THE REAL AND THE APPARENT

Rev. Abiel Silver — 1863

From the work: The Holy Word in its own Defense:
addressed to Bishop Colenso and all other earnest seekers after truth.

WE are told, in the Holy Word, that God is angry, and that He is Love; that He is wrathful, and kind; revengeful, and merciful; provokable, and unchangeable; that He repents, and repents not; that He loved Jacob, and hated Esau, and that He is no respecter of persοns; but maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth His rain upon the just and the unjust; that He curses people, and punishes them; and that He is kind unto the unthankful and the evil, and that His tender mercies are over all His works; that He forms the light, and creates darkness; makes peace, and creates evil. He says, “Is there evil in the city, and I have not done it?" thus plainly indicating that He does all the evil in the city. And to complete the apparently decided fatality of all things, the foreknowledge of God has been understood by some to pre-order and fix fast everything that occurs, whether of thought, feeling, or action; and to sustain this view, we are often cited to the Epistle to the Romans: " Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate." . . . "Whom He did pre-destinate, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified." "Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy; and whom He will He hardeneth;” that He a maketh one vessel to honor and another to dishonor."

Men have two ways of receiving ideas—by appearances, and by realities. And a glance at the Key of First Principles, will very soon decide which of the above characters of God must be the real, and which the apparent. And as the Principles which constitute this Key are Eternal Axioms, which all Christians must admit, they would throw much light upon all the doctrines of the Word, by distinguishing between the apparent and the real, if men would receive and use them. For there is a common consent and agreement, among all Christians, to the truth of the first general view of the doctrines of the Scriptures, which teaches that there is an Infinite and Eternal Being who created all things; that the Bible is His revealed Word; that in Him is a Trinity, called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; that He made all things good; that man fell into depravity, and imparted his sinful nature to his offspring; that, to save the fallen world, God was manifest in the flesh, and thereby opened up a way of salvation; that, in order to be saved, man must be regenerated by the Spirit of God; that, after death, we rise and go into the spiritual world, and there are judged, and are happy if regenerated, and unhappy if unregenerated. These great leading doctrines God, in His Holy Word, simply and clearly teaches and, as here stated, they are indisputably true to the very letter, and the Christian world generally acknowledge them as here expressed. And yet those very people are divided into hundreds of different sects, and are at great variance upon the character and quality of these doctrines. They know them alike by outward terms, but not by essential principles. Thus they disagree as to what each doctrine is in itself, and are wavering in mystery, between the apparent and the real. But, by the Key of First Principles … light may be thrown upon all the doctrines, the apparent may be distinguished from the real, and all may be brought together in harmony, and the watchmen see eye to eye.

Now, all things have their appearances and their realities. There is truth as it appears, and truth as it is; the literal sense of the Word as it appears, and that sense as it is; nature as it appears, and nature as it is; God as He appears, in His Word and works, and God as He is. And even the appearances are various, depending altogether upon the states of the observers.

Nature and its laws do not appear to the scholar as they do to the savage. The same forms of things fall upon the eyes of both, but they suggest very different ideas. The savage sees them only by the light of the sun; the scholar has the additional light of science. All persons, at first, look at nature as it appears. But, as their minds are educated, they lose thought of the appearance and see things more as they are, rising, as they progress, from the surface view to scientific laws.

And as with God's works, so with His Word; here too is the apparent and the real. When wicked men first turn their thoughts seriously toward moral arid religious things, they see, in the Word only the low appearances of God's character. Each man sees Him according to his state; the angry man as angry; the froward, as froward; the upright man as upright; the pure in heart, as pure. Thus He seems to come, "all things to all men."

