminently important, position in that 20th verse, of the Fifth Chapter of St John's Gospel, to wit, THE FATHER LOVETH THE SON, will be likely to occur as deserving of the carefulest pondering.

The following passages, in the Gospel of the Apostle of Love, may be read in connection with the verse specified in the preceding paragraph : John, iii. 35; x. 17; xv. 9; xvii. 23, 24. These places speak directly

of the same love of the FATHER to the SoN. Other places utter the same language, if one makes the proper deduction. Ex gr., from John xvi. 27, the love of the FATHER to the Son may be drawn indirectly, or in virtue of a true consequence, to wit, a conclusion in conformity with the eternally valid laws of logic.

NOTE TO DEMONSTRATION: NOTE G.

Having attempted to illustrate the meaning of something contained in the preceding section by a reference to a place in the book men are agreed in calling the New Testament; possibly, it may be permitted to me to balance my procedure, and illustrate (for I should evitate the impropriety of seeking to prove) the point prominent in this section by a reference to a piece, of incomparable loveliness, occurring in our neversufficiently-to-be-admired Old Testament. If the words (= ideas) of the New Testament are enshrined in the most powerful and yet beautiful of human languages; the older Hebrew writings can boast of passages of unsurpassable majesty, and sublimity, in combination with the most childlike simplicity and gracefulness. Despite the comparative impediment of the bonds of a Shemitic tongue ("lip"), the Hebrew writers burst through all obstacles, and, overleaping all bound, have forwarded to our age, and have left for every future generation which shall exist on the earth, the deathless examples of almost every kind of excellency of which a human speech is capable. If the Apostle of Love is immortal in the most pliant and self-sufficing of languages; no less is the man after God's own heart immortalized within those so stiff square characters which have been, and shall be to the end of time, the vehicle-or, more strictly, the source of all other vehicles-for the most profound prayers, and the most exalted praises, which ever were, or can be, addressed, by the church of the world, to the Heavenly Throne, or, rather, to Him who sitteth thereon, even the Holy, Holy, Holy, One, who is from eternity to eternity.+

And now for the piece which has been thus prefaced. The 145th Psalm may be given as a classical passage, of unextollable beauty and forcibleness, for the identification of Goodness and Love, as existing in the mind of JEHOVAH, and exhibited towards "the children of

+ The intelligent reader will, without the least difficulty, bear in mind, that I am not arguing at present: nor assuming neither. I am only speaking (for those who have ears) from a certain stand-point, for a certain purpose, and for a certain time.

men" (verse 12). JEHOVAH'S Goodness to all in creation (v. 9, &c.),— specifically, every living (= breathing) thing (v. 16); becomes raised to Love, when exhibited to men, or at least to the saints of JEHOVAH ( those who experimentally understand His benignity—v. 10), even those who reciprocally love Him (v. 20); as David himself, the inditer of this inimitable Psalm, loved his GOD, who was also his King. (Verses 1, 2, 5, 6, 21.)

=

In consonance with the view now advocated, the Anglo-Catholic Church, in her liturgical Psalter, translates the 9th verse, of the Psalm in question, (which King James's Bible renders, “The LORD is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works,") I say, translates the 9th verse in this way, The LORD is loving unto every man: and his mercy is over all his works. A fine instinct, which leaped to meet the author's idea, took a meaning to the original which the Hebrew words do not contain. A most true meaning of the Hebrew, nevertheless. Which statement will look wondrously like a paradox to many: even to the carnal-minded dwellers in the superficies of inspired terms; the superficial many, who deem themselves to be the only wise men, the sole (and too often soul-less) adepts in "rational" criticism.

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NOTE TO SCHOLIUM I.: NOTE A.

Fichte, by his subjective idealism, had banished from the realms of existence both Nature and God, reducing everything to the allengrossing Ego."-From the article "Pantheists" in "The Faiths of the World," by Dr James Gardner. The work in question is a most useful compend; containing a vast body of information about all sorts of Churches, Sects, and individual Sectaries. Nor are systems of Philosophy, and Philosophers themselves, neglected.

NOTE TO SCHOLIUM I.: NOTE B.

“We see no very great reason, but that in a rectified and qualified sense this may pass for true theology, that Love is the Supreme Deity and Original of all things; namely, if by it be meant eternal, self-originated, intellectual Love, or essential and substantial goodness, that having an infinite overflowing fulness and fecundity dispenses itself uninvidiously, according to the best wisdom, sweetly governs all, without any force or violence (all things being naturally subject to its authority, and readily obeying its laws,) and reconciles the whole world

into harmony. For the Scripture telling us, that God is love, seems to warrant thus much to us, that love in some rightly qualified sense is God."-Cudworth: "True Intellectual System of the Universe." (Page 123.)-Book I. chap. iii. 18. And to the same effect, see also p 374, &c.

NOTE TO SCHOLIUM I.: NOTE C.

"I am persuaded," wrote one of those eminent men who, each in his own way, have completely altered the destinies of the world; “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God."- Epistle to the Romans: viii. 38, 39.

NOTE TO SCHOLIUM II.

What words could be

No words so forcible as those of the Bible. better adapted to express the idea in the text than these: "For thus saith the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell [or inhabit] in the high and holy place." (Isaiah lvii. 15.) The verb is the same in both clauses: -I do not overlook that Gesenius speaks of an ellipsis, translating the clause, in the verse, thus: "God Ty who inhabits (the heavens) for ever". [Tregelles's Gesenius, page 823. (Bagsters; London, 1859.)] This way of it would come to pretty much the same thing. The difference would tell in my favour. Gesenius's translation would make GOD to be, not the Substratum of Eternity alone: but the Being underlying Immensity also. Just as, when king Solomon, speaking of, and to, the LORD GOD of Israel, declares, “Behold, heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain Thee;" the king's philosophy, underlying the popularly expressed words in the address, makes, in reality, GOD (ELOHIM) to be the Substance within the substance, not only of these heavens, but of the more ethereal, or spiritual heavens underlying them, i.e., the visible heavens, or expansion (= the yp of Genesis I. verses 6, 7, &c.): the expansion which, if not palpable to sense, is at any rate most palpable to our imagination and intellect. An expanse, not finite, which our conceptive powers cannot refuse to recognise.+

See the very first Proposition of this "Argument." See, also, the expansion of the matter of that Proposition in the "Examination" of Antitheos, Part II. § 9 to § 16. Consult, likewise, Part I. § 25 to § 35.