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THEO-SCIENTIUM 
 
 IOHN M K\ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 The 5olar Throne, .... 4 
 
 The Solar hell, - I 25 
 
 The Problem of Creation, - - 36 
 
 Contraction of the Solar System, - 48 
 
 The Origin of Man, - ' 
 
 The Fall of Man, -» I 68 
 
 The Redemption, . - 74 
 
 I he Seven A^e> 81 
 Illustrations 
 
THEO-SCIENTIUM 
 
 or 
 
 Introductory Extracts 
 
 To "The Seven Ages of Creation" 
 
 by 
 JOHN M. RUSSELL. 
 
 Dedicated to lovers of learning, and to all who love to 
 linger late and early at wisdom's gate. 
 
 1902 
 
 EAGLE PUBLISHING CO 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 
 
 <t|^s|39|^> GBB 
 
|IUkLI8IUIV0l 
 
 CONGRESS, 
 COPY B, 
 
 Copyright A. D. 1902, 
 
 By 
 
 John M. Russell. 
 
 ■&)* 01 
 ^ 
 
AETICLE I. 
 The Solar Throne 
 
 4-nd I saw a great wonder in Heaven : a woman clothed 
 with the sun, and the moon under her feet/ (Kev. 
 
 xii:l.) 
 INSPIKED TESTIMONY. Pondering on the 
 
 words of the above passage of Holy Writ, and a few others, 
 of like signification, we became struck with the thought 
 that the interior of the Sun is the Heaven of the solar sys- 
 tem. The 'Woman' therein symbolizing the earth's tri- 
 umphant Blessed standing on high, and all as it were, 
 united into one great being, a 'wonder/ the destined 'Bride 
 of the Lamb/ And, behold, here we find her in the Sun. 
 This is a vision of immediately after the 'end of time/ as re- 
 lated in the preceding chapter. But in the second verse of 
 this vision, the scene instantly reverts back to the time 
 of the birth of Christ; and, likewise, from Heaven back 
 to earth. 
 
 This brief extract of sacred Scripture is exuberantly 
 illustrative and suggestive that the sun is really the solar 
 Empyrean. But we have still other evidence from the pen 
 of the same sacred writer, seemingly no less conclusive, such 
 as: 'And I saw an Angel standing in the sun (xix:17). 
 and speaking of the yet far-off time of our planet' s disso- 
 lution in the future, the Patmosian prophet declares : 'And 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 / saw a great white throne and Him that sat thereon from 
 whose presence the earth and Heaven fled away' (xix:ll). 
 The great white Throne here seen in the vision of the future 
 undoubtedly is the Sun. But the 'Heaven' mentioned in 
 this quotation means the terrestrial firmament 
 (See Gen. i:8). But perhaps the most direct passage 
 pointing to this fact is found in Psalm (xviii:6-7) where 
 it says : 'He hath set his tabernacle in the sun : and he as a 
 bridegroom coming out of his bridechamber hath rejoiced as 
 i giant to run the way. His going out is from the end of 
 Heaven, and his circuit even to the end thereof.'* 
 
 It is inferable from the twenty-first chapter of the Kev- 
 elation of St. John,, that the sun is an immense shell of 
 gold, the interior of which is composed of 'clear gold, like 
 transparent glass/ as it were, having the appearance of 'a 
 sea of glass mingled with fire/ And that the celestial vault 
 is on all sides around, studded with cities of gold and of 
 precious stone and pearl, and with Merusalems' and Zions 
 of most gorgeous and magnificent display. The 'New Jer- 
 usalem' described in that chapter being one of the many 
 cities of the sun, the one destined to receive terrestrial sal- 
 vation. Over all, then, and out-glorying all else, the inter- 
 ior Throne of Eternity's Monarch ! 
 
 Indeed, the Scripture abounds in many rather illus- 
 trative passages presaging this same idea as, 'My dwelling 
 place is in the Heaven of Heavens/ 'As far as Heaven is 
 above the earth, so my ways are above thy ways; 'My throne 
 is above all thrones/ 'Our strength is in the name of the 
 Lord who made Heaven and earth/ 'Thou art a hidden 
 
 *This pas *age is not quite the same in all translations, and 
 in some versions the same Psalm is number xix. 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 5 
 
 God, the God of Israel;' 'The Heaven of Heavens are His 
 dwelling place, but the earth He gave to the children of 
 men/ 'All is vanity under the sun/ etc.; which passages 
 also go to show that the residence of the Deity, the dwell- 
 ing place of the sovereign God, the throne of infinite Ma- 
 jesty, is somewhere far removed from this world of ours, 
 somewhere raised far above this lower world, and that the 
 same is a place of surpassing splendor, and besides all this 
 that it is a real, distinct place, a separate world in itself, 
 and standing apart from all other worlds. And there, 
 the Lord ordained it, that the brightness of His Throne 
 should furnish light and day to the outer circling worlds. 
 
 WELL, SO MUCH FOE EEVEALED INTELLI- 
 GENCE. NOW FOR SCIENCE; scientific informa- 
 tion, and let us see how the two harmonize. Although there 
 is nothing in astronomy directly declaring the sun to be 
 a heaven, yet the idea is at least very deducible from many 
 stated facts. In starting out we must of course admit that, 
 outside of the Scripture, the proposition cannot be proved 
 by any rule of mathematical calculation, nor logic, nor by 
 ocular demonstration ; data can be gleaned only by inference 
 from appearance, size, position, relation, motion, import- 
 ance, etc., of the cosmic body. But even the same is true with 
 respect to all scientific discoveries. And especially in deal- 
 ing with this hidden question, science at best can give us 
 only 'circumstantial evidence/ * 
 
 But circumstantial evidence is sometimes very strong, 
 such as cannot be overthrown. Astronomers tell us that the 
 
 *The solar system consists of the sun at the center, and eight 
 or nine planets revolving around that center in orbits at varying 
 distances therefrom. 
 
6 INTRODUCTION" 
 
 sun is the only self-luminous body in the solar system; 
 certainly a fitting characteristic for the throne of a Deity. 
 The moon and planets all shine only by reflected light, the 
 light of his eminence, the Sun. They tell us that the sun is 
 the only stationary body in the solar system ; all the others 
 revolve and rotate around this glowing center. Yes, they 
 inform us that the sun is the great central body of the 
 system,, that all the other members are merely eccentric 
 wanderers. This dignified position and commanding loca- 
 tion are not unseeming prerogatives of an Omnipotent See. 
 It is the sun that governs the order and controls the mo- 
 tion of all the other members ; the standpoint of the 'com- 
 mander-in-chief of the cosmic forces. The qualities and 
 properties of supremacy and royalty are everywhere 
 stamped in unfading characters on this awful central orb ; 
 the soloris firma, the root and stock, the pre-existent base 
 and firm foundation of the solar system. The prerogatives 
 of ponderance, appearance, magnitude and power are here 
 monopolized in this all-controlling, all-beholding member. 
 This great, reposing, recumbent, luminous body possesseth 
 not unbecoming qualities of uranian dignity, not to speak 
 of the prolific omnipresence of its nature, or the exuber- 
 ance of its creative capacity, or the all-seeing intelligence 
 of Heaven's 'eye/ 
 
 Astronomers assure us that the sun is by far the largest 
 member of the solar system. All the other revolving 
 spheres are as nothing in comparison to the incomparable 
 magnitude of the mighty central globe. The sun is com- 
 puted to be about 1,300,000 times as large as the earth. In- 
 deed, that body is 674 times as large as all the other mem- 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 1 
 
 bers of the solar system together. But the high Heaven 
 appears small to our eyes. Why ? Because of the distance. If 
 the sun were as near the earth as the moon it would cover 
 three-fourths of the whole sky. The sun is the greatest of 
 orbs, why not the greatest of worlds? It would require a 
 chain of one hundred earths side by side to reach across 
 the sun's interior from one side to the other. It is said, if 
 the earth were placed at the sun's center, there would not 
 only be room for the moon to revolve in its present orbit 
 about the earth, but the sides of the sun would stretch out 
 in every direction to a distance of 200,000 miles beyond. 
 The area of the surface of that celestial world would ex- 
 ceed the surface of the earth by 12,000 times, or it would 
 require 12,000 globes the size of the earth (and that in- 
 cluding land and water) to furnish the same surface area, 
 or world-room, as that of the sun. The proportionate size 
 which the earth bears to the sun is very nearly the same as 
 that of a pea to a globe two feet in diameter. If the earth 
 were laid in the sun, it would bear about the same propor- 
 tion to the vast concave as a marble in a parlor. 
 And if all the planets were consolidated into a single 
 body, that would set in the sun like a school globe in a 
 large room. It is an astonishing fact that this Orbus Mag- 
 nus is but little less than the entire solar system in itself ! 
 The sun illuminates the whole solar system, and even at 
 this distance, 91,500,000 miles away, we scarce dare look 
 upon his majesty for brightness. Think not the sun too 
 small for a Heaven, nor that most awful, lofty, sacred 
 sphere deficiency in lustre for a solar Throne. 
 
8 INTRODUCTION" 
 
 All the other members of the system are dark, opaque, 
 little bodies to this. Who will think after a moment's con- 
 sideration that this body, nearly 700 times as large as all 
 the rest together, was made for the single purpose of giv- 
 ing light and heat to the planets, and that the sun is other- 
 wise a vast desolate fireball? What a lack of purpose, a 
 deficiency of design on the part of an all-wise Providence, 
 that he would not appropriate this mightiest creation to 
 some further and better use. Surely an Alfonso would 
 here cry out, as he did in disgust over the unmethodic, 
 cumbersome Ptolemaic theory: If I had been consulted 
 at the creation, I could have done a better job than that/ 
 Every or any likly reason which can be adduced on the ques- 
 tion goes to support the proposition of the sun being the 
 Throne and Heaven of the solar system. Yes, it is appar- 
 ent, convincing, irrestible, the doctrine that this vast, 
 reposing central sphere should be the Heaven, the em- 
 pyrean of the system of the sun. From both science and 
 theology this conclusion must be drawn. 
 
