The gospel of cause and effect

Front matter

Class P)T"°t4- 0

Book .N,4

Copyright^ 0

Chapter I

That shrewd and thoughtful observation of facts and faces, which some would exalt to the dignity of a science, called "Physiognomy," shows plainly that the invisible man has nearly all his characteristics stamped upon his countenance. It does not

show as plainly as it might, how- Men are the

moulders of their ever, that he is largely responsi-

own features. J

ble, personally, for these very features. Our present dispositions in their magnanimity or pusilanimity are both the fruit and proof of our own noble or ignoble choices in the past. There is no more stupid or groundless heresy current, than the fallacy that men are not responsible for their natures, as revealed in their appetites, tempers, affections, dispositions, etc.

We grant that there is such a thing as pre-natal influence, and that some children, cursed by their

parents, are born with a tend-

Children have a

born* to be wel1 ency to a ^ ev ^ * n general, and to some evils in particular; but that this bad bias is irremediable we cannot admit. To admit of such a thing would be to rob God of His judicial prerogative; for what right would the Deity have to reward righteousness or punish Begin to teach a iniquity, if men have no control tendency? Life is really formed from the invisible and internal to the visible and external, and not to the contrary, as is commonly supposed. The soul rescues itself from its mere spiritual condition by exactly duplicating itself in the physical body, through the brain battery and nerve system. The fact is that men are the arbiters of their own future, the architects of their own eternal dwell- The visible earth m S s - Though saved by faith, is as true physiologically as it is theologically. There is no escape from the consequences of our affections, choices and actions. Our only hope lies in the renunciation of base desire, before choice has made it bloom in action. God himself saves from the effects of sin, largely by saving from the sin itself.

To the thoughtful mind it is written on the very face of all corporeal substance, ''He who sins must suffer." He who criminally ignores this warning, deserves to die, lest he perpetuate his ignorance; so it is written, "The fear of the Lord prolongeth days,but the years of the wicked shall be shortened."

Begin to teach child when his grandsire is a baby.

over their lives, but were forced to blindly follow a pre-natal is but the corporeal izing of the spiritual.

men are always "rewarded according to their works," This

CAUSE AND EFFECT.

It is so arranged in the very nature of all things that neither meanness nor magnanimity can be concealed for any great length tenance of the evil-doer, and the eye of the intelligent observer becomes a sort of nasal organ with which he smells the act. This is the principle embodied in the words of Holy writ, "He beautifies the meek with salvation," that is, through a holy, benevolent life.

There is no one so thoroughly deceived as the one who would deceive another. And the record of his deception is in his countenance no less than his conscience. As in the days of Esther, men hang themselves today as high as Haman, by building gallows for others. Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace slew the Babylonian officials that thrust the three Hebrews into its burning bosom; while the righteous trio had only their bands burned off by the flames. It is rather fatal business to "make it hot" for others. God has said, "With what measure ye mete v/ithal, it shall be measured to you again."

Righteousness is largely its own reward, and wickedness its own punishment, even in this life. The things which we permit to lodge in our hearts mould us in their own image, and tincture us with their own taste, be it good or bad. It is a self-act-

Sin and suffering are united in eternal wedlock.

of time. The diabolism of a deed registers itself in the very couning principle, a subtle compensation, that finds its expression in all the minutiae of life, that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he

Penuriousness

is its own punish- also reap.' These words are as

ment.

scientific as scriptural. He who permits base, contracted or unworthy conceptions of God, or ill feelings or suspicions toward man to have a lodging place in his heart, personally becomes by that very fact, base, contracted, groveling and unworthy. He has given activity to a cause which cannot fail in its effect. It is worse than useless to ask God to make us loving, magnanimous and Ghrist-like while we exercise the opposite traits of character, for exercise must ever develop the particular powers used and not their opposites. Vice becomes its own victim and vir-

Magnanimity its ... .. TIT ,

own reward. tue its own coronation. Work

and wages are equalled. Meanness mars. Holiness happifies. Grosses crown their victims, while thrones their wicked rulers damn. He who blesses another is blest thereby himself and the benediction received equals the one bestowed.

