The pearl of great price

Front matter

i LIBRARY OF CONGIIESS. t

I « BR" I at !

♦UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.!

Preface

The Press being the only means or medium by which the author of this little work (now in the eighty-ninth year of his age) can communicate its contents to his kind, it is thus presented to them solely, as he humbly trusts, for their furtherance in the knowledge of God, and the consequent increase of their happiness. Believing assuredly that the evidence referred to in the work clearly reveals the infinite truth that all mankind are, in the highest and most perfect sense, verily the offspring of God, by virtue of their oneness with his Son Jesus Christ, which oneness is that of the literal body with the head. All his readers to whom that evidence is satisfactory, will see that such filial and paternal relation between God and all mankind assures the latter of the same ultimate eternal glory as that of the Son of God himself — which also solves the problem of human destiny. It is hoped that the Scriptural and other testimonies referred to will alone be heeded, while the author and his style and method of composition are forgotten. The joy and crown to which he aspires being his instrumentality in the extension of the knowledge of the paternal relation of God, and the headship relation of Christ, and their consequent love to all mankind, past, present, and to come. The necessary result being the eternal glorification of the whole humanity.

J. H.

THE

PEARL OF GREAT PRICE.

Chapter I

I have for many years believed that the Gospel is the " pearl of great price ; " bearing the good news of the love of God given or extended to all mankind in and through Christ, as the Scriptures abundantly show. But I had yet to learn from the same source that the relation to, and oneness of the humanity with Christ, and thereby their filial relation to God is the sole cause of that love.

I now proclaim and set forth to the world the knowledge of the infinitely momentous fact of that relation as, above all else in the universe, the pearl of great price. A portion of the Scripture testimony in proof of that relation is the following, viz. : " Christ is the head of every man." 1 Cor. xi. 3. — He was " the first-born of every creature," or man. Col. i. 15-17. " We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Eph. v. 30. — " Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ ? " 1 Cor. vi. 15. — " Ye are the body of Christ and members in particular." 1 Cor. xii. 27. — " For both

8 THE PEABL OF GREAT PRICE.

he that sanctifieth and they who were sanctified are all of one." Heb. ii. 11. — " According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world." Eph. i. 4. — " According to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in him before . the world began." 2 Tim. i. 9. Other testimonies will be introduced, showing together with these, that the relation of all mankind to Christ is simply and actually the oneness of the literal body with the head. Also that Christ the head, and the humanity, constitute a whole species of spiritual beings of a heavenly and godlike nature and form, being together born of God " before the world began." Christ the head — the spiritual Son of God — being " the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person — whom he appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world."

That " bringing forth of the first and only begotten spiritual Son of God, and the members of his body, was the first of God's works," the beginning of his ways u before his works of old, when as yet he had not made the earth nor the heavens, nor the highest part of the dust of the world." Then the spiritual Son of God was with the Father, as "one brought up with him " and was " daily his delight rejoicing always before him." And when the Father prepared the heavens, the universe of worlds, when he gave to that universe (which existed invisibly in himself) visibility, glory, and beauty, solely by the power of his will, the Son was there to express that will, as when he said " Let there be light, and there was light." For the Scrip-

THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. U

tures assure us " that the Son was with the Father in the beginning," and spake the word by which " everything was made that was made, 55 and that * God made the world by him, and that the world was framed by the word of God. 55 John i. 2 ; Heb. i. 2 ; Heb. xi. 3. Another Scripture informs us that Christ was " the first-born of every creature or man, 55 and that " he was before all things. 55 Col. i.15, 16. Other testimonies affirm that " All things are of and through and to God, and in him all live and move, and have their being. 55 Heb. i. 2 ; Rom. xi. 3 ; Acts xvii. 28.

The universe, therefore, is and was from eternity, of, and through, and in God. It was not made from nothing, nor produced from nonentity, as is popularly believed, neither can anything, much less a universe, come from nothing, or cause its own existence. Whereas, the matter and substance of the universe existing in God could be so extended as to give it visible form and glory, and all life and motion is a direct and perpetual out-going from God, and the universe so extended is still in God, inasmuch as his presence or sphere is infinite extension, as boundless as space.