 CONCLUSION. This is not a system of 'fire wor- 
 ship' nor 'sun worship/ but it is a theory expounding the 
 mystery of the Sun; neither is it a new religion; but it is 
 a new beam or buttress in support of that oldest, hopeful- 
 est, holiest creed, the creed of an everlasting Heaven; a 
 place of endless joy; another and glorious world hereafter; 
 and that this lowly life of ours is deemed pregnant with 
 eternal value of daily increasing worth, in pursuance of 
 the great things that are to be. Being architects of our 
 own destiny, we may build an infinite fortune from day to 
 day, as the tide of time rolls on and eternity draws nigh, 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 9 
 
 when the just shall rise like the morning to the Palace 
 of the Lord most High. It cannot be regarded heretical 
 or heterodoxical since the same is grounded on several clear, 
 direct and corroborating passages of Holy Scripture. We 
 are merely looking into the final purpose and deeper func- 
 tion in the Providential design of the solar Creation. Such 
 might be called an inquiry into the esoteric nature and pur- 
 pose of the creation of the sun. It is a looking upward into 
 that source of all brightness for a better world than this. 
 It is, perhaps, the oldest idea in religion that there exists 
 somewhere an eternal Heaven, but it is a new piece of dis- 
 covery to point out and definitely locate the exact place of 
 that blissful abode. For 6,000 years this problem has puz- 
 zled the world's brain. We lay claim to the distinction, 
 however underserving we may be, for standing on the 
 shoulders of these giants* we have been raised to see afar. 
 
 As Copernicus discerned the fact that the planets re- 
 volve about the sun ; as Columbus understood the practica- 
 bility of of the earth's rotundity, and who was sometimes 
 persecuted t; and as Galileo devolved the rotary motion of 
 
 *Standin<g on the shoulders of giants. This allusion is taken 
 from Newton's expression that in his discovery of the 'attraction 
 of gravitation' he was merely standing on the shoulders of his 
 predecessors who had made other discoveries by aid of which he 
 himself was enabled to succeed. 
 
 tit is a notable fact, and not underserving of some com- 
 ment here, that new truths and findings are often, at first, re- 
 ceived by the world with the spirit of repugnance. It has been 
 truly said that 'truth is to-day abhorred and to-morrow adored.' 
 Admitting that it is the duty of authorized custodians and war- 
 dens of the various knowledges, both sacred and secular, to guard 
 against the invasions of error and heresy with a paternal and 
 jealous care; yet these 'watchmen' should, however, keep re- 
 minded that, although falsehood and deception are ever liable to 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 our planet, and for which he was much derided as a vision- 
 ary fellow; so we flatter ourselves that we have found the 
 Heaven! Yes, found the Empyrean, or the highest 
 Heaven, or rather discerned the location of the place there- 
 of. Confidently trusting that many friends who have gone 
 before us all have found the place first ; and to them we re- 
 linquish, for the present, all claim on the sacred territory 
 by right of conquest or earliest discovery; but we cannot 
 see how it can be other than a most laudable task for any- 
 one living to search for the happy place. A hopeful intel- 
 ligence, this story of the sun, bright news, though we cannot 
 yet see the seraphim nor cherubim, nor hear the golden 
 harps. 
 
 POPULAR IDEAS ABOUT HEAVEN. If the 
 
 question were asked : Where is Heaven ? What kind of a 
 place is Heaven? the world's answer would be various. 
 Some would tell us that Heaven is up, somewhere up. Some 
 would say, Heaven is everywhere. Others would declare 
 
 creep in, there are yet many vital truths of which we do not 
 know; and though much is known, there is much to be known. 
 
 This wonderful being called 'man' with unfinished touch of 
 God-like power and appearance is virtually a new beginner in the 
 rank and file of creation's being, comparatively a stranger, a new- 
 comer on the planet, with his 'whence and whither' as yet, to him, 
 but faint and darkly known. Hence it is, that we, as human 
 beings, naturally and of legitimate right, inquire into these 
 things. It therefore behooves us to at least refrain from that 
 class of pseudo-philanthropists and quasi-conservators, and which 
 the divine Master ,himself, so indignantly denounced as those: 
 'Who would lock up the store-house of learning and will neither 
 enter themselves nor permit anyone else to enter.' Besides, no- 
 tice how He sternly reprehended the Doctors of the Law for not 
 understanding better the prophecies concerning Himself, which 
 culpable ignorance deluded them from knowing who the Messiah 
 was. 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 11 
 
 that Heaven is all around us. Others again would assure 
 us that 'the kingdom of Heaven is within you/ Still oth- 
 ers would inform us that Heaven is where God and his 
 angels and his saints dwell. But any of these traditional 
 ideas does not vouch for the Throne of the Deity, nor for a 
 distinct world and residence of the blest, such as the Script- 
 ures everywhere describe, nor for a real substantial dwell- 
 ing place. These assertions are kind of vague and mythical, 
 and like many suppose God to be an immaterial, insubstan- 
 tial Being, they believe his abode and resting place to be 
 likewise. These ideas are generally the outcome of misap- 
 prehensions and misconstructions of certain Scriptural 
 passages. Of course they are true to a limited extent, but, 
 after all, very unintelligible. 
 
 Heaven is up. Well, up is never the same any two 
 seconds. Perhaps this view is founded on the first chapter of 
 Genesis, which says : 'God declared the firmament Heaven/ 
 Which latter also accounts, in a manner, for Heaven to be 
 in the lofty, cerulean azure, surrounding the globe, for the 
 firmament is the temporal Heaven of the earth. Heaven 
 is everywhere. — This notion of Heaven is probably an out- 
 come of the pantheistic idea that God and nature are one 
 the same. And though the kingdom (spirit) of God be 
 within his servants, yet this definition very narrowly ac- 
 counts for the Throne of an omnipotent Majesty. Prob- 
 ably the idea of a solar Heaven was never before brought 
 squarely up before the world, and will, at first, be received 
 with some feelings of repellancy, and that because the sun 
 is commonly reprehended as being nothing more than a 
 huge globe of fire and burning metal, and a Heaven should 
 be looked for in a more serene and cooler place. Though 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 most people consider the earth to be a solid body, yet if 
 asked their belief concerning the location of the bottomless 
 pit, they most assuredly would say, Within the earth. Well 
 then, we must consider the earth to be empty, and if the 
 earth be an hollow globe, why not the sun ? And for that 
 the heat all radiates off into space, the interior surface re- 
 mains refreshing and cool. 
 
 DISTANCE. Astronomers agree in saying that 
 the mean distance of the sun is 91,500,000 miles from the 
 earth. Here is a scope of measurement which no human 
 mind can hope to span, and the imagination palls before 
 the amazing magnitude of that cosmic fabric called the solar 
 system. And yet the distance of 91,000,000 miles is simply 
 used as a foot-rule in computing the distances of the fixed 
 stars, or the stars outside and beyond the planets. 'Suppose 
 a railroad could be built to the sun. An express train, trav- 
 eling day and night, at the rate of thirty miles an hour, 
 would require 341 years to reach its destination. Ten gen- 
 erations would be born and would die; the young men 
 would become gray-haired; their great-grandchildren would 
 forget the story of the beginning of that wonderful journey, 
 and could find it only in history, as we now read of Queen 
 Elizabeth or of Shakespeare; the eleventh generation 
 would see the solar depot at the end of the route/ — Steele. 
 Behold, is not this the great fixed chaos betwixt Heaven 
 and earth, as mentioned in the Gospel, where Abraham, 
 speaking to Dives, said: 'And besides all this, between lis 
 and you there is fixed a great chaos : so that they who would 
 pass from hence to you cannot, nor from thence come hith- 
 er/ (Luke xvi:26.) By the Almighty's power alone can 
 this gulf be spanned. Yet our prayers, too, may span this 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 13 
 
 blank abyss, carried by angel's hand. Then, with the 
 psalmist, let us break : Out of the depths we cry unto Thee 
 Lord, Lord hear our voice from these far distant low- 
 lands of time. 
 
 VEEBAL INDICATIONS. The propriety and 
 adaptation of this proposition of a solar Heaven is verified 
 in Scripture which everywhere uses the phrase, in Heaven, 
 not at Heaven, nor on Heaven; showing beyond the iota 
 of a doubt that Heaven is a place within. 'I saw a throne 
 set in Heaven;' 'I saw a great wonder in Heaven;' 'and I 
 saw another sign in Heaven ;' 'and I saw the holy city com- 
 ing down out of Heaven;' 'Our Father who art in Heav- 
 en ;' c and I saw Heaven opened/ etc. 
 
 Heaven must therefore be an inclosure somewhere, sub- 
 stantially impaled on all sides round; an interior habita- 
 tion within some mighty swelling dome. The primative 
 position of dwelling is on the bare outside of a world, the 
 rudimentary form of life (organic) inhabits the convex 
 sides of a planet, and where the view commands but little 
 compass. But that final, electic and perfect position of 
 everlasting residence is ever a world within, and that 
 within a sphere. There the length and breadth of the en- 
 chanting zones and regions are always in full view and 
 visible to all. The latitude and longitude of the hemis- 
 pheres Empyrean are, far and near, in constant sight. Be- 
 sides, such is the only possible formation into which a world 
 could well be made in order to adequately accomodate an 
 Omnipotent throne. Internally and not externally is the 
 place for a God to dwell ; eternal bliss hidden and bounded 
 by unfailing protection and security around about, above 
 and beneath. The worlds of time are without, but eternity's 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 world is within. 0, a great 'wall' is the auriferous zones 
 surrounding the paradise of God, wherein are crystal cities 
 and princedoms and kingdoms and zions and seats of solar 
 regents. 
 
 The interior surface of the sun is a most magnificent 
 concave wall of gold, refrangible, transparent, and of the 
 deepest hues and colors, or as the Scripture describes it: 
 'Like a sea of glass mingled with fire ;'* and more ornate 
 than the rainbow or the liveliest flowers that ever bloomed. 
 Nor can any mind of man picture a Heaven so beautiful, 
 or what mortal could deem a place so lovely, so heavenly, 
 a paradise so fair ? Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor 
 hath it entered into the heart of any human being, the 
 beauty of that place. And then, centerward, and high over 
 all, the throne of Him of Eternity, whose rarest brightness 
 enlightens the circumambient vasts. God is the 'sun' of 
 Heaven and lights the solar kingdom, as it were, by the re- 
 fulgence of his beauty. It is almost incredible to us that 
 any being, even a God, should be so glorious, so bright 
 (whose beauty is awful to behold, whose power is dreadful 
 to behold) like the smoke of the beams of the majesty of 
 creation's immutable Chief, whom thunder-clouds of glory 
 summer about His head; the imperturbable God of gods! 
 As it is written: 'And from the throne there proceeded 
 lightnings and voices and thunderings! Yet, after all, no 
 man is able to conceive a true idea of the appearance and 
 greatness of God, except that His power, in a measure, is 
 
 *This appearance of mingled fire does not come from the fire 
 on the sun's outside surface, such is the color right in the con- 
 stituent gold. 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 15 
 
 seen in His works, an estimate of His power in the magni- 
 tude of His works. 
 