With both malediction and benediction there is a reactionary movement, which brings them back to smite or smile upon their authors. To be untrue to another is to outrage one's self, and the performance regulates the pay. Simple goodness is embryotic greatness and common honesty is nebular

CAUSE AND EFFECT. Z

nobility. Penuriousness impoverishes itself, while benevolence ennobles and glorifies its author.

Purity is power, wickedness is

Impossible to do . .

wrong and dodge weakness, indolence is idiocy.

consequences.

Good or evil, God or devil is in the power of our choice. The sinner's warning - , "Be sure your sin will find you out," has its counterpart in the Master's words, "He that reapeth receiveth wages;" and that "wage" is seen to embody an eternal element in the clause that follows: "And gathereth fruit unto life eternal." Men will sing or sigh, worship or wail, both here and hereafter, according to the choices they make. The earning of transgression is doom, but the donation of Jehovah is limitless existence.

The mental as well as the muscular qualities are developed by use and shriveled by disuse. It is in the power of the human will to decide whether the mental development shall be made prominent in the intellectual, moral or animal qualities, located respectively and significantly in the fore, upper and back parts of the brain. Moral qualities have the power to transform themselves into physical entities, and transmit themselves to the body, through the brain and nerves. Any intelligent investigator after truth can see how the vital connection between the invisible and responsible life quality and the physical body is kept up through the shading off process from muscles to nerves, from nerves to

8 THE GOSPLL OF

brain; and from the brain to the invisible "ego" and vice versa.

That wonder of physiology, the voluntary nerve mechanism or attenuated, influential nerve arcs or curved endings which man possesses in a high degree in addition to the mere involuntary or automatic nerve attachment of the lower orders of animals and plants, forms the chief visible agent in the physical transformation and bodily register of the moral miasma of the heart. This miracle of mechanism, these significantly named and located inner and upper influential arcs or voluntary nerves, center in the fountain of the creature's highest intelligence and powers of moral choice. Those orders of animals that have nothing but the automatic nerve arcs, are under no moral law, for they have no moral faculties. Their performances are the instinctive actions of necessity, rather than the result of free will; they are mere animated machines rather than free moral agents. This mere automatic nerve construction secures them from the possibility of depravity, but also precludes the possibility of intellectual or spiritual development. These influential arcs form the key to the telegraph receiving and transmitting instrument of the nerves, which the morally responsible spirit uses to send its messages to every part of the body.

A noble or ignoble choice on the part of the will sets the corresponding brain battery in motion; and

CAUSE AND EFFECT.

out through the telegraph wires of the nerves the result of that choice is carried,

The soul registers Its nature on and its nature is actually and

the body.

indelibly penciled upon every atom of the physical body, like sounds on the cylinder of a phonograph.

How jealously men should guard their hearts and choose wisely between the subjects of good and evil, presented by God or rise often in the the devil. The mistake of

invisible spirit.

scientists in general and doctors in particular, has been to separate soul and body and consider life in its visible and physical manifestations only; as if disease had no direct connection with the spirit life-spring. The silly sophistry of the so-called Christian Scientists and mere mental evolutionists is but the reaction from this fallacy and the opposite extreme of the same.

We must not make the fatal mistake of supposing that the mere body is the man. It is but an approximate physical duplication of a spiritual being. The physical machinery is bestowed upon the ethereal man in his probation, as the Scriptures would say, "to profit withal." He must necessarily at the end of his probation, be rewarded or ruined ''according to his works." Man is as truly a trinity as is God, his Father; and each of his component parts, body, soul and spirit, are as essential to his perfect being, as to his well-being, both here and hereafter.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the undertaker entirely divorces the spirit and the body. We will need our minds and bodies

A reunion of seal

antibody beyond again beyond the grave. No

the grave. to J ■ are peculiarly our property. There will be a glorious re-union in the resurrection morning, when we shall have bodies fashioned like unto His glorious body, who is "the chief est of ten thousand and the one altogether lovely." "This mortal must put on immortality," and "death be swallowed up of life." Plow carefully then should we watch over and develop our bodies and souls, as well as our spirits; for our works, as the fruit of our affections and choices will eternally distinguish us, "as one star differeth from another star in glory."