The framing and formation of the worlds by God, and his spiritual Son, (who subsequently in due time became incarnate, as we shall show,) who willed and spoke into visible existence " the heavens and the earth and all the host of them in six days ; 55 forming man of the dust of the ground, God breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, and a living immortal soul. He (the man) being 1*

God's earthly Son and whom he constituted the head of a species of earthly beings consisting of bodies of flesh and blood and of immortal souls — Male and Female created he them (the species) and called their names Adam in the day that they were created, and thus were both the spiritual and heavenly, the earthly and fleshly Sons of God each alike the head of a whole species, the former brought forth before, and the latter created on the sixth day after the world and time had begun.

By the Scriptures referred to, it is thus shown that a spiritual and heavenly humanity or species constituent of the nature and body of Christ, was in and with him God-born, anterior to the creation of the earthly and fleshly humanity, constituent of the nature and body of Adam. We have now to show that the species forming the spiritual and heavenly, and the earthly and fleshly humanities, existed in their respective heads, Christ and Adam, in the mass, in an inert and unconscious state, and in that state were united and made one, each with a member of the other species ; the result of that union being one whole humanity whereof every member is a spirit, soul, and body.

Saint Paul refers to this union of the spiritual with the earthly humanity as the cause of Christ's tasting death for every man, saying that inasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood he (Christ) likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy death, and him that had the power of death, that is thedevi],and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For he that sanctifieth and they who were sanctified are all of one ; and the same truth is clearly set forth in perfect union and oneness of the spiritual Son of God with Jesus, at his baptism. It is in place here to refer to the whole book of nature to show, that it is the way of God to give existence to the many in one, that is, in the head of the species and by natural generation and growth, to institute procreation throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms; which generation and growth are but the extension of the species or kind from their mass and germinal existence in their heads to their constitutional maturity and size.

CHAPTEE n.

We now resume our remarks and illustrations on the union and oneness of the spiritual and heavenly with the earthly and fleshly humanity, existing both in Christ and in Adam, the earthly humanity being created male and female. "And God said it is not good for man to be alone, I will make an helpmeet for him, and God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof, and the rib which God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her to the man."

Thus it is seen that the whole humanity, earthly and heavenly, male and female, existed in the first man and woman, being one perfectly, a unit, and it is seen also that the spiritual nature of the body having been born of God in and with their head, Christ, were joint-heirs with him, of God and of the universe. Now it was for the first parents of these children and heirs of God that he planted a garden, and every tree that was good for food, and pleasant to the sight. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life, also in the midst of the garden. And he told them to eat freely of the fruit of all the trees of the garden, except that of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, of which they must ijot eat, because it would surely cause their death. He did not however tell them that they should thereby fall under his wrath and curse — they and their posterity, and suffer all the miseries of this life and the pains of hell forever — (as Christendom has taught for seventeen centuries) — not a word of it or like it.

Now these children loved their Father and feared death, and for a hundred years (the time of their residence in the garden as we shall show) dared not even to touch it, until a being called a serpent, whom God had endowed with greater subtlety and knowledge than he had given to any other creature, and with the faculty of speech, came to Eve, and, informed her that the fruit which had hitherto been forbidden as fatal poison, had now become not only good for food, but medicinal also, and would open their eyes or develop their mental powers, and that they would not then die, as God had told them, as they would have done had they eaten it in early life. (And both the event and the word of God verified every word of the serpent.) Eve and her husband ate the fruit, they did not die — but survived for hundreds of years. Their eyes were opened, and God said, " Behold the man is become like one of us to know good and evil." What shall we say now ? — we, an humble individual, at this late day — to the fathers of the Church, who have taught ever since the second century that the words of the serpent were all lies of the devil, and that

Eve and Adam committed a crime by which not only they, and all the millions of their posterity became obnoxious to the T\yath and curse of God, and for which they deserved eternal torments, which subjected the whole universe to an everlasting blight and curse ? The simple, plain facts upon the record are these : The truth of every word of the serpent was, as we have shown, fully and literally verified by actual results and confirmed by the express declaration of God.