Now it is much better that man should believe the apparently hard things that are written of God than not believe anything. When Galileo presented the solar system to men, the world, as to astronomy, was in the shade of appearance, believing that the sun daily revolved around the earth. But this was much better than no thought on the subject. It was far above what any animal could think. And though only an appearance, yet it was truth to those who could see no higher. And, as such minds are developed by science, they will see through the appearance to the reality. And so of spiritual things. We must first have them by appearances. Men are of all qualities, from infernal to heavenly. And God's Holy Word, in its Infinity, is adapted to all, from the highest to the lowest. In it, God comes to men with a disposition and passions apparently like their own; and of every shade of character, from the most furious and wrathful to the most gentle and merciful. And without so coming He could not reach all minds. For the elements of one mind cannot flow into another by outward instructions, without a medium or language for ideas adapted to their states. That medium, for the lowest and most vile people, is the "terror of the Law" in the literal and apparent sense. Now it is much better that the Lord should appear to a very wicked, perverse, and ignorant people as an almighty, wrathful, vengeance-taking God, than as all-merciful and forgiving. For, as they are taught from infancy to fear this terrible Being, this character has a powerful influence over their conduct, in restraining them from vice. Such an apparent idea of God can reach and influence them when a real one could not be seen, and would not be feared if it could be seen. And all the Scripture which so represents God is mercifully given for the use and benefit of all such barbarous and cruel minds. The world has had its ages of such benighted ignorance and tyranny. And it has its nations now, to whom such teachings are a blessing.

And, in the ages of great sin and ignorance, even a lake of fire and brimstone, apparently prepared by the Lord to torment wicked souls in forever, has been a blessing, just so far as it has restrained from sin, held evils in cheek, and caused men to keep the commandments. And with a people in a state of blind superstition, and fear of an awful unknown Power, this dreadful doctrine would have that influence, when nothing else would do it. And now, when we see the real, spiritual truth of this doctrine, and fled that that burning lake is no fiction, but a dreadful reality, coming not from God, but from the transgression of His laws, and located in our own souls, if we are evil, and that it will torment us with the fires of hatred, revenge, jealousy, and ill will forever, unless removed by repentance and a good life; I say, when we see this, the same Holy Scripture may bless us also, and save our souls.

Thus we see that the Infinite Word of God is suited to all ages of the world and to all peoples: not only to the patriarchs, the Israelites, and the first Christians, but also to those of the New Jerusalem, the glorious light of which is now dawning upon the world; and if we apply it to our hearts and lives, it will lead our souls into the paradise of God.

But, it is asked, Is not this using deception, by making God to appear what He is not? When those Scriptures are properly considered, there will be seen nothing false in their expressions. It is not a falsity that the sun appears to revolve round the earth, or the grass to look green, or the snow white. These things are truths to a mind that can look no higher, though science speaks further to others. Every man must judge of things according to his state. All men must think and judge of God, not as He is, in His Infinity, but as He manifests Himself to them in His Word.

The bad man, therefore, sees God in the apparent truth of His Word as acting against thieves, murderers, and robbers, for breaking His Law, just as he himself would act against them if they had trespassed against him. He looks upon the Law as just. And when circumstances bring him under the influence of God's Spirit, he is afraid to break the Law. And upon this ground he can commence the work of repentance and regeneration, when otherwise he could not be reached.

And when it is seen that all the power in man to do either right or wrong is not man's power, but God's, constantly given him, and that man is free to use it, either for good or for evil, the apparent truth is that God hardens men's hearts, and blinds their eyes, and creates their evils, and torments them, and sends them to hell, because it is done through God's power. In this apparent light it is that God, in order to reach the low states of the wicked, is said in Scripture to do these things: whereas the reality is that men, by the abuse of God's power and their own freedom, run into vice and iniquity. Thus, by sin, they harden their own hearts, blind their own eyes, create their own evils, torment themselves, and send themselves to hell, when they have full power and privilege given them to take the other course. Indeed, the human heart is not unconscious of its freedom and responsibility to the truth.

And as to the foreknowledge of God, binding the destinies of men to an unalterable course of life, this is also apparent. God, being Infinite in Wisdom, must know all things at once. Foreknowledge with Him, therefore, must be the same as afterknowledge, and thus does not interfere with the freedom of man. It would be absurd to suppose that the knowledge we of this age have of the American Revolution was the means of its success, or was in any way connected with it. But it has just as much to do with it as our foreknowledge would have with the laying of the Atlantic cable, it we could see that it would be successfully done in two years. Simple knowledge of events, whether present, past, or future, does net necessarily affect the events at all.

God made man free, and therefore His knowledge of his acts cannot affect or destroy that freedom. For, though He knew that a man would sin, yet He also knew that he could do better, or else His commandments are not binding. And the declaration, "Whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate," does not at all affect the matter, or reach man's freedom. For predestination is only the decision of a general law, showing that certain effects must follow certain causes; that misery must follow the transgression of the laws of either moral or physical life, and happiness must be the result of obedience, so that the predestination rests entirely upon the life lived. The freedom of man, therefore, is the grand pivot upon which he turns either to the right hand or to the left, and thus lie determines his own destiny.