This doctrine of resurrection stamps the teaching of the transmigration of souls as an insane imrection day and to all eternity. The modern reviving of this old exploded heathen fallacy, that would at present resolve a man into a vivified shadow from the graveyard, and a future nonentity without identity, deserves a severe rebuke for its ignorance and audacity.

We multiply or minify our talents by use or disuse, like the pounds of the Master's parable. God one else can have them. They

Tr an emigration antagonistic to the doctrine of resurrection. .

possibility, since our personality and identity must be an individual possession, in the resurloves and finds pleasure in every element of the lives that he has made; and his highest glory is inseparably connected with

Higher criticism .

is lower Christ- man s greatest good in body,

lessness m fact.

mind and spirit. Our mooted philanthropy and organized charities are but an insane reaction from the theologian's neglect of the physical body; and so-called higher criticism is a correspondingly insane reaction from the church's neglect of the mind. Higher criticism is lower Ghristlessness in reality, because in every element it endeavors to do away with a supernatural spirit power and make the soul an element of, or goal for physical and mental evolution. Between the two extremes of higher criticism and thoughtless formalism, there is a happy medium where that which is right in each is unitedly harmonized in a sound Christianity.

Mental and moral development are all right in their places, but all effort to make the soul the m a mere fruit of development is

The development

of a nonentity, a really to make a man his own

manifest fallacy. J

progenitor. When our higher critics prove themselves capable of being their own fathers, it will be time enough to heed their teachings. The developing of a child before it is born or even conceived, is too early for sound education. The development of a nonentity is a manifest fallacy; for development bespeaks the pre-existence of something to develop. This kind of development, as one has said, is a "devil-up-ment," indeed. The degenerate spirit,

The death-dealing- qualities of a through a vital faith in Christ

fit of anger.

must be regenerated and purified, in order to have a medium of true development opened up to it. All development that has not this fact for its base, is pseudo-evolution and not true spiritual growth. To show that the pre-existing spirit, the magisterial will, in its choices, is the responsible agent of virtue or vice, health or disease, life or death, we have only to state an accredited fact, that all of the secretions of the body are purged or poisoned by powerful passions, good or bad.

A mother may instantly kill her infant child by nursing it after a violent fit of anger, or a great fright. Fear or anger has also been known to cause apoplexy and death. Worry or sorrow has been known to turn the dark hair white, make a young person old and wreck a life in a few short hours. Every secretion of the body was poisoned by the condition which the invisible life-energv produced, and which was by it distributed through the brain battery, nerve wires and circulatory blood system.

A chemical analysis of the perspiration or the saliva of persons after a paroxysm of anger, a fit of jealousy or a night of debauch, etc., reveals the same as being filled with a deadly poison, a breeder of disease and death. An able American authority a chemical anai- on therapeutics declares: Sditlawfuf liva "Anger changes the chemical proper-ties of the saliva to a poison dangerous to life; and violent emotions sometimes weaken the heart in a few hours, till insanity and death are caused thereby."

It has been discovered by scientists that there is a chemical difference between that sudden, cold a chemical detec- exudation of a person under a your sfnwmflnd deep sense of guilt, and ordinary perspiration. The state of the mind can sometimes be determined by a chemical analysis of the perspiration of a criminal, which, when brought in contact with selenic acid, produces a distinctive pink color found in no other case." No wonder God said, "Be sure your sin will find you out."

