erefore incapable of
being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.
The idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad
tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth unto the other, is
consistent only with the ignorance of those who know nothing of the
extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviours
believed, and continued to believe for several centuries, (and that in
contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of
navigators,) that the earth was flat like a trencher; and that a man
might walk to the end of it.
But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations? He could
speak but one language, which was Hebrew; and there are in the world
several hundred languages. Scarcely any two nations speak the same
language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every
man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to
translate from one language into another, not only without losing a
great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and
besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time
Christ lived.
It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end
be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be
accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and
infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in
accomplishing his end, from a natural inability of the power to the
purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly.
But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as man
faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end: but human
language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is
incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and
uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that God useth in
manifesting himself universally to man.
It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a
word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language,
independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various
as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read.
It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it
cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the
will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself
from one end
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