The Path – August 1887

CHRISTIANITY - THEOSOPHY — Wm. H. Kimball

Theos: Ingenerate Creative Father or Life-giving Power.
Theogony: Generative, Creative Maternity or Life-bearing Process from the Father.
Theosophy: Generated Body in divine Human FormEmbodied Wisdom of the Father.

All positive Science, of whatever form or degree, must both analyze and synthetize its subject or theme, before it can vindicate its power as embodied science.

We may say of science itself, accordingly, that, according to strict creative law, it is a one, (science) in three-fold order — as thesis, analysis, and synthesis. And this triunity of sciential nature is realized by the human understanding according to the various planes of man's mental constitution, which is itself a triune power apportioned to the threefold providence of Creative Wisdom. This providence gives us:

Firstly: a Subordinate-Natural Sphere in the Corporeal realm of creation, primarily related to sensuous experience.

Secondly: a Superior-Natural Sphere in the reflective or ideal realm, mediately related to moral and rational experience; and

Thirdly: Supreme-Natural Sphere, in the vital realities of eternal Life and Law that are intrinsically one with the human soul as the central verities of all divine intuitions, revelations, and fulfilling powers.

So, the human intellect comes to be fortified in understanding and power according to its attainments in the degrees of Sub-Natural, Super-Natural, and Supreme-Natural degrees of science.

In the first it mainly memorizes observed things and facts.

In the second it analyzes and synthetizes things, facts and ideas immediately related thereto.

In the third it comes to be opened to the contemplation of the necessary laws of Creative Being, thence systematically traces the operation of those laws in the varied processes of forming and filling the creaturely vessel as a spiritual subject fitted to creative designs; and finally comprehends the full law and testimony of that end itself, as God's true creation achieved in divine Sonship humanly realized.

Such is a briefest possible outline of the service of the Christian Revelation, as I understand it, to the human intellect. And the powers of life in man unfold and work by the same order of creative degrees; so that from right being, through true knowing, in divinest doing, creation becomes livingly consummated in the human form in conscious oneness with the Divine and thus endowed with all the powers of supreme mastery or lordship.

And I understand that the process to this end is vitally set forth in the Christian Revelation as a crucial travail in creation towards full creative glorification and ascension to the majesty there inherent. And I further understand that the reign of worldliness in the creaturly subject must give place to the rule of the spirit (aspiration for holiness or wholeness in life) ere man can escape from the practice of penance and self-abnegation, and become born into the consummating degree of ascension towards the Highest. After this birth into the spirit of righteousness (the love of right for its own sake) there is no more achievement through repentance or penitence and forcible putting away of besetting evils; yet there is a liability to fall and bruising until evolution in this spirit shall have wrought its perfect ends. But the old process of repentance and forgiveness cannot be available here, because if the spirit or heart is right there can be no repentance.

If one in love with cleanliness fell into a pool of filth he would not indulge self-accusing or repentant moods. He would rather pity his misfortune and make it a stimulus for greater care as to missteps in future. And inasmuch as evolution is a law of development in every degree of human experience, this consummating degree under the sway of Holy Spirit must involve a long process of growth ere it becomes matured, just as the fruitional degree of growth in the corn is "first the blade, then the ear, then the corn fully ripe in the ear."

This ripening degree in the human form is not effected by the economy of the previous degree — the experience of repentance and forgiveness as conscious motors of life — but by the scourgings of afflictions and pains and purgatorial fires, designed to "destroy the adversary." Remedial agencies are ample providences to creative designs in all the various conditions of human growth and final gathering in divine fulness by the great Husbandman of Creation, just as an earthly husbandman first prepares the soil and plants the seed, then laboriously cultivates, and at last reaps and gathers the ripened fruits into useful stores — all different processes to one end.

So, while I see in the revelation of Jesus Christ the full light of the End, I also see the glory of the Father as requisite primary Life, and thence the clear methods of the creative operations in his natural humanity, before creaturely fruition and "rest" in His Divine Natural Humanity can be realized.

Seeing all this, I want to emphasize the manifest truth that Christianity, seen by the light of creative law that it surely displays, and not by the fallacious and unstable flashes of its professed votaries throughout Christendom during the many toilsome centuries of development of the rank stock, is not a limitary or exclusive system, but is as broad and catholic as is any possible conception of Human brotherhood.