This is what the apostle James means when he declares that a wicked tongue, as the tool of a bad The apostle's neart > "defiles the whole body, S°th d e s he f art llfire and setteth on fire the wheel

are scientific. £ ,.- > / ., , .

of life, (as it reads m the original, meaning the circulatory system) or course of nature;" and closes by saying, "Hissed on fire of hell." This is not hyperbolic or metaphoric as many suppose, but purely scientific, as the foregoing facts prove. This implies that men take their fagots to the flames of the eternal pit with them, if they go, in the form of these degenerate natures of body, mind and spirit. Tumors, cancers, fevers, chills and various congestions and diseases, directly or indirectly have their rise largely in unnatural action, as suggested in this text. Jesus said that by keeping his commandments, we should affectionately fear the God of grace and nature, "Who is able to cast both soul and body into hell where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." Probation being ended at death, and the experiences and conditions of life being eternally fixed, of necessity the "worm" of remorse cannot "die," nor the "fire" of unholy desire "be quenched."

The soul indellibly registers its vices or virtues upon the body. The following pungent passage from a worthy contemporary is

The fatal physic- J

ai results of a fit to the point here: If a person

of anger.

is dominated for a moment by, say a fit of anger, there is set up in the physical organism what we might justly term a bodily thunder-storm, which has the effect of souring or rather corroding the normal, healthy and life-giving secretions of the body; so that instead of performing their natural functions they become poisonous and destructive. And if this goes on to any great extent, by virtue of their cumulative influences, they give rise to a particular form of disease, which in turn becomes chronic. So the emotions opposite

CAUSE AND EFFEGT. 15

to this, those of kindness, love, benevolence, goodwill, etc., tend to stimulate a healthy, purifying and life-giving flow of the bodily secretions. All the channels of the body are free and open and the life goes bounding through them." These same benevolent forces, if kept in boundless activity, have a tendency in time to counteract the poisonous and death-dealing effects of their opposites. God has said, "A (divinely) merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones/' In the light of this scientific fact, no wonder God has said, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life."

If the effects of vice or virtue are seen to be so great upon the physical body, what infinitely greater effects must be produced

The countenance

c?inie egister ° f upon the never-dying spirit.

Even ignorant people recognize the fruit of this truth, that the crime is registered in the countenance, in the fact that they look in the faces of wicked men for traces of past guilt and present degeneracy. Again, the reason why bad men find it hard to break away from their wicked habits, lies in the fact that they have lived so long in certain characteristics and through exercise have developed certain base brain faculties, till those faculties and nerve habits are strong and assertive and not easily crushed out. Such men's natures are not only grooved to evil, but developed in it. The gospel alone offers a rescue from this awful state, in that it begets new appetites, tempers and passions in the man and leaves the old, base brain developments to shrivel through disuse, while the moral qualities are being developed by use.

"A new heart and a new spirit will I put within you." The new spirit has new desires, appetites, Grace or disgrace passions and choices; consenaffyfwMchsnaii quently, a new development of the mind. Science emphasizes the Master's words, "Ye must be born again."

In the light of this fact, what madness it is to give place to a base or unholy feeling, passion or choice. What a mighty incentive to righteousness of life should this prove. From the principle of mere self-interest, do not these truths call for purity, magnanimity, benevolence, patience, charity and every noble choice? Reason and revelation agree in declaring, "The way of the transgressor is hard."

This is the basal principle of the gospel blessing in general. Good news when believed, causes great joy, and the ecstacy of

Hope and happi-

Seaitn 116 basis of 6 ^ r ^ ^ nus produced inspires a more rapid and healthful heart action; thus all the natural activities of the body and mind are stimulated and strengthened and the encroachment of disease and decay resisted. The

CAUSE AND EFFECT. 1Z

gospel was called by angels, "Glad tidings of great joy, that shall be unto all people." When a man actually believes that angelic message of glad tidings of a limitless and free redemption, the result is that "great joy" is produced in his heart at once. A new energy seems to leap out through his veins, quickening every faculty into natural and boundless activity. His step is firmer, his cheek is redder, his eye is more full of the fire of expectation, and a general strength and elasticity is infused into the whole body and mind. This is the inspiration of hope, begetting a fervency

Faith or unbelief ... .-. , r .

springs of nope of spirit as its natural fruit.

or despair.