 HEAVEN'S DOOBWAY. The question may be 
 
 said to here intuitively arise : What is the manner of en- 
 trance into Paradise? How can anyone get into the sun? 
 Well, the answer is easy enough since this is also described 
 in Kevelation. There is a door leading into Heaven; a 
 great door or rather a door of doors. This door may be 
 opened so as to let in a man or it might be opened so as to 
 let in a great angel ; yes, or a city. The prophet said : 'Af- 
 ter these things I saw; and behold a door opened in Heav- 
 en (iv:i). And in another place in the same mystic book 
 we find : 'Behold I have given to thee a door opened which 
 no man can shut' (iii:8). Here the appointed Keeper 
 holds the keys which lock and unlock the door of Heaven's 
 threshold.* 
 
 NATUEE'S ASSERTIONS. A hero-worshipper 
 has disserted that a full-grown man who, for instance, had 
 never in his life seen the sun, would upon the dint of the 
 
 *Inferably, Heaven's door is placed at the region of the celes- 
 tial pole, or poles, where the temperature on the outside is lowest, 
 perhaps utterly cool. For according to the theory of vortical pres- 
 sure (as explained later on) the temperatures of all great spheres 
 is ever greatest at the equatorial zone and least at the poles. Be- 
 sides, the Psalm states that the Lord's 'going out is from the end 
 of Heaven.' Even so it is, in a manner, with the earth's struct- 
 ural formation. The entrance or entrances into the infernal re- 
 gions of the bottomless pit must be at the terrestrial poles. Here, 
 there undoubtedly exists a cosmic vacuity, at least open a great 
 way in, which condition is the result of an almost total lack of 
 cosmic pressure and concretion (leaving the gates of Tartarus 
 in part ajar), and which chaotic ends of the geogony and the 
 wardens there, are ever secluded from the gaze of man. Nor can 
 the ends of the Solar be descried from this, our terrestrial obser- 
 vatory, nor the prospects of the Gates. 
 
16 INTKODUCTION 
 
 impulse, kneel down and worship that body on beholding 
 his first sunrise, and bow his head in meditation and prayer. 
 This, because of the inspiration of the imposing spectacle; 
 because of the transcendent appearance of the object; for 
 the sun is not only an emblem of the living throne, but it 
 is the real thing, an emblem of the imperial power and 
 majesty of the Lord, for that bright sphere is the world of 
 God. 
 
 Of all things visible the sun has a most celestial ap- 
 pearance; indeed, as if enshrining the hidden glory; as if 
 the streaming radii of the super-brilliant disc were wont to 
 emanate from the hidden power ; for the exterior splendor 
 is but an emblem of the interior resplendence, and of the 
 plentitude of the living Paradise. The rising sun is the 
 stamp and image of unfailing life and immortal youth, and 
 reneweth the face of nature every morn, and remindeth 
 no less than of that place from whence all blessings flow, 
 as if Heaven's bounteous flood of love would yet more than 
 requite its due. Verily hath the Almighty 'set His taber- 
 nacle in the sun/ In the rising pomp thereof is attested 
 an objective symbol of the living sanctuary ; and in the ex- 
 altation of the meridian sun, the overpowering fervor of 
 the great throne; and in the setting thereof a 'still small 
 voice' from the Ark of the Eternal Testament. The glory 
 of the solar Sovereign is emblazoned on His flaming throne, 
 and His power in the conflagrations thereof. Lo, the most 
 conspicuous of all things, the largest of all things, the 
 brightest of all things, such that we scarce durst look upon 
 the throne for its brilliancy and the deluge of its reful- 
 gence ! 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 17 
 
 Why account it strange that Heaven should illumine 
 the transparent depths and give birth and light to the 
 worlds abroad ? What wonder that the Heaven of the solar 
 system should be the throne of God ? Truly the blessings 
 of the pleasant sunshine are second only to the grace of 
 God. No sooner does that orb depart at eve than darkness 
 comes on and coldness comes on, twin sisters of death. It 
 is the radience of the Lord's bright House that makes our 
 humble dwelling beautiful and glad; it is the brightness 
 of the day-star which makes our lowly planet grand, when 
 Heaven and earth are full of glory. And every sea and 
 every land and every stream and every hill and every thing 
 on which the sun shines, reflects a silent paean : 'Lo the ex- 
 haustless fount, the illimitable light, the light of Heaven !' 
 All beauty is owing to the sunlight. The picture 
 on the canvas, the landscape, the brilliant plumes 
 of the birds and color of the flowers, the tints of the rain- 
 bow, the crimson-streaked clouds are naught else than 
 the miracles of sunlight painting nature, messages of 
 beauty from Heaven, such as inspired the poet, the artist, 
 the philanthropist to light their votive lamps with a spark 
 from the living Flame, and taught all mortals to lift their 
 eyes and look upward. 
 
 Undoubtedly Milton more than half believed this when 
 he wrote his famous apostrophe to light : 'Hail holy light, 
 offspring of Heaven first-born, or of the eternal, co-eternal 
 beam, may we express thee unblamed? Or, hearest rather 
 thou, pure ethereal stream of whose fountain who can tell V 
 
 And Ossian, when he sang: 'Whence thy beams, 
 sun?' 
 
18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Lastly, permit us to offer as our humble tribute : Hail 
 distant Throne, whose brightness lends the day ! Hail ra- 
 diant Orb, whose luster leads the way ! 'Lead kindly Heav- 
 enly light/ that, one day, we the glory of thy inmost Shrine 
 may see. 
 
 Who would not seek Heaven in the most glorious place, 
 and what place is so glorious as the harbinger of the morn- 
 ing? Creation's most elaborate work, this, nor could a 
 solar Architect wisely afford to keep the apartment vacant. 
 In characters unfading, the sun declares itself to be the 
 Heaven. Who will say the gracious sunshine is not Heav- 
 en's own gift ? How frequently we hear the remark : 'The 
 sun is like Heaven this morning?' Common sense in- 
 tuitively reveals it. Here again may we safely infer the 
 reality, for such things really are what they seem to be. 
 How we love those blessed beams, so near and yet so far, 
 like streams of dissolving gold-dust strewn gratis through 
 the void ! The natural appearance of the sun speaks vol- 
 umes, and in silent proclamation betokens its royalty. No 
 dubious Heaven this, nor pageant world. That very, very 
 common thing, the sun, know we not that is the Paradise, 
 the Paradise of fadeless renown? Revelation declares it, 
 Science proclaims it, and all nature asserts in solemn tones 
 that the Lamp of day is the Shrine of the Most High ! 
 
 INDUCTIVE REASONINGS. Perhaps, in the 
 chain of argument there can be nothing stronger or more 
 pertinent offered on the projected doctrine of solar 
 empyreanism than the inductive theory of solar con- 
 traction, or the focal concentralization of the solar 
 system. And although observation, so far, seems 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 19 
 
 to fail to answer the theory, it is nevertheless 
 deducive from universal analogy that the solar system is 
 ever consolidating itself in the body of the sun. Wher- 
 ever liquids or fluids tend to seek a center, a rotary motion 
 of the converging volume is at once inaugurated. Even so 
 with the solar system, the rotary is established, which again 
 evinces the counter fact that the center is being sought. For 
 the solar system is involved amid a mighty whirlpool of 
 space, an universal vortex, and which vortex is itself much 
 vaster than the visible, material system, which latter is set 
 within the vortex with the sun at the center or 'eye' of the 
 vortex. * 
 
 Now, the solar system, taken as a whole, is but a 
 cosmic Integer, a distinct section of the universe, in itself, 
 with its own vortex, members and bodies, with its own tem- 
 porary worlds and its own eternal world. We behold here 
 a separately organized creation, a detached universal one- 
 ness. But the sun, besides being the omnific member, is 
 also the eternal member, the first and the last, whose age 
 is incomputably greater than that of any other member 
 of the entire system.f For the planets are — notwithstand- 
 ing all protests to the contrary — mere temporary or trib- 
 utary bodies, created and forever being created in the outer 
 depths of the solar vortex, and by that vortex borne and 
 
 *The controlling, solar Sphere might well be metaphorized as 
 the cosmic Heart reposing in the bosom of Chaos, the day and 
 night of whose pulsations vibrate through the solar Deep. 
 
 fThe age of the sun might be vaguely said to consist of seven 
 Arch-«ons of solar duration, corresponding to as many united 
 Dynasties of the living Throne and to the 'seven Spirits of God.' 
 But these are mighty Epochs, such as could not be reckoned by 
 years. 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 carried downward during the vast, cosmic ranges of time, 
 to the sun.* Such is the law of universal convergence, 
 wherein it is the primitive property of all matter, bodies 
 and system to condense and focalize. Such is the func- 
 tional cause, such is the final result. The sun assimilates 
 and is gradually assimilating the solar system; slowly but 
 surely they will fall in one by one ! It is the solar 'sea' into 
 which these lesser tributaries empty. Thus is the sun the 
 final and eternal port or harbor or conservatory of the en- 
 tire system, the haven or the Heaven ! Yes, verily is the 
 throne of God the Solaris umbilicus, the glowing and firm 
 foundation 'stone' of the solar fabric; 'tis the lasting 
 Bourne, the jasper Shrine, the aye enduring Sun ! 
 
 It is the organic law of all systems, whether animate 
 or inanimate, political or cosmic, to have a Head or a com- 
 mon terminus, to and from which, the current of force and 
 activity constantly tends and flows. Even such is the ra- 
 tional plan on which the solar system was built; and that 
 umbilical orb, the sun, is the functional head. And that 
 which is the Heaven for all the other planets is likewise the 
 Heaven of our earth. There is no special Heaven for the 
 children of men above the children of Venus and the blessed 
 of Mercury's creation, for our planet is but a dependent 
 organic factor in the make up of the solar Integer. Here 
 is a great and wonderful system, with its own Heaven, its 
 own hell, its own worlds, its own Creator, too ; a complete, 
 creative organization intact. One for all ; that mystic M eg- 
 asphere which gives day to all, that omnipotent sphere of 
 
 *Not until recently has the planet Neptune hove into view, 
 even to the most powerful telescopes. 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 21 
 
 spheres, that is the solar Capitol and castle of the cosmic 
 empire, the goal of bliss ; it is the regal palace of the Sov- 
 ereign King and horn of the eternal Strength ! 
 