Its seizure and exposition of special instrumentalities and truths, is only in order that the sublime truth of the inherent unity of mankind in creative source, and the seeming adherent diversity and contrariety of man in process of creative development, may be surely authenticated as being and seeming made one in full creative composure at last; and this not for Judaistic stock and its special fruit alone, but for all humankind. For "there is neither Greek nor few, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ all and in all."

Now, although I have never seen my way to a connection of myself with any of the various churches in Christendom — which appear to me to be only crude fragments or broken parts of the great Unitary Humanity, and hence not truly representing that Humanity — I have yet remained a firm votary of the truth actually revealed by the Christian Gospel — the truth of "God in the Christ reconciling the whole world unto himself." So, from the true Christian attitude one may be grounded in all the breadth of universal human brotherhood; and not only that, may come to comprehend the exact law of Creator, Creating and Created. One may come here, not only to a scientific perception of the truths of creative order, but to a practical knowledge of the methods of organizing those truths in human affair? — to qualify human character, order human thought and activities — and thus intelligently cooperating with creative purpose, gradually abolishing unbelief and evil and settling into the harmony of final order and good will towards all men.

One can have no true, satisfactory knowledge of a man from seeing him in his common nature as a human person: for here is where men meet in communal or chaotic indifference. A man must be known in his special nature — in his manifest power of doing — in his productive activity organically embodied — to be vitally known and rated in value. Art-genius in man is of no account to human fellowship until that genius becomes sampled in an embodying form that duly reveals it. Then the artist will be known and greeted according to the character of his achievement, at least by such as are duly cultured in his sphere of genius. So, the Creative Genius cannot be known by the dim vision of Theistic faith — by any conception of God's mere being as Creator. And as our common humanity stands to Him as embodying instrumentality stands to the artist, that humanity must be divinely fashioned to sample the infinite love, wisdom and power, ere Creation's Artist can be known and truly worshipped, God's creative power being amply sampled in His Divine Natural Humanity personally embodied — this being the Light and Life of the Christian Revelation — He should be known and worshipped by this revealed Light. He cannot be known, as Creator, by physical and spiritual conditions short of this revealed Life in human form. All degrees of our human development in historic experience, are only so many steps in the forming and qualifying processes of Creative Wisdom, towards His sublime purpose in creation. Hence to rate Christianity by the human conditions or states manifested by professed votaries during the era o! Christian, development, is equivalent to rating the growing ear of grain by its enveloping husk, rather than by the matured "first-fruit" given in the planting.

The grand oratorial chord of Universal Human Brotherhood, struck with such force and held with such tenacity by Theosophy, is simply the resonant thrill of Creative Wisdom as it livingly plays to fulfil its purpose in the actual unity of Humanity — the associate order of Man in organic brotherhood on the earth. And only this aim is the worthy endeavor of man under whatever banner he marches. In Christian Science the End is clear from the Beginning, and vice-versa.

Let us not indulge strife and contention over formal differences, but unite all our forces, under whatever name, in the furtherance of God's ultimate purpose in the Divine Natural Humanity.

If we are Theosophists, intelligently surveying the whole field by Theistic Wisdom, we shall see that God's life as Creative Theos must eternally Be: thence it must operate through Theogonal or generative processes, involving creaturely spirit in natural man as the requisite instrumentality. Thence we must see that true Theosophic embodiment — the organic form and activity of Theos-Wisdom in the Natural Humanity — must become the fulfilling reality. So, under other terms, as (1) Creative Theos, (2) Creative Theogony, (3) Creative Theosophy in organic form Theistically qualified, is seen just what the truly informed Christian beholds in the Christian Revelation as a science, (1) of Creative Being, (2) of Creative operations in natural man, (3) of Creative End in Divine Natural man, with harmony and order organically realized in all human affairs. Thus it is seen that from the attitude of true Christian Science the ampler aspects of Theosophy will be relished with most vital zest. And going on to work "in the unity of the spirit and diversity of operations," formal unity will ultimately be realized through the perfect, scientific adjustment of all institutions in constant human service.



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