We have only to ask those Christian fathers whether our first parents could by any act have achieved a greater glory than that by which they became like as gods ? — But you say they became as devils. There is nothing found in the context to authorize those good divines (for they w r ere Christian men) to call the very act by which our first parents became more like God, the fall of man. The popular Christian Church has also taught, very erroneously as we believe, that by the institution of the forbidden tree God placed the first parents in a state of probation, simply as a test of their fidelity and obedience. We cannot believe or admit that infinite wisdom and perfect foreknowledge required any such test, inasmuch as God knew before he planted the tree how long his children would abstain from the fruit, and when they would yield to the temptation to partake of it, and if the event had been contrary to his will, he would not have created and specially endowed the serpent by which he brought it to pass — and the Church by admitting (as she does) the existence of those divine attributes is greatly inconsistent with herself in teaching at the same time of probation.

It is a just inference, therefore, that it was the will and purpose of God, that the forbidden fruit should not be eaten during its own immaturity, and that also of young humanity, which period was about the whole time of their residence in the garden, and which by a computation from the record was a fall century. We reckon thus : " Adam was at the birth of his third son, Seth, one hundred and thirty years old. We deduct that thirty years as a full allowance for the time which must have elapsed from the birth of his first son, Cain — born soon after the exodus from Eden — leaving a hundred years for the residence there. We gather from the record that the first parents, although of adult size, were in an infantile and childlike state; the fruits of the garden being to them what the nourishment of the mother's breast is to the infant, and for a hundred years they knew not that they were naked. And we infer from the same source that the term of time required for the attainment of manhood and womanhood was at that age of the world in proportion to the average length of human life, the former being one hundred and the latter nine hundred years — instance, the first children of the first five generations from Adam were born about the hundredth year of their parents' age. And to our mind it is a natural inference that the fruit of the forbidden tree also required a century for its full maturity, and which is now found to be true of several vegetable productions. We conclude, therefore, naturally, as we conceive, that in the unripe state that fruit was a deadly poison to the digestive powers of a young human stomach.

We have thus given the scriptural account of the origin and character of the humanity, and their history also, up to the close of the first century ; keeping in view, as we shall continue to do, the essential attributes of God, and his paternal relation to that humanity. At that period we find them to have attained under the divine economy their constitutional maturity of physical and mental manhood and womanhood ; having acquired the godlike knowledge of good and evil, by which attainments they were fully qualified and prepared to exchange their rudimental life, and the cultivation of the garden, for the full possession and enjoyment of the world-wide domain, and multiply and replenish the whole earth and subdue it ; according to their right and title recorded in their deed of gift from their Father, as follows, viz. : u Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowls of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." God having thus prepared his children for the change, in his wise and gracious economy (not in anger or wrath as is popularly believed and taught), u sent them forth from the garden to till the open field," and lest they be inclined to return to the garden, and eat of the tree of life, or life-sustaining tree, (instead of the herb of the field, " which he was thenceforth to procure by the sweat of his face,") and so continue to live in the garden forever, " God placed a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way/ 5 and bar his access to that tree. We learn further from the record, that as soon as the first parents knew that they were naked and had made themselves aprons of fig leaves, God in his paternal love and kindness made them coats of skins and clothed them, which was before, and, as we infer, preparatory to their exodus from the garden. And we learn from the record that God called his children to strict account for their disobedience to the letter, though we cannot believe they transgressed the spirit and intent of his command, and we are impelled to this belief by the fact that God foreknew and foresaw, and by his own act and providence, as we have shown, caused that apparent disobedience. God's words to Adam do indeed seem to reprove him, " Saying, hast thou eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee saying, thou shalt not eat of it ? " But he seems also to admit Adam's plea, that he received the fruit at the hand of the woman, that God gave him to be with him, and he apparently does the same in the case of Eve, who pleaded that " the serpent beguiled her." And turning from Adam and Eve, " God said to the serpent, because thou has done this, cursed art thou above all cattle, upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life, and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between her seed and thy seed, it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel."