 ULTIMATION OF AEGUMENT. Of course a de- 
 mand for nothing less than a pan-universal Heaven, a par- 
 adise on an infinite scale, would satisfy the ambition of 
 some people's idea of a celestial world hereafter, where the 
 blessed of the Universe of universes shall sing in united 
 choirs and hosannahs all within the pale of solitary em- 
 pyrean bliss. But such cosmopolitan anticipation is evi- 
 dently due to the shortcomings of our understanding and 
 the inadequateness of the human mind, nor would such all- 
 comprehending magnitude in any way enhance the beati- 
 tude. Such idea sprang from our utter misapprehension 
 of the measureless mightiness of infinite space, and the 
 potential of magnitude and distance which must forever 
 lie submerged and hidden in the fathomless realms of the 
 void. Undoubtedly, the broadest stretch of the imagina- 
 tion which has favored any mortal on the vastness of bound- 
 less immensity could be easily circumscribed within the 
 limits of solar immensity, if not within the median circle 
 of the earth's orbit. Addison has gone so far as to say 
 that the size of the earth alone, and which is only like an 
 atom in space, is beyond the capacity of any human intel- 
 lect. 
 
 There is yet, at least, one other argument, and one 
 which we are utterly unable to produce, the argument of 
 personal observation, the testimony of an actual eye-witness. 
 But the same is ever lacking in proving the existence of a 
 Heaven at all; the same is wanting in proving the exis- 
 
22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 tence of a soul, or the existence of a Deity. We have the 
 argument of Nature, which goes far towards establishing 
 a solar Heaven; we have the argument of reason, which 
 likewise proves the sun to be a divine Throne; but like in 
 proving the existence of a God, there is only one sure and 
 certain method of solving the problem, and that is by Rev- 
 alation's word, wherein we have the testimony of those 
 'Eagles' of prophecy (John, Ezekiel, etc.) who were them- 
 selves actual eye-witnesses. And which, if we will not be- 
 lieve, 'we would not believe one should he come down from 
 Heaven or rise from the dead before our eyes, and declare 
 these things/ However new and startling as the theory may 
 seem to us now, it is quite certain that the time will come 
 when the idea of a visible throne of God shall be set down 
 as a cononical truth and a dogma of divine faith. Even 
 as the once rejected hypothesis of the earth's rotundity soon 
 ripened into a substantial, scientific fact, so the discovery 
 of a solar Empyrean and glowing seat of the Almighty's 
 power must, in time, crystalize into an intrinsic and estab- 
 lished doctrine among men. Yes, or as the sun was, on a 
 time, shown to be the solar Center, so shall it now be proven 
 to be the solar Shrine. 
 
 OTHER CONCLUSIONS. By analogy, it is there- 
 fore inferable that the fixed stars are also suns, suns 
 afar off! Astronomers tell us that since the fixed stars 
 shine by their own light, they are distant suns, self-lumin- 
 ous centers of unseen systems. Far away centers of 'solar 
 systems/ everywhere thronged throughout the infinite 
 mazes of the depths of space. Likewise we say these, too, 
 are thrones of the omnipresent Deity, the universal Deity, 
 
THE SEVEN" AGES 23 
 
 and real Heavens like unto our own sun; and with a dis- 
 tinct, presiding personality of infinity's God dwelling in 
 each potential seat of endless majesty.* The Almighty 
 hath many, many thrones ! 
 
 A DOXOLOGY. The EEIGN within our sun 
 
 might, without protestation or prejudice, be called the 
 God of the solar system, beyond whose jurisdiction, for us, 
 there is no appeal; 'Hear, Israel, the Lord thy God is one 
 God;' and his dynasty is forever and ever; and the realms of 
 his empire are unto the utmost bounds of solar dominion. 
 And from thence he speaketh by way of omnipotence and 
 enduration, from the center of the void, the King of Ages 
 speaks : 'I am who am ; before the earth was, I am and my 
 glory shall never cease. My joy! my rapture! from eter- 
 nity to eternity I am, and no one shall reign but me. The 
 earth shall pass away, a moment and these worlds shall be 
 no more; yet I am, and there is no one thou shalt adore 
 but me. I remember the days of old and the worlds that 
 
 *The Fixed Stars are Suns. The vast distance at which the 
 fixed stars are known to be, precludes all thought of their shining, 
 like the planets or moon, by reflecting back the light of our sun. 
 They must be self-luminous, and are doubtless each the center of 
 a system of planets and satellites. 
 
 *Our Sun is one of them. As we see only the suns of these 
 distant systems, so their inhabitants see only the sun of ours, 
 and that as a small star. This, because of the immense distance. 
 Between them and us there is a great chasm which no imagination 
 can bridge; a distance so great that figures are meaningless, and 
 we can only call it space, — so profound that to us it is limitless, 
 boundless, though beyond we see those other suns twinkling like 
 distant lights over a waste of waters. The distance of Neptune 
 from the sun is 2,750 millions of miles, but the distance of the 
 nearest fixed star is nearly 7,000 times farther! If we represent 
 the earth's distance from the sun by one foot, then will Neptune's 
 distance be represented by thirty feet, while that of the near^t 
 fixed star will be about thirty-six miles. 
 
U INTRODUCTION 
 
 have been since the foundation of the sun was laid, since 
 my throne began to shine, yet I am, the self -same, forever 
 young; a thousand days with me is as one day that is past. 
 From a nameless, dateless beginning, I have overcome all 
 things; I have overcome the enemies of God; in my name 
 thou shalt conquer/ saith the Lord, 'and there is no one 
 thou needst fear but me. Lo, who can stand the blast of my 
 wrath, or the rebuke of the heat of my throne ? The arms 
 that opposed me are perished for aye, perished are the wea- 
 pons of the great. I am Alpha and Omega/ saith the Lord, 
 'the first and the last, the beginning and the end, and the 
 Lord God Almighty is my name. Who can count the days 
 of the everlasting God ? Who will give us, man, the date 
 of our solitude or the depth of our profundity; who will 
 give us, ye living powers, the number of the year of our 
 reign V 
 
AETICLE II. 
 The Solar Hell 
 
 { He hath set his tabernacle in the sun; and he as a bride- 
 groom coming out of his bride chamber hath rejoiced 
 as a giant to run the way. His going out is from the 
 end of Heaven, and his circuit to the end thereof : and 
 there is no one that can hide himself from his heat! 
 
 Psalm xviii: 6-7. 
 In the previous article we have endeavored to establish 
 the fact that the interior of the sun is the solar Heaven, now 
 we shall undertake to prove, however paradoxical it may 
 seem, that the exterior of the sun is the Hell of the solar 
 system. The Psalmist in the above quotation speaks of a 
 certain 'heat' from which no one can hide himself, and 
 he speaks of this in connection with the assertion that the 
 'tabernacle of God is in the sun/ With the mind free and 
 open to conviction, in taking a general view of the matter 
 from a scientific standpoint, one cannot help acquiscing 
 to the idea that the surface of that awful sphere is the mys- 
 terious Hell of Eevelation. It is the 'pool burning with fire 
 and brimstone/ the 'lake of fire/ the 'second death/ and 
 such like epithets for which the word 'HelF is the universal 
 and common term. It simply means the place where all 
 refuse, rubbish and waste matter of creation, material or 
 spiritual, shall be cast for the purpose of effcting its exter- 
 mination. 
 
26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 It is thus that Hell surrounds Heaven in order to pre- 
 vent the entrance into the empyrean of anything corrupt- 
 ible and unfit. All things in the solar system must fall to 
 the sun, is falling into the sun, and all things therein shall 
 be destroyed, annihilated, except such as the Lord God shall 
 choose to permit to enter by Heaven's doorway into the 
 sanctuary of eternity's blissful abode. All the rest shall be 
 destroyed, wiped out ! Hell surrounds the Heaven, lo 'tis 
 Heaven's own fortification, the empyrean breastwork,and no 
 one of himself can pass the solar fortress nor hide from 
 its heat. Hell is the protector of Heaven and the ornation 
 of all nature. Flame is the adornment without and cordons 
 of fire the embellishment of the sapphire throne, and heat 
 the emblem of the scepter : behold, verily, the pyro-regalia 
 of infinity's see. There is nothing so hot as the sun ; there 
 is nothing so bright as the sun; what might we expect to 
 see so hot as hell or so bright as the throne of God ? Nay, 
 who durst e'en look on His throne, for the flood of torrid 
 splendor gushing from the fount of light? Eevelation 
 like the sun embodies a Heaven clad in fire, and religion 
 like that sacred orb enshrines an endless paradise wrapped 
 in obscurity and which the eye of faith alone can see. 
 
 Hell is the armory of Heaven, the bulwark of eternity. 
 Hell guards the Heaven with an invincible wall of fire! 
 Thus has Providence in his unerring wisdom made a double 
 use of Hell ; first to effect the destruction of all waste mat- 
 ter, and, second, to protect the most sacred vaults of the 
 'Holy of Holies' within. And no one can pass through 
 except by permission of the Almighty and his keepers of 
 Heaven's gate. Of all fires we ever saw or heard, there 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 27 
 
 is none like to this ; this is the eternal fire ! 'I have kindled 
 a fire in my wrath, said the Lord, and it shall not be 
 quenched/ 
 
 The sun is the Almighty's bright throne impaled in a 
 robe of fire, and that fire 'serene' is the solar Hell; but so 
 far, far away we cannot hear its roar, nor the woeful surge 
 of its swell! 0, the monsters who were devoured there, 
 and the hecatombs of felons that were slain, slain, and the 
 wrecks that were grieved there of yore; that the great in 
 Heaven tremble, sitting on securest seats, and the mighty 
 shrink in fear, when they ponder on the power of Hell, and 
 what its history yet might be ! 
 
