Spirituality-Religions
Christianity Embraced
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This vast valley plain is our Garden of Eden. Now, Look! as thousands before you have done in wonder and surprise! Look immediately around you, over the hanging garden on which you stand, and, look out for snakes, for how could you have such a garden without a "Serpent."
"The word was God." That "word is Truth." Truth can never change, or it would contradict itself. Past, present, and future, must be governed by immutable laws. Experience is acquired by the careful study of history, and the present condition of all things.
The extraordinary character of the story here published, which some peculiar circumstances have fortunately, I think, put into my hands, will excite a curiosity as vivid as the incidents of the narratives are themselves astonishing and unprecedented. To satisfy, as far as I can, a few natural inquiries which must be elicited by its publication, I beg to explain how this unusual posthumous paper came into my possession.
THERE is no age more remarkable to the quiet observer than our own. Everywhere there is a fermentation in the minds of men; everywhere there is a battle between light and darkness, between exploded thought and living ideas, between powerless wills and living active force; in short everywhere is there war between animal man and growing spiritual man.
This is a book of triple power. It combines a presentation of the magickal virtues within the 150 Psalms of the Holy Bible, the ancient art of candle burning and an unusual method of invoking the Divine Names of Power.
In penning the foregoing sketch I had purposely to omit many facts connected with branches of Italian, Irish, and French politics. I have also entirely omitted my own struggles for existence.
That it is the duty of mankind to be tender-hearted, feeling for the distress of others, and to do all in their power to prevent and alleviate their misery, is evident not only from the example of the Son of God but the precepts of the gospel.
Phrenology is a system of Mental Philosophy. It enquires into the quality and condition of the mind, estimating the faculties, sentiments, and propensities of the individual, without being deceived by personal esteem or the voice of partial praise; for as it too frequently occurs that minds of the highest order are more or less under the influence of self love, or a desire for the admiration of others, so are they blinded to their own weaknesses and in some measure rendered incapable of acknowledging their faults even to themselves.
Phrenology is a system of Mental Philosophy. It enquires into the quality and condition of the mind, estimating the faculties, sentiments, and propensities of the individual, without being deceived by personal esteem or the voice of partial praise; for as it too frequently occurs that minds of the highest order are more or less under the influence of self love, or a desire for the admiration of others, so are they blinded to their own weaknesses and in some measure rendered incapable of acknowledging their faults even to themselves.
Phrenology is a system of Mental Philosophy. It enquires into the quality and condition of the mind, estimating the faculties, sentiments, and propensities of the individual, without being deceived by personal esteem or the voice of partial praise; for as it too frequently occurs that minds of the highest order are more or less under the influence of self love, or a desire for the admiration of others, so are they blinded to their own weaknesses and in some measure rendered incapable of acknowledging their faults even to themselves.
THE aphorism, "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he," not only embraces the whole of a man's being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.
The Bible has been regarded as a sealed book, its mysteries impenetrable, its knowledge unfathomable, its key lost. Even its miracles have been so excluded from scientific research as to be invested with a supernaturalism which forever separated them from the possibility of human understanding and rational interpretation.
Why should an astronomer write a commentary on the Bible? Because commentators as a rule are not astronomers, and therefore either pass over the astronomical allusions of Scripture in silence, or else annotate them in a way which, from a scientific point of view, leaves much to be desired.
APPEARING before the Public as a translator of the Oracles of God, it would ill become me to deprecate the severity of criticism, when I most cordially desire the intelligent and learned of my brethren to point out my mistakes for correction, and, in love and in the spirit of meekness, to smite me friendly. Should, however, the shafts of malignity, and the weapons not of our warfare, be employed against this humble, yet well-meant, attempt to make the Scriptures better understood, I shall endeavour to pluck the honey-comb from the lion's carcase, and be thankful for real information, in whatever mode it may be communicated.