This fervency as the fruit of faith is the antipodes of the dead formality which is the fruit of unbelief in the glad tidings. Faith or unbelief is the spring of expectation or despair and in its last analysis, in both intensity and extent, hopefulness is happiness, healthfulness and heaven while hopelessness is haplessness, healthlessness and hell. Hope surely inspires happiness, happiness certainly tends to healthfulness and the combination of hope, health and happiness forms a heaven on earth, limited only by their own degree.

We must further elucidate this fact that the ruinous consequences of badness are as manifest in the body as in the spirit. Sin is an unnatural element, an abnormal inoculation in the whole life, and its natural results are as disorganizing and destructive in the realm of the mind and body, as The destructive insanity or smallpox. Take the as opium, cocaine, tobacco, snuff, liquor, etc.; the effects at once go beyond the spiritual realm of theological guilt and influence the natural realm of physiological law, resulting in disease and pain and premature death.

This is equally true of licentiousness, gluttony and every unnatural appetite or habit of body, mind, is a cause of nervous disorder and bodily disease. All violent passion is just so much poison infused into the system and soul, mind and body are influenced thereby. The mind and the spirit must rest in perfect and natural balance, or the abnormal condition caused by the unbalanced and disquieted state of the same results in friction, inflammation and the unnaturalness of disease. Wickedness then is a prime cause of disease, as God's Word declares, "By one man's transgression came sin into the world and death (disease) by sin." Here either ignorantly or willfully we find the continuous cause of the poisoning of the fountain of physical health to this day. "The way of the transgressor is hard." It is no effects ot moral wrong upon the body.

indulgence of an abnormal and acquired appetite for narcotics,

Violent passion as a malignant poison.

or spirit, as was previously shown. Every disturbance of the natural or spiritual equipoise

CAUSE AND EFFECT.

proof against this general fact that disease becomes hereditary or contagious and, at times smites the innocent. It is rather a part of the Lord's corrective plan to influence the good to force the bad, as far as possible to live naturally and right.

Moral badness transforms itself into physical disease by the spirit's poisoning of all the secretions the task (profitable as tiresome) of tracing the bubonic plague, or the significantly named smallpox back through their varied stages and changes to their original springs may prove the soundness of this fact and greatly add to his general store of knowledge. No thoughtful and intelligent man will honestly contest this truth of the rise and spread of disease, plague and physical and mental disorder generally through the vices and unnatural lives of men.

The unnatural fermentation in the secretions and fluids from which the waste of tissue is supdaily reconstruction of brain and brawn the effects of the poison of sin is seen. The very atomic and corpuscular formation of tissue is perverted or de-

Moral wrong is a well-spring ot physical disease.

and fluids from which the waste of tissue is daily supplied.

Anyone who will put himself to secretions.

A malformation of tissue caused by an unnatural brew in the plied causes the remade matter to be abnormally developed from a poisoned or an unnatural substance, so that even in the formed and it becomes amalformation in its process of upbuilding. This malformation of tissue is the retribution for sin.

Look closely into the bloated and inflamed face of the drunkard and be not faithless but believing.

equally true of the libertine in his emaciating of his system; and this poisoning or impoverishing process in greater or less degree exists in all sin. A night or even an hour of debauch is often followed almost instantly with chills, fevers, headaches, etc. Stagnant stomachs, lazy livers, and arrested or unnaturally accelerated circulation, resulting in various diseases are the natural fruits of such unnatural and sinful lives.

We ask the physiological skeptic, why does the drunkard's face swell? why does the debauchee's some. knotty head ache? why does a fit of sane, or fretting consume the flesh from a woman's bones, if investigation is mistaken in showing that there is an unnatural brew in the secretions caused by the sinful act. All nature rebels against the abnormal element of badness, and functional discord and death are the result. What causes the strong,

The drunkard or the libertine as an object lesson on cause and effect.