 The fire of Hell is terrific ! Speaking of the intensity 
 of the heat of this fire, we have simply to say, it is the fierc- 
 est in creation. Raised to a white heat, the heat of the sun 
 is the hottest possible. Even from a distance of more than 
 ninety million miles, how easily it prostrates us mortals. 
 The solar flame is constantly fed from meteors and cosmic 
 debris which rain down from all sides out of space in in- 
 cessant showers on the surface of the sun. Such is the final 
 end of all matter. The planets, comets, satillites and our 
 own earth are slowly, imperceptibly, but surely winding 
 their way down to inevitable doom. And all wicked spirit 
 and being shall also perish there. Hell shall destroy all 
 things except the spirit of the just; and then, like ai} all- 
 consuming tyrant, murmur to himself that he could not de- 
 vour their smoke. The one burning passion of hell is that he 
 might be able one day to devour the universe and lay all 
 things waste ! 
 
28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 That fierce, furious, tremendous white fire devours 
 all cosmic refuse and rubbish, whether of matter or being. 
 All foulness and wickedness shall here be destroyed. Great 
 is the fire of the throne, great is the solar flame! All 
 'weeds' and grass and corruption and serpents and sin-fed 
 growths, and ordurous and obnoxious things go in here. 
 And all dross and solar waste and old worlds and worn- 
 out planets and worthless creations and wasted systems, and 
 decrepid earths and the sweepings of immensity, and un- 
 couth beings and monsters and canker-eaten things, and all 
 proud and disdainful things and all abominable things, and 
 all hateful and deadly things are devoured here, for, ah, the 
 living throne is clad in a robe of white death, and this great, 
 central, white fire forever keepeth the solar system 
 purified. Aye, since solar eternity begun nothing has ever 
 been found able to withstand the intensity of this all-de- 
 vouring all-enghouling white fire. Nor rock nor brass nor 
 spirits nor devils, nor hard substances, nor the strong, nor 
 clay nor water nor granite, nor demons nor gorgons can 
 resist the depredation of the flames of this unquenchable, 
 inexorable white fire ! 
 
 Astronomers tell us that the heat of the sun is some- 
 thing prodigious. Such as filled the ancient naturalist with 
 awe and is still the inexplicable puzzle of the modern phys- 
 isist, and men must bow their heads in reverential wonder 
 and amazement when they contemplate the power of the 
 Being who made the sun and gave to it the potential of its 
 radiative energy ! The amount of heat we receive annually 
 across the depths of space is sufficient to melt a layer of ice 
 thirty-eight yards in thickness extending over the whole 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 29 
 
 earth. Yet the sunbeam is only one three-millionths part 
 as intense as it is at the surface of the sun. It is said if 
 the heat of the sun were produced by the burning of coal, 
 it would require a layer ten feet in thickness, extending 
 over the whole surface of the sun to feed the flame a sin- 
 gle hour. Sir John Hershel says that if a solid cylinder of 
 ice forty-five miles in diameter and 200,000 miles long were 
 plunged end first into the sun's fire, it would melt in a sec- 
 ond of time. Truly, is not this solar chaldron the eternal 
 and unquenchable fire spoken of in the Bible ? Is not this 
 'fiery pooF the 'second death' referred to in Eevelation, 
 where the unfortunate wicked shall henceforth be cast after 
 the disappearance of the earth before the presence of the 
 'great white throne?' 'And hell and death were cast into 
 the pool of fire; this is the second death. And whomso*- 
 ever was not found written in the book of life was cast into 
 the pool of fire! The 'second death' means the destruc- 
 tion and death of the soul or spirit. Is not the sun's fire 
 great enough to answer the purpose of an ideal Hell ? Nay, 
 argument is unnecessary ; the truth is only too self-evident, 
 fearfully conclusive. Obeservers say that during a total 
 eclipse, immense tongues of flame are seen to shoot out from 
 the sun's edge for a distance of 200,000 miles in all direc- 
 tions; swift messengers from that treacherous deep; as if 
 voracious, bristling, beryl hell would fletch out into remot- 
 est regions and usurp and imperil immensity itself. This 
 great fire is no illusion; it is a fire, hell's fire, high and 
 bright that all may see. There is nothing under the Heaven 
 so plain to be seen as Hell, though safely yet, the while 
 standing on our own beloved planet and gazing o'er the 
 distance, we behold the gigantic flood of the solar Gehenna ! 
 
30 INTRODUCTION 
 
 By associating these astronomical teachings with those 
 of religion we unite another two of the great and leading 
 principles of science and ethics which instantly chime and 
 unify, the one clearing up and solving the grand mystery of 
 the other. For the Apocalypse, in its revelations, is co-ex- 
 tensive with the solar system, and the divine message deals 
 unreservedly with that portion of the cosmic structure as 
 is more directly connected with the creation of man, to 
 whom the Divine Word was given; namely, the earth, sun 
 and moon. Such indeed is the unmodified conclusion which 
 this astro-doctrinal theme forces upon us. This theory ef- 
 fects a reconciliation, to the satisfaction of both reason 
 and the senses, between the discrepancies and heretofore 
 opposing tendencies of science and theology. We see how 
 amicably these things will agree when once rightly under- 
 stood. Evidently, the apparent shortcomings in these prov- 
 inces are merely the shortcomings in the human compre- 
 sion and may be entirely explained away when the true in- 
 terpretation is applied and the proper mode of exegesis dis- 
 covered. In the true interpretation of science, one cannot 
 depart from the interpretations of the revelations of God. 
 Both are the teachings of Himself and His wonderful 
 works, though from different sources. Nor can we be per- 
 suaded that any portion of the mysteries of Revelation's 
 word, which, being given to man for the edification and 
 moral instruction of his race, shall to him forever remain in 
 a latent hidden state of incomprehensibility. It is said 'there 
 is nothing hidden but shall be revealed, and nothing secret 
 but shall be made known/ There are signs and signals abun- 
 dant enough, withal, in both nature and in the book, where- 
 fore to infer all these things only to surmise them, and 
 
 ! 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 31 
 
 like in mathematical equations we may in a great measure 
 deduce the unknown from that which is known. 
 
 When less of the abstract and more of the concrete 
 enters into religion and its teachings, men will be more 
 given to believe. Man is a matter-of-fact creature, and ever 
 ready to believe what he sees and understands, and not 
 much more. He may believe in mysteries or he may not, as 
 it suits him ; it is difficult for him to do so ; mysteries are 
 anyhow a stumbling-block to him. Yet he will never say 
 that he does not want to learn and know about these things. 
 Besides, why should any cloud of obscurity surround the 
 knowledge of the real and exact locations of Heaven and 
 Hell? Can anyone assign any reason why these all-im- 
 portant places should be kept secret and hid from mortal 
 vision ? No, the vagueness exists in the human concept, not 
 in the reality. However, such is a deep-seated error that will 
 be hard for a time to remove, even like the idea of the sun 
 being nothing but a vast desolate fire ball. We must rescue 
 ourselves from the old time-worn roots of nondescriptness 
 and vagueness, and let our mental conceptions put on real 
 form. Such misapprehensions entrammel the mind, like 
 the people who once believed the earth to be flat regarded 
 the calculation of sailing around the globe as an idle, foolish 
 dream. 
 
 This astro-theory of the doctrine of Heaven and Hell 
 is purely non-sectarian. Nor does it belong to any special 
 form of religion, except that it upholds in that measure 
 any and all forms of doctrine which maintain the real ex- 
 istence of these final and everlasting abodes. Nor can 
 it be urged, in the least, as prejudicial to the broadest ex- 
 position of the dogmas and tenets of Christianity. Our 
 
32 INTRODUCTION 
 
 position is simply an original and specific species of theo- 
 logical solution, based on a new phase of scientific discovery. 
 Is it not time that men should know the mystery of the sun ? 
 Is it not time the world should understand the deeper mis- 
 sion of that bright and lofty miracle of power? Is it in 
 any wise unreasonable or derogatory to our most cherished 
 faith and sanctity to believe that solar Colossus to be the 
 See of the Great God ? What more befitting residence could 
 we either imagine or desire in which to enshrine our be- 
 loved Creator, the Father of all love and goodness to whom 
 we daily pray ? 
 
 Like that of an endless Heaven, it is also one of the 
 oldest teachings in religion that there is somewhere an 
 everlasting Hell ; a place of punishment for the wicked and 
 all evildoers. It also seems to be an innate principle of 
 justification or resentment instinctive in the human soul 
 that there ought to be, and therefore must be, a place of 
 destruction for all treachery and corruption. The idea is 
 self -appealing. Both nature and reason cry out for such, de- 
 mand such, establish such. Likewise, reason and conscience 
 declare in favor of a place of everlasting reward for the 
 virtuous, the true, the brave, the good. A place of dis- 
 franchisement in the end from the woes and cares of a 
 troubled world like this. Places, these, 'where the wicked 
 cease from troubling and the weary are at rest/ This is 
 a doctrine which has its foundation in the Divine Word 
 and its superstructure in the human breast; a doctrine 
 which is the hope of the just, but the terror of the wicked. 
 Evil should be destroyed, but goodness should be rewarded 
 with unending happiness. This is an ethical element as 
 old as religion, and as constant as day and night, and the 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 33 
 
 embodiment of the doctrine is in the two old-fashioned 
 words — Heaven and Hell ! Places whose existence believers 
 are given to affirm, while skeptics are prone to deny; and 
 the negative takes advantage of the shroud of vagueness 
 and indefiniteness ever surrounding the question of loca- 
 tion and identical whereabouts of these nondescript abodes ; 
 until the world is learning more and more to doubt and to 
 altogether deny these existences and to tauntingly question 
 the most orthodox principles of divine truth, and to even 
 refuse to accept as rational the doctrines of revealed fact. 
 'Where is thy Heaven; where thy Hell? Show us these 
 places, Theophilis, or at least tell us where they are and we 
 will believe/ This, then, is perhaps the most serious draw- 
 back in religion in all ages, namely, the lack of definiteness 
 and concreteness in its teachings. In the field of doctrinal 
 ethics there is no obstacle so formidable as the snag of 
 uncertainty. It gives boldness to iniquity and license to 
 immorality on every road of invasion, by removing the 
 curbstones of fear and hope from a life hereafter and the 
 prospects of a world to come, until the prevalence of sin 
 and crime, even now, in our day, cries to Heaven for ven- 
 geance ! 
 