The purport of this language is clearly a punishment for a sin, but can we admit that God would so punish a mere animal, simply "one of the cattle? " which having no moral sense or conscience, was consequently incapable of committing a moral offense ? The curse and the infliction, therefore, whatever might have been the design and purpose of them, were certainly not retributive. But may it not have been preventive ? The serpent, we infer, was to be more cursed than any of the other beasts of the field. Tthey are also cursed, though in what sense we are not informed. And the serpent was evidently to be changed from the erect form and made to go upon his belly, that he might become as he is at this day, cursedly hateful and fearful. It is inferable, therefore, that the change of form and loss of the faculty of speech was the curse to which he was subjected, though not as a punishment or retribution. God thus divested him of the endowments necessary for the performance of his mission, but for no other purpose, and which, if continued, might have been very onerous to the humanity. We have thus shown, as we trust, that the curse denounced against the serpent was not an execration as that term signifies, but the result of a change which God saw good to make in his condition, and of which he had no right to complain. God gave him his life and endowments, and had the sole right to change or dispose of them. We present this interpretation of the words of God to the serpent as having at least the merit of harmonizing with his attributes, his acts and providence, but we should be glad to see an abler or better exposition having that indispensable recommendation.

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THE WORDS OF GOD TO EVE.

"And to the woman he said; I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception ; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children : and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Our understanding of these words is the very reverse of the popular one ; the creeds see in them a sentence of the woman and her whole female posterity to a fearful punishment as for a crime of the deepest dye, while the language of the text is to our mind a gracious promise of a greatly multiplied conception and bringing forth of children, wherewith to replenish, subdue and cultivate, she and her children, their universal domain, subject only to the pain or sorrow of childbearing, resulting solely from physical conformation, and that pain and sorrow were to be remembered no more for joy at the birth of a God-given offspring.

REMARKS.

Eve was part of the earthly son of God of whom she also was thereby a daughter of God, Adam was her lord and she was his helpmeet, and his wife whom he loved, nourished, and cherished as " his own flesh ; " her subjection to his will, therefore, was not an infliction, but a kind providence and a blessing ; he was her protector and his rule over her was kindness and love.

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THE WORDS OF GOD TO ADAM :

"And unto Adam lie said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shall thou eat of it all the days of thy life, thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread, until thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." God spake these words, let us remember, to his earthly son whom he had constituted the head of the whole earthly humanity, and which he had united and made one with the heavenly humanity, who being the members, as we have seen, of the nature and body of his first-begotten spiritual son, and who were consequently his (God's) children, and for which whole humanity so made one, God had framed the whole universe, they being God's heirs and joint heirs with his first-begotten son. And let us keep in mind, that this earthly son and Eve his wife had been good obedient children strictly obeying for a hundred years their father's command not to eat of the forbidden tree., and then because they were beguiled, did they disobey him ; and we must likewise remember that God foreknew and foresaw the event, and also provided the means to bring it to pass. Now under this scriptural view of the whole case, can we believe that the term curse as used in this connection was an execration, an infliction of evil ? Or that it meant anything more than the thorns and thistles with which the ground was infested, and the toil and sweat of the face necessary to remove them and give place to the herb of the field ? and do we not know that the sweat and the labor necessary to the cultivation of the earth are essential to vigorous health, without which there is little or no enjoyment ? And was not an abundant harvest of the herb of the field a rich reward for the sweat and toil ? and was not the transfer from the garden an act of paternal kindness and love ? A transfer from a rudimental and childlike round of enjoyments to all the variety and forms of beauty of a world, with the divine promise of innumerable descendants to replenish and enjoy it ? Shall we then, as do the popular creeds, call the clothing of the naked children with coats of skins — the exodus from the garden to a world teeming with luxuriant productions and enjoyments, which fill the earth with food and gladness, a curse, an infliction of punishment, a vindictive retribution ? Do not those creeds virtually blaspheme the holy name by which they desire to be called ?