Not the drunkard's face alone, but every part of his body and mind inside and out is thus inflamed and poisoned. This is questions for the physiological skeptic.

anger upset his own stomach?

Why does worry drive men inoffensive odor around a violently angry person or a debauchee? It is caused by nature's effort to throw off the poisonous matter with which he has filled all the secretions of his body. If it were not for this benign provision of nature, death would be the certain result.

Science when sound declares that sin is suicidal and unholiness is hell in nature and degree. What Tnere was a Swedenborg said he saw in a

Fn the mad e nes 0 s d of vision of the inquisitorial angels

and eyes over the physical and spiritual members of blessed and damned spirits to find in the very physical and spiritual element before and after death, records and measures of their virtue or vice, seems more scientific than silly today.

If this is true of vice, it goes without saying that the very reverse is true of virtue and of holy living generally. Also, if the forego-

What is true of 7 . „ ...

vice is conversely mg is true of one individual, it

true of virtue.

becomes equally true of a community, state or nation; and these distempers being largely transmittible are handed down through offspring to future generations, till it is no wonder the world is a reeking hot-bed of ignorance, disease and pain and society is in danger of being disorganized by sin in its mental and physical as well as its moral influences. In either sphere vice or virtue demands retribution or remuneration.

We have been looking on the physical consequences, for ignorant men can be more easily shown the results of sin in this realm; but a more terrible The spiritual and state of distemper is begotten passions perverted, the imaginations inflamed, the reason partially dethroned, the fears and prejudices crowned, the judgment unbalanced, the affections alloyed by lust, the passions and appetites contending with the judgment, the will clamoring for wrong ends, infidelity and ignorance of spiritual things boasting a superior knowledge than intelligence and faith and the whole realm of the spiritual man thrown into a most confused and unnatural state by this unnatural and devilish element of sin.

Badness therefore is a discordant element in both the natural and spiritual realms, if indeed a gives a being to conspires to curse the man who of sin into being. Gould inspiration have done less than to have anticipated science and declared, "The wages of sin is death."

If, as laboratory experiments prove, the whole human structure can be changed very rapidly, for health or disease, by spiritual influences and passions, as well as by physical influences and actions,.

mental results of sin worse than physical results.

in the invisible spirit of the sinner. The will is wrecked, the

All nature conspires to curse the man who line of distinction can be made between them; and all nature brings the discordant element who will deny that the real science must necessarily be divine? The spirit often must be purged and kept free from its transmittible

Tlie cause of dis- .

ease must be the moral miasma and ethereal

key to its cure.

poison, if exemption from the physical effects would be enjoyed. No pill-poisoning quackery can dodge this mighty truth.

Ignorance, the spring of all superstition, instead of recognizing that disease is the direct or indirect

fruit and proof of a breach of

Dirty diet or bad

behavior the nature's law, and seeking out

cause of disease.

and correcting the cause of the trouble, rushes off in blind unbelief for chemical poisons and medical mud to doctor the symptoms. Nature has been outraged and the blood poisoned by dirty diet or bad behavior, and ignorance would add more dirt and poison as a cure.

The v/orld is greatly in need of two new remedies. The people's brains need medicating with one and the doctors' conscience with the other, and some of the D. Ds. as well as the M. Ds. of various orders need attention, that both professions be purged.

Surely it is written, God's "people perish for lack of knowledge." Pain is nature's rational protest against violated law, and her

Pain as nature's

protest acainst voice should not be stifled until

violated law.

the outrage against which she is crying is stopped. Then, when the lesson is learned and transgression ceases, God can be confidently appealed to in the name of Jesus, for healing. To be healed before this lesson is learned would be a misfortune. In that case, the absence of the disease would be a greater calamity than the disease itself.

On this principle of our mental and physical bodies being made the register of the good and evil The compensa- of our passions and choices, we o? j^Jgmeut^ay can see how the decisions of