 Such is, indeed, the practical feasibility and 
 utility of this theo-cosmic evolution.* The mere 
 unqualified intelligence that Heaven is an elysian, 
 a paradise, a place of future emancipation and 
 felicity , an incomprehensible something, somewhere, 
 
 * Though this is generally regarded as an age of doctrinal de- 
 cline, it is nevertheless an age of keen and thoughtful inquiry, 
 when the world is grasping and sighing for a more substantial 
 form of truth and light; in a word, the world at this time wants, 
 nay, demands that these things be explained. 
 
34 INTRODUCTION 
 
 though we know not what it is, and that Hell is a 
 dungeon of punishment somewhere hidden away; such we 
 say is a mode of explanation that does not wholly satisfy the 
 thinking mind. Our reason desires something clearer, more 
 real, and even in our best moments we instinctively revolt 
 against such shadowy prospects of hope and fear. Not that 
 this exposition of ours is intended as an ingenuous scheme 
 to supply any want or deficiency in either of the depart- 
 ments of science of religion. Our deductions are genuine 
 solutions and disclosures, spontaneous discoveries as the 
 result of years of patient investigation as to why our noble 
 science and the teachings of the Bible seemingly refused 
 to harmonize. Nor can there be anything irreverent or 
 sacreligious in this unveiling of Heaven or the unmasking 
 of Hell. Nor can such be deemed an indignity beneath the 
 Throne of Him that liveth forever and ever. Verily, verily, 
 Heaven and Heir are the throne of God; Hell represents the 
 vvrath of God and Heaven is like His love. The jasper 
 sphere is an emblem of Him whose 'countenance shineth 
 like the sun in its full strength/ 
 
 On the contrary we regard it as a Christian preroga- 
 tive and duty of any person, so disposed, to undertake the 
 task of inquiry and investigation, provided he does not con- 
 flict with the established and canonical principles of morals, 
 faith, or Church. Methodizing and philosophizing are in- 
 dications of mental progress. To unfold the mysteries of 
 nature is to learn the wisdom of God. Truth is the goal 
 of all human aspirations, and virtue the highest end of all 
 human endeavor, and the clearing up of the mysteries is 
 now the richest boon which could well be bestowed on a 
 world, 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 35 
 
 Cosmo-theology is the true school in which to explore 
 and expound the revelations of nature and Scripture. This 
 by uniting the two, and thus closing up the vast, indescrib- 
 able gulf of blackness which has heretofore divided the two. 
 Religion is the core of all true philosophy, the revelation 
 also of nature. Such speculation cannot be reputed, either, 
 as the work of pulling down any doctrinal support or edi- 
 fice, for this is the great edifice of religion that was never 
 built up, the unfinished part of the divine structure. 
 
 Duly impressed with the mightiness of the import, and 
 fully apprised of the fact that the value of any theory con- 
 sists only in the essential truth it contains, we started out 
 with such status and datum as we can offer. Trusting, how- 
 ever, that to show the location of eternity's own abodes is 
 to prove their palpable existence; and to prove their sensi- 
 ble existence alike proves the existence of a personal Deity, 
 whose it is to forever champion the cause of eternity; and 
 likewise proves true all that the inspired Book has taught, 
 and at the same time tolls a sounding knell to infidelity and 
 crime. And when I looked around and had seen the reek- 
 ings of iniquitv on the earth, I exclaimed: 'Show them 
 Thy Heaven, God, and show them Thy Hell, that a terror 
 might strike into them, or else a new spring of hope P 
 
 And now we shall take leave of hell with a cordial 
 adieu, and, while we may, most politely excuse ourself be- 
 fore the bright laughing Terror, hoping we may not be 
 obliged at some future day to 'call again/ 
 
AETICLE III. 
 The Problem of Creation 
 
 In previous articles we exposed the doctrine of a solar 
 Heaven and a solar Hell. We shall now, as an introductory 
 phase to Theory X, of the body of the work, undertake to 
 explain the origin and source of Material Creation itself. 
 
 Let us commence by showing that angels fell from 
 Heaven in the past, and then that these sinful angels were 
 cast into the great Hell and were destroyed, annihilated! 
 Truly this is the problem of destruction, but the problem of 
 creation originated in and grew out of the problem of de- 
 struction. 
 
 In proof of this fearful speculation, Eevelation again 
 affords many striking and unmistakable passages, espe- 
 cially the following: 'And there was a great battle in 
 Heaven; Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; 
 and the dragon fought and his angels, and they prevailed) 
 not, neither was their place found any more in Heaven. 
 And that great dragon was cast out, the old serpent, who is 
 called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world; 
 and he was cast forth unto the earth, and his angels were 
 thrown down with him/ (Eev. xii:8-9.) 
 
 Like in all matters of inquiry into the final cause of 
 things, the first and final cause, the Divine Word alone af- 
 fords us any insight. Here we have an instance of a battle 
 in Heaven. The battle was fought by whom? By good 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 37 
 
 angels on one side and bad angels on the other side. And 
 this was a great battle. Yes, a most mighty battle, such as 
 mortals hath never seen; great as Heaven is above the 
 earth, when the archangel banished the serpent of the sun ! * 
 Exceedingly great and fierce! When the bad angels 
 knew they were about to be cast out of Heaven forever, and 
 what was still worse, they were to be afterwards cast into 
 HelPs fire to be destroyed and punished, was not this the 
 strongest possible incentive to cause them to resist with the 
 utmost power of their being? However, we see they were 
 defeated. The bad are always defeated in the end. No- 
 tice, too, that the evil angels are called 'devils and satans/ 
 tempters. And how in united conflict they are designated as 
 'the dragon/ How does it come that these bad angels taken 
 collectively in a united body are described as a dragon, a 
 serpent? Well, sin hath done this. Sin reduced them to 
 serpents or into a serpentine formation. Long eras of 
 celestial sin and transgression transformed these wicked 
 angels into a united serpent. The ultimate consequence 
 of protracted sin is to effect this most abject state of being. 
 Of course, the bad angels were not reduced to the real ser- 
 pent form as yet, but before they are destroyed they shall 
 become actual and real serpents, f This is why they must be 
 
 *Hence is war rightly considered a diabolical invention. It 
 is the Devil who has ever made war a necessity, both in heaven 
 and on earth. 
 
 fThe 'Serpent' is, of course, the lowest order of being, and 
 the lowest possible condition, on a biological scale, into which any 
 being may fall. The philosophy of the text is clear, from the fact 
 that the constitutional effect of sin is to deteriorate during pro- 
 tracted ranges of time, the essential nature of the being, which 
 degeneration cannot otherwise than, sooner or later, revert the 
 victim into a lower form of being. 
 
38 . INTKODUCTION 
 
 destroyed, because of the wickedness and depravity of their 
 very nature and being. Thus they are in united body called 
 the 'old serpent/ Besides it is one of the essential qualities 
 of spirit being that many spirits can unite themselves, like 
 many clouds, into a perfect oneness, into one being, and 
 again, at will, resolve themselves into as many separate 
 ones. 
 
 At any rate, without dilating further on this topic, we 
 see that the dragon was cast out of Heaven, out from the 
 sun, so he might with propriety be called the solar Serpent. 
 But this same dragon is also described in the Bible as a 
 'Lucifer/ The word Lucifer means light or an angel of 
 light. And as the consequences of his sin (for angels have 
 power to sin if they will) he became a dragon. Hence in 
 the prophecies of Isaias we see the following passage: 
 'How art thou fallen from Heaven, Lucifer, son of the 
 morning; how are thou fallen to the earth/ This passage 
 was addressed by way of metaphor to the king of ancient 
 Babylon. But it nevertheless alludes to the angel Lucifer 
 as having in reality fallen from Heaven. And we see in 
 the Gospel where Christ, ref ering to the fall of Satan, said : 
 '/ saw Satan fall from Heaven as lightning/ 
 
 Thus it is beyond question that angels were cast out of 
 Heaven. And it is likewise deprehensible, that as angels 
 fell, angels are likely to fall, and that they always were 
 liable to fall. Then by expatiating on the premises, and 
 knowing that the length of time in eternity is endless, we 
 may infer that the number of angels who fell and were cast 
 out of Heaven during eternity's past, is infinite. Then, 
 by analogy, extending the same to any and all of the fixed 
 stars, we have the numberless suns, heavens, which stud 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 39 
 
 the starry vault, multiplied into endless eternity, produc- 
 ing, indeed, a multitude of which no reckoning could be 
 made. It is a sad and mournful theme, though no less true, 
 that destruction is the first cause of creation. These angelic 
 beings were, of course, destroyed, had, for cause, to be 
 destroyed. Now, where is the ruins of the past? Where 
 their ashes, their smoke, their remains ? Where the source 
 of creation's material? The conclusion is unanswerable; 
 the universe is a Pile raised from the wreck of eternity's 
 remains! Awful, dreadful! Beautiful, glorious! Like a 
 sunbeam breaking through a tempest cloud ! Life out of 
 death ; creation rose anew out of the smoke of the strife of 
 the past. 
 
 This is no hypothesis, or theory based on imagination ; 
 it is based on the foundation of conceded and revealed the- 
 ology, and simply expanded by induction. Induction and 
 deduction are the two great processes of reasoning by which 
 we may trace out the unknown by the known. It is the 
 exact and plain logic of geometry and problematic dem- 
 onstration. Why not apply the same method to theology? 
 Yes, sin and angelic conduct in Heaven predetermines the 
 order and creation of outer worlds. 
 