Now in view of all these acts of paternal mercy and love toward the humanity as existing in the first parents ; and in view also of the divine perfections, we are impelled to construe the words of God to Eve, to the serpent, and to Adam as if he had said to Eve, " Because, or seeing that thou hast attained to the 4 knowledge of good and evil ' and to the full maturity of thy mental and physical powers, ' I will greatly multiply ' thine offspring, subjecting thee to much suffering in bringing forth children, ' and thy desire,' or thy love, l shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over,' or protect thee." And to the serpent, "As thou hast fulfilled the mission for which I especially endowed thee, I will now take from thee thy faculty of speech, and so change thy form that there shall be perpetual enmity between thee and the woman, and between her seed and thy seed, and it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel." And to Adam, Because, or seeing that thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the fruit which I commanded thee saying, " thou shall not eat of it in the unripe state, thou shalt henceforth till the ground, which for thy sake, and for thy good being is infested with thorns and thistles ; thou by the sweat of thy face shalt remove them, and cultivate instead thereof the herb of the field, which shall be thy bread until thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, because thou art dust, and must therefore return to dust again." By this interpretation of the word of God we trust, as we have before said, to preserve the harmony of those words with his attributes and his ways.

Chapter III

We now offer further exposition of the divine economy, and of God's paternal care and love for the humanity. We learn from the record that God was in daily communication with the first parents, and that he spake to them in audible words, duly and progressively teaching them the knowledge of himself, and, after the higher development of their understandings through the knowledge of good and evil, revealing to them more and more of his purposes of love toward them. 'And inasmuch as he had told them from the beginning that their bodies were but dust, and must therefore return to dust again, and had thereby given them a strong desire to live again, he revealed to them also the hope of immortal life and glory by the promise of the great Messiah, who was to come in due time, and, as the head of every man, offer himself a sacrifice, that, in and with their head, all mankind might die and rise again to immortality and glory.

Which sacrifice and resurrection were symbolized, and thereby virtually promised to the world by instituting sacrificial worship and offerings. That institution symbolized the sacrificial death and the resurrection of Christ in this wise, viz. : As all mankind by virtue of their headship existence in Christ, died in and with him, and in and with him rose from the dead, so under that mode of worship the offerer of the sacrifice died figuratively in and with the animal slain, and the blood of the sacrifice was offered and accepted of God, as the evidence of that figurative death ; and that acceptance signified the access of the offerer to, and the enjoyment of God's presence, which is resurrectional life, for " God is not a God of the dead, but of the living," and by the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ " all live unto God." We also learn from the record, that the offering of Abel was accepted, and that of Cain rejected, for the reason, as Paul informs us, that the former had faith in the Messiah, from which we infer that Cain had not that faith ; his offering, being only the fruit of the ground, was not a sacrifice — there was no blood, whereas Abel offered the blood of his flock, which was an expression of faith in the Messiah and his sacrifice.

And we gather from the words of God to Cain (viz., "If thou doest well shalt thou not be accepted ? ") that there was nothing wrong in his offering as a gift or thank offering, only it was, as we have said, not a sacrifice ; his sin which God visited upon him was his anger and the murder of his brother. ,

It is a natural and scriptural inference that Adam taught his children the true significance of the sacrificial institution, and enjoined their strict observance of it. And Saint Paul speaks of the elders of the human race, as having obtained a good report (from Adam as we infer, he being their natural teacher), and it is clearly inferable also, that that report was the account of the framing of the world by the word of God (spoken as we have before shown by his Son), also of the promise of the Messiah as given in the institution of sacrifice, as we have seen. The elders spoken of were doubtless Adam's earliest posterity, probably those who first began to call upon the name of the Lord and to offer sacrificial worship. We are impelled here to give expression to such conceptions of the greatness and glory of Adam as have been impressed upon us by the inspired record, of his origin, his relation to God, and to the entire humanity, and to the universe of worlds.