Man's knowledge of existence is of a twofold nature: the things that do exist, and the power by which he has that knowledge. The first is distinguished as material existence; the second, as spiritual existence. Material and spiritual existence are the only two positive existences of which man can speak or write, to which no inspiration can add; for inspiration is only knowledge; and the recognition of material and spiritual existence is the limitation of knowledge. The details of knowledge can be nothing more than definitions and descriptions of existing things,—the plantings of art upon nature.
All knowledge is matter of art. Nature is the thing known—art the knowledge of the thing. This art can not only know nature, but can invent descriptions of unreal things; can describe things by types, and principles by figurative allegories; can imitate nature by appearances, such as pictures, statues, &c.; and can, by mysterious constructions of language, make the appearance of a thing to represent a principle or describe qualities in the absence of the thing: this is spiritual power. Nothing of the kind is seen beyond human life; certainly not beyond animal life. We may, therefore, reasonably speak of spiritual power or spiritual existence as confined to the human race—speech and language being a primary necessity to its existence: the art of other animals extending not beyond their wants.
Man, then, is the creator of spirit; and, beyond man, spirit is not known. Man is not known to be the creature, but the creator of art; not the creature, but the creator of spirit, soul, mind, reason, knowledge, or whatever other term relates to the mental phenomena.
I maintain, because it is a truth of the deepest importance to the human race, and without the knowledge of which nothing can work well in human society, that man is the creator of all spiritual existence; and in the sense in which God is a spirit, man is the creator of that God, and has been the creator of every description of existence that has been made of such a God.
We may also correctly speak of this two-fold existence as physical and moral. The physical, its forms and compositions excepted, is eternal and immutable—the moral is evanescent, mortal, and mutable in its personal existence, but immutable and immortal as to principle. The root of God, therefore, as of man, is in physical power, which is correctly described as almighty, immutable and omnipresent: it is only omniscient, as being the fountain of knowledge—the all that can be known. Science is art; therefore, there can be no science in an infinite or eternal sense, as we can speak of the physical power of Deity; but science, as art, is limited to human power,—the all that is known, and not the all that exists to be known.
This is evidence, that man has created not only all the descriptions that have been made of spiritual existence, but that existence itself: and so it is true, that man has been the inventor of a spiritual God; that religion and all its appurtenances have been the offspring of the art of man; and that man alone is capable of correcting any of its errors,—which is to be done in the same way by which I propose to put down the Dissenters—the acquisition and communication of knowledge by the Church.
I pass by the Pagan mythology, which, in its understood personifications and allegories, is as beautiful a picture of physical and moral nature, as the Christian Religion itself; and I rest on the Christian, as, when understood, the only religion for human improvement that has been presented to the notice of the human race.
As man is the inventor of the Spiritual Deity, which is peculiarly the Deity of the Christian Religion, so I infer, by evidence to come, that the Deity of the Christian Religion is no other, nothing more, than a personification of the mental phenomena of the human race, which was the work of the philosophers and scientific men of the Pagan world: and noble was their task—important for man was their production. Not the thing called the Christian Religion now in existence, which is no other than a religion mistaken, a corruption and Pagan superstition, the dregs and drivellings of the gross ignorance and superstition of the dark ages; something two thousand times worse than the Paganism of the Millenium before the so-called Christian era. But a personification after deifications of the mental phenomena, is a sounding, preaching, writing, carving or painting God, as the perfection of knowledge; Christ, as the perfection of reason; and the Holy Spirit of communication, as the perfection of all attainable moral power by the human race: making those perfections to be things sought, the things worshipped, the best religion, as it undoubtedly is, for the whole human race. It was the best plan of scholastic improvement, when acted upon, that human wisdom could have devised, and to this I would have you bring our Church.
There is a two-fold way of reading the Bible, which I have before described, as it is described in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. iii. v. 6, a reading or a ministration according to the letter, and another according to the spirit. The Apostle or author of that Epistle declares himself to have been a minister of the New Testament according to the spirit, and complains, that the Jews, in his time, did not know how to read the Old Testament. I declare that the Church now existing ministers to nothing but the letter of the Bible, which is a ministration not to life, but to death; and such is the evidence of the whole era of such a ministration; such has been the cause of the dark ages, on which no dissenting sect has yet thrown a ray of light; and the reform that is now required throughout the Church, that established by law and all others, is the understanding of the Sacred Scriptures, that shall cause them to be taught according to the spirit, the spirit of knowledge, reason and constant human improvement. I now see, that none of the people called Jews or Christians know how to read either Old or New Testament according to the spirit.
To read the Bible according to the letter, is to make it a piece of human history; to make a creation of the world, and an attempt to account for everything past, present and future. I proclaim this conduct to be the folly of ignorance, opposed by all real history of the human race, and by all the developments of science, in relation to the earth's existence, its qualities, and its relation to the general planetary system.