 And Eevelation also shows that these outcasts of 
 eternity were dstroyed : 'And hell and death were cast into 
 the pool of fire, which is the second death' (xx:14). The 
 first 'death' in this quotation means the angel of death him- 
 self, and the 'second death' means the death of the spirit. 
 And, fortelling the consequences which befall the wicked 
 at the last judgment, Christ said: Then shall He {the 
 King) say to them also that shall he on his left hand: De- 
 part from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which was 
 
40 INTEODUCTIOKT 
 
 prepared for the devil and his angels' (Mat. xxv). Now, 
 the ultimate result of hell's fire is to effect an utter depriva- 
 tion of being. During the course of long ranges of cosmic 
 time, they at length become utterly consumed,* when their 
 essence and the substance of their nature bcomes all radi- 
 ated off in the form of light, and disseminated throughout 
 the length and breadth of the great deep of space. It is a 
 mistake to suppose that these or any beings suffer endlessly 
 in hell, without becoming annihilated. Such is absurd 
 from the fact that pain in itself implies loss, and continual 
 pain continual loss. But the pain of a spirit bein^r, suffer- 
 ing in intense heat, is not like that of weak, mortal flesh. 
 The endurance of spirit nature is such as to almost defy 
 destruction's violence, or even pain. It is also an absurdity 
 to attribute an insubstantial quality and character to the 
 beings of the supernatural world, even as Heaven is repre- 
 sented to be some kind of an immaterial, hidden pageant 
 world, an unreal, vague land. These are, though invisible 
 to us, the most substantial and real of all being. The most 
 perfect substantiality and lasting durability characterizes 
 the great beings inhabiting the realms of the higher sphere. 
 But in the course of the process of hell's destruction (for 
 helPs fire will in time destroy anything) the eroded 
 part constantly goes off in the form of light radiation from 
 
 *The causes which led to angelic downfall is sin. Undoubt- 
 edly, the nature of this sin consisted in premature and inordin- 
 ate deification, or beatification before the perfection of their re- 
 spective being was consummated. The effect of sin in any being 
 is a deterioration of constitutional vigor and consequent spiritual 
 and physical decline, which condition rendered these immortals 
 more refractory, combustible and obliterative. (These matters 
 are treated more at[ length in the body of the work.) 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 41 
 
 the sun.* Bright destruction ! And, departing, the same 
 goes off into and remains invisible in the infinite void. It 
 is the motion of light which makes it visible ; as soon as this 
 radiant ether is at rest and motionless, it then becomes in- 
 visible. The motion of light is intense, marvelous ! It is 
 said that light travels at the rate of 186,000 miles a second. 
 
 Now the main feature in the issue of this theme is to 
 explain that the cremated remains of past destruction go 
 into the boundless void, the appropriate graveyard of eter- 
 nity^ dead. The light going off from the sun is liable to 
 be in a measure the bright smoke of spirit destruction in the 
 solar hell; likewise from the fixed stars, for these, too, are 
 universal hells. But the revelation of the Bible does not 
 attempt to treat of anything, nor extend outside the prov- 
 ince of the solar system. And even there, the traditions 
 and legends are again restricted specifically to recent solar 
 time. That is, such time as has any direct connection with 
 the creation of our planet. For the fall of Lucifer is the 
 first cause of the creation of the earth. The ultimate and 
 perfected organic creation herein being destined and or- 
 dained by the Creator to supply and refill the lost seats of 
 the fallen angels of the dragon. Outside of this our rev- 
 elations has nothing to do. With other planets our revela- 
 tion has nothing to do. Back of this certain date, nor with 
 the traditions of other suns, other heavens, other falls, other 
 issues, other rises, our God-given revelations has nothing to 
 do. 
 
 *This is, of course, original light. However, much of the light 
 given off from the sun consists in the disolved atomic elements 
 of burning metals, electricity, etc., which latter form of light 
 might be called visible or radiant heat. 
 
42 INTKODTTCTION 
 
 Consequently, all else must be inferred. And it is very 
 inferable that as Lucifer fell immediately prior to the rise 
 of terrestrial creation and is destined to be destroyed, so did 
 other mighty angels fall during solar eternity, of which, 
 to us, no mention is made. If one angel fell, and was liable 
 to fall, so were others, and that, too, from the same Heaven. 
 Then where is the limit? How many seraphs sinned and 
 fell ? We shall answer according to the dictates of reason, 
 that as eternity is endless, and the workings thereof has no 
 limit, so the number of angels who fell is limitless. And 
 the same theory holds, by generalizing, to any and all the 
 infinitude of the fixed stars ; thence what is the result less 
 than infinity multiplied into eternity? 
 
 This is not saying that the track of the past is all 
 strewn and whitened with the bones of disaster (for the 
 decline and fall of celestial being is and must be of compar- 
 atively rare occurrence, for the reason, if no other, that 
 there are no devils in Heaven to first tempt them to sin), 
 but it is saying that there are remains of wrecks, however 
 few and far between, more or less all the way. And their 
 ruins filled the void blank of space with the rare, invisible, 
 intangible, ethereal 'atmosphere' of their 'smoke/ Now, we 
 shall have it, that this universal atmosphere is the grand 
 and eternal source from which visible creation sprung, and 
 from which the material universe is perpetually wrought. 
 Perhaps this is the chief development of the theory. The 
 remains of angelic cremation is thus forever reviving and 
 reforming into new created matter and being, when the in- 
 visible becomes visible, and creation is made anew. Behold, 
 said the Lord, f I make all things new/ The glorious universe 
 of suns and planets and comets and stars and moons and 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 43 
 
 worlds, and all manner of being as dwell and subsist there- 
 on, and which we behold magnificently risen and surmount- 
 ingly filling the heights and depths, all this, we say, 
 is but the timely fulfillment and survival from the fearful 
 past, or as one would say, the resurrection of universal 
 death, eternity's great, great dead ! A glorious reclamation 
 by the power of the living God from the ruins of the aw- 
 ful catastrophies of eternity's long, long past and infinity's 
 stern dooms ! 
 
 Thinkest thou these things have not happened? In 
 the realms of eternity's achievements there is nothing pos- 
 sible, good or bad, great or small, happy or unhappy, that 
 has not happened. Will anyone think for a moment that 
 the narrow sphere of our own observation and experience 
 circumscribes the utmost, the extremest of all that was ever 
 done ? Who can comprehend the achievements or measure 
 the possibilities of God and the great workings of infinity ? 
 We are referring now more explicitly to the negative side 
 of untold transpirements ; transgressions, curses and pun- 
 ishments. Even the mighty history given to us in the rev- 
 elations of the great Apocalypse, and which is to us so mys- 
 terious and wonderful, is only a mite in eternity's record. 
 Yes, great things have happened of old; ancient strifes, 
 whose records dire are blotted out with age ; dreadful won- 
 ders, such as never entered the minds of men ; presumptuous 
 rage, when the unholy fled from the anger of God; hoary 
 sinners of antiquity who defied the Almighty's wrath in the 
 day that they fell, till a bereaved Heaven paled at the 
 emptying of thrones from on high! Mighty, threatening 
 felons of yore, who warred against God in Heaven, whom 
 the Lord God alone could overthrow, but they perished by 
 
44 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the heat of the Omnipotent 'sword' and the fathomless 
 deep is their grave. Notice the potent cause why hell was 
 made; these enemies of creation would have undone the 
 works of God had not their existence been thus deposed. 
 
 It is generally admitted by Physicists, both ancient and 
 modern, that all space is filled with an unknown medium, 
 described as being a thin, rare, invisible substance common- 
 ly called 'Ether/ 'Universal atmosphere/ 'Crystalline fluid/ 
 etc. Plato taught that the universe was formed out of 
 pre-existent, amorphous matter. But this seems to be as 
 far as these speculators had gone. They did not undertake 
 to explain the cause and origin of the Ether, nor did they 
 but dimly show the character of itsliature, or the law and 
 method by which the same is concentrated into matter ; nor 
 did they resolve the same into an universal Force which 
 confers the properties of weight and motion to all matter. 
 
 As we have already accounted for the origin of this 
 celestial fluid, we shall now proceed to explain that the 
 character of this ethereal fluid is simply that of an univer- 
 sal Atomic element. This invisible fluid simply consists, 
 in itself, of the original Atoms which enter into the consti- 
 tution of all matter. The Atoms might be defined as the 
 indivisible portions, or smallest minims of which any 
 substance is composed. Hence, for the sake of convenience, 
 we shall call this celestial ether the Atomic element. Now, 
 this atomic element is also of a double nature, which double- 
 ness is manifested first in water in the doubleness of that 
 element, for water is the first form of all matter, the first 
 visible formation into which the celestial Ether concentrates 
 itself. Whence it is that water is composed of the two or- 
 iginal elements of all nature, namely, oxygen and hydrogen. 
 
 '■ ■ 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 45 
 
 Secondly, the doubleness of the atomic element expresses 
 itself in the organic age, or the age of the creation of being, 
 in the quality of sex. For male and female are eternal 
 characteristics of being, and when eternal beings are des- 
 troyed the doubleness of their nature is also consigned in 
 their remains. This theory, therefore, explains the mys- 
 tery of sex in all organic beings. 
 
 But the manner in which this fluid of the boundless 
 deep concentrates itself into matter is now to be shown. 
 Though this part of the theory is not absolute- 
 ly new, yet it is new in the main. The manner 
 is that of vortices. Universal systems of vortices 
 or celestial whirlpools of space. The great deep is every- 
 where concentrating itself into matter at certain 
 central points, and these points are the numberless 
 suns or fixed stars of immensity, of which our sun is the 
 central or focal sphere of the solar whirlpool. Then again, 
 within the vast solar vortex, there are several smaller ones, 
 like wheels within a wheel, of which the planets are the 
 axiel centers. Yes, and still other smaller ones within ihe 
 planet systems, with satellites as centers. Now, it is the 
 force of the solar, vortical current that produces the orbit- 
 ular motion of the planets and the rotary motion of the sun. 
 Likewise, the revolving force of the planets' vortex affects 
 the rotary motion of the planet and the orbitular motion 
 of the moons. 
 
 Thus it is that the element of the great deep is forever 
 condensing itself into matter in the form of great spheres. 
 Thus it is that creation is risen posthumously and 
 Phenix-like, up and out of the infinite disaster of angelic 
 
46 INTRODUCTION 
 
 downfall. Thus it is that the manner of eternity's resurrec- 
 tion is ever visioned in creation's spangled habiliment, and 
 in beings' and worlds' multifarious modes and entities, in- 
 habiting and investing the ever-moving, ever-rolling deep, 
 and tangibly witnessed in matter's ponderous adjustment, 
 poise and equipose. Such is the mystery of creation; de- 
 struction is the origin of creation. New creations cannot, 
 need not produce, until old ones are first destroyed. Then 
 new creations rise up to take the place of the old annihil- 
 ated ones. Out of the wreck of the past the future springs 
 anew. Such is the solution of the mystery of the 'wonder- 
 ful works of God. And behold, how now, a whirling uni- 
 verse rests on rolling rotundity, and immensity hangs on 
 revolving Thrones and flaming Shrines, and day and night, 
 and time and years, race round on rapid spheres. 
 