Now, there are everywhere, throughout the entire Word and works of God, two scenes, the apparent and the real. The Lord's written language always paints two scenes, or one scene with two sides—an inside and an outside. It is declared in Scripture that the Word is "written within and on the back side." (Ezekiel 2:10; Revelation 5:1) Now, we cannot see the beauty of the outside scene, unless it be made transparent by the light which shines upon the inside; giving us, at the same time, a view of the inside picture in and through the outside one, by analogy. The outside picture or literal sense is seen as a lower light, like moonlight compared with the real light. This lower light gives many simple and plain commandments, and teaches many important duties; and it directs the soul to higher things.

This is all the light man can at first bear from the Holy Word. But, in man's fallen state, this light cannot bring out the clear, distinct features and qualities of even the outside picture, so as to show its true designs, and its full symmetry and beauty. Indeed, as we examine it closely in that light only, we perceive much irregularity and confusion, and are left in much uncertainty as to what the picture, as a whole, is intended to represent. But when, by analogy, the inner light shines through it, it infills and blends with the lower light, and the two scenes become one. The inside scene, with its real light, now fills up and supplies all the apparent deficiencies of the outside one. All the dark places, deformities, strange objects, and mysterious characters, which were scattered more or less throughout the whole view, are now brought out in new light, and in great perfection and beauty.

This Divine picture, as seen upon the inside, is a view of spiritual things, or things of the mind; but as seen only upon the outside, without the spiritual light, it is a view of natural things, as seen in the light of the literal sense, which is often only apparent and contradictory. Thus the Holy Word has its earth-side and its heaven-side, or its apparent and its real; just as man has his earth-side or natural mind and body, and his heaven-side or spiritual mind and body. Therefore, when we look at the Word upon its earth-side only, and from the earth-side of our mind, we do not see the scene as it really is, but only as it appears to our selfish, external man. Consequently, many parts of it appear dark and indistinct; and some portions seem distorted and ugly, with things out of place and upside down. And thence we begin to doubt its being a scene drawn entirely by a Divine pencil, in the hand of an Infinite Artist.

But the difficulty is all in ourselves. The mental position or state in which we stand to view it, darkens and distorts our vision. The selfish and ignorant mental sphere which surrounds us, and through which we are looking, gives its own false coloring to the Divine Word. But let our understandings be once open to the spiritual sense, so as to let in upon our natural mind, by analogy, the heavenly light of the Sun of Righteousness, and the fogs of our mental earth will soon disappear. And then even the earth-side of the Holy Word will be bright and beautiful.

Now it is precisely so with God's Book of Nature, but on a lower plane of thought. The untutored savage, standing, as he believes, on the immovable, at earth in the centre of creation, sees the lamps and torches of the heavens revolving around him in panoramic order; while a new and sublime scene passes before the learned, filling his soul with rational wonder and admiration. The first of these is a natural scene, viewed with the eyes of the body, in natural light. The second is a mental scene, viewed by the eye of the mind in the light of science. If, then, the two scenes in God's Book of Nature are so completely unlike in aspect, magnitude, and fact; if the view becomes so vastly changed in beauty and grandeur, by the aid of only the light of natural science ; what must be the change of scenes in God's Book of Revelation, when we can look above and beyond all the clouds of appearances, and view it in the pure light of spiritual science—the science of the soul—the science of thoughts and feelings—the science of spiritual substance, of spiritual heat and light, of spiritual attraction and repulsion ; and, indeed, when we can have a rational conception and knowledge of the Science of Causes, and, to some extent, of God Himself, the Cause of all causes, and in the light of His Divine Wisdom can look down upon Νature, and see her, with all her apparent laws of gravitation, motion, heat, light, and production, to be but the mere blind and unconscious effect of the higher, the spiritual principles and laws, and as baring existence, life, light, and action, only in and by the constant influx of these spiritual principles, as they flow from the Divine Fountain?

To come into the blessed enjoyment of this Spiritual Light and Life is now the privilege of fallen humanity.