 In conclusion of this subject it remains to be reiterated 
 that the first condition in which all matter exists is the 
 form of water. The earth and all the planets existed or- 
 iginally in the form of great liquid spheres. Here, again, 
 omniscient Scripture steps in to show us how our world 
 was made: 'In the beginning God created Heaven and 
 earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was 
 upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved over 
 the waters (Gen. i:i-ii). The Heaven here referred to is 
 the terrestrial firmament. 
 
 The earth was 'void and empty,' because nothing was 
 in her sphere but water. Life was then the first thing cre- 
 ated within the great virgin sphere; life, animal 
 or vegetable (first in order the vegetable for wa- 
 ter and sunlight soon breeds life. 'For the dumb 
 

 THE SEVEN AGES 47 
 
 water and without life, brought forth living things at the 
 command of God, that all people might praise they won- 
 drous works/ The prolific waters of the globe soon be- 
 came pregnant with primeval life, when the mighty sphere 
 soon commenced developing at the center, from the settling 
 sedimentation, into a solid concrete globe.* The solid 
 sphere thus gradually drew from its center. Thus all plan- 
 ets existed at first in the state of water, which afterwards, 
 through the agency of organic life, became by degrees con- 
 verted into a smaller solid globe. Thus our planet is trans- 
 formed into her present advanced stage through the evolu- 
 tion of the life of her past ages, and the proportion of her 
 once great sea is reduced to its present limits. 
 
 *Thus the solid globe or the terra flrma originated at the 
 center of the original sphere. As the neucleus evolved and grew, 
 of course its weight increased, and the force of pressure in its 
 mass and matter, likewise, increased. With the volume, increased 
 the ponderance, and with the ponderance, the pressure, till the 
 augmenting pressure became intense at the focal, central point, 
 where it actually and at length, caused the very matter to burn. 
 Thus were all spheres ignited early, for indeed a very finite though 
 constant force of say some few hundred tons per square inch, is 
 capable of causing any matter to actually burn. Yes, tremendous 
 pressure caused the central portion of the sVlid mass of matter 
 to burn; even as pressure causes the sun's mighty volume to 
 burn with terrible energy. But as the focal center heated and 
 burned, it is evident that the interior region gradually burned 
 out. Burned out, and became hollow, concave, whence the sphere 
 became a hollow shell. Thus all celestial spheres became concave 
 • shells. And as the evolving heat all goes out and off, the interior 
 'surface' became cool. Such is the true philosophy of the hol- 
 lowness of celestial spheres. 
 
 Of course the present state of science on this subject is to con- 
 tend that the earth and all cosmic bodies are solid. This, we must 
 say, is an error, contrary to reason and diametrically opposed 
 to the teachings of Scripture. If the earth were a perfect solid, 
 the increasing pressure centerward would be raised to infinity at 
 the central point, and no finite substance is capable of withstand- 
 
ARTICLE IV. 
 Contraction of the Solar System 
 
 i 
 
 It is the doctrine of the Plenist that all space is filled 
 with matter; that the length and breadth of the universe 
 is replete with a certain complement of matter, dense or 
 rare, light or heavy, visible or invisible, tangible or intan- 
 gible. The term plenist is derived from plentitude, and 
 plentitude means fulness or plenty. That all space is re- 
 plenished with its appropriate complement of substance, 
 with no absolute blank, void nor emptiness anywhere, is 
 the correct philosophy of the plentitudinarian. No unused 
 or unoccupied territory in the infinite providence of the 
 infinite God. And some plenists extend the theory to the 
 purpose that the mode, form, order and design of all things 
 in the universe, taken as a whole, consists in the most per- 
 fect possible condition. This doctrine is practically true. 
 But in the visible universe, everything might rather be con- 
 sidered as existing in the progressing, evolutionary state. 
 However, it seems this class of philosophers did not push 
 their investigations in search either of the origin, or 'first 
 cause/ on one hand, nor the development of matter on the 
 other hand. Like many of the most important discoveries 
 
 ing an infinite force. Indeed, it is the force of intense pressure 
 that finally resolves all matter into heat, and that at a great 
 depth. Besides Revelation declares in most positive terms that 
 the interior of the earth is the 'Bottomless Pit.' (See Apoc. 
 ix:l-2 and xiii : 11 and xvii:8.) 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 49 
 
 in the field of invention, these matters were left to await the 
 result of modern thought and research. And, in our mite 
 of investigation, we find it evident from more than one 
 view of the question, that visible creation came forth from 
 the plentitude of the inane, dead depths, and that all the 
 works of God are visible in the form of great spheres ; even 
 Heaven and Hell are visible, material creations ; yes, these 
 two special productions stand out as the main, chiefest and 
 most prominent of God's works in the universe. 
 
 The solar system and the solar systems, or the number- 
 less systems of the great universe with suns as their centers, 
 may each be regarded as an integer or a unit in itself, dis- 
 tinct and separate, and existing in a state according to the 
 common law of systems. The solar system consists of the sun 
 at its center, and eight or nine planets revolving around 
 that center at various distances, from 35,392,000 miles 
 or the distance of Mercury, to that of Neptune, or 2,746,- 
 271,000 miles; all revolving in the same direction, i. e., 
 from west to east, or in the directions of the hands of a 
 watch facing north. Now this vast system is nothing more 
 nor less than an immense whirlpool of ethereal space crys- 
 talizing into matter, and carrying this matter around about 
 with itself, and likewise slowly but surely downward to- 
 wards the common Center. It is a common principle of 
 philosophy seen in everyday life, that whenever liquid or 
 fluid seeks a center, as when poured into a funnel, a rotary 
 motion is established. So it is with the element of space, 
 seeking those great centers; a vast, cosmic whirl- 
 pool is established. And as sure as the current carries 
 the generated matter around with it, so surely does it con- 
 stantly draw the same matter, though imperceptibly, to- 
 
50 INTRODUCTION 
 
 wards the central point. The solar system is contracting 
 and settling sunward. The orbits of the planets are dimin- 
 ishing, and the time will come when the planets shall fall 
 to the sun, when the earth shall fall to the sun, and be 
 burned up ! Such is the end of all matter ; to burn is the 
 end of all matter in the fires of hell ; for, the sun is the solar 
 Pyre! 
 
 The first step in the production of matter is to orig- 
 inate, but the second step is to densify. Matter originates 
 in the rarest form (water in either the liquid or gaseous 
 state) and through the slow and gradual processes of time, 
 it concentrates and densifies into the heavy solid form, as 
 clay, rock, ore, metal. So it is with the solar system. So 
 it is with each and every planet and body in that system. 
 All matter originated in the form of water and ends in that 
 of metal and fire. 
 
 It is the purpose of this essay to demonstrate from the 
 provinces both of science and theology that the solar system 
 is contracting and concentrating towards the sun. (On 
 page 17 of the Aqueous Age see table of solar system shotv- 
 ing the distances, densities, size, force of gravity, etc., of the 
 various members.) 
 
 By taking a general survey of the stupendous structure, 
 we see as a rule that the planets more and most remote from 
 the sun are much the largest bodies ; not only this, but they 
 are likewise the rarest and lightest, about the density or 
 less than that of water. The density of Neptune is esti- 
 mated at .96, water taken as 1; that of Mercury, or the 
 nearest known planet to the sun, 7.03 ; or, Mercury is more 
 than seven times as solid and dense as Neptune. Between 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 51 
 
 these two bodies the other planets increase their density 
 very nearly on a graduated scale. That of earth is 5.67. 
 The specific gravity of Neptune is about equal to that of wa- 
 ter, while that of Mercury is about the same as that of cast 
 iron. This goes to show that the remote bodies are of most 
 recent origin, while the age of Mercury is comparatively 
 very great. It is small, old and dense, and its location away 
 down near the sun. When the other members reach this 
 solar position, they will undoubtedly be the same in form 
 and substance, and, conversely, when Mercury originated, it 
 was away out in the depths of space, even beyond the orbit 
 of Neptune. The change of transformation is due to the 
 results of organic life, and then to the subsequent effects 
 of time, pressure and heat.* 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose that the original size of 
 all the planets was the same. The original size of Jupiter 
 was, without doubt, the largest, and that of Mars possibly 
 the smallest. But it is obvious that these bodies do all 
 decrease in size from first to last, with age and the natural 
 evolution of matter, even until the sun is reached. Though 
 
 *The Nebular Hypothesis as advanced by La Place (see p. 517) 
 accounts for the formation of the solar system by the theory of 
 the process of Nebular Condensation. This theory cannot hold, 
 for the reason, first, if the sun had given off the planets sever- 
 ally in turn, why have not the outer members condensed as well 
 as the sun and inner members? Secondly, why did not the same 
 power of attraction which effected the sun's condensation, effect 
 a corresponding simultaneous condensation of any and all matter 
 in the solar system, and thus cause the matter of the planets 
 to also settle towards the sun's center? The orbitular motion of 
 the planets could not, in that case be greater than the rotary mo- 
 tion of the sun's surface at the time the lesser body was thrown 
 off. For the orbitular motion of the planet is, in that case, sup- 
 posed to have been derived directly from the rotary motion of 
 the sun. But the principle of perpetual motion of the heavenly 
 
52 INTKODUCTION 
 
 there, the intense and repellant force of the sun's heat keeps 
 the matter of that huge body much rarefied. As it is com- 
 puted the sun's density is only 1.43. 
 
 So much for the argument of size and density in prov- 
 ing the theory. We shall now produce a very different and 
 no less cogent phase of argument, in respect to the num- 
 ber and order of satellites belonging to the various planets, 
 as a means in the way of demonstrating the doctrine of solar 
 consolidation. As the solar system is slowly contracting, 
 so, likewise, are the several planetary systems; and as the 
 planets are falling towards the sun, so the same law holds 
 regarding the satellites, which are no less surely descending 
 to their respective planets. Behold the manifest and tell- 
 ing reason why the oldest bodies nearest to the sun are 
 moonless ! Behold the why and wherefore that the remotest 
 members, as a rule, have many satellites as yet revolving 
 about them. 
 
 It is an uncontroverted astronomic fact, long since 
 proven by the power of telescopic observation (it being no 
 hypothesis or supposition) that the planets as they recede 
 from the great solar center have an almost uniform increase 
 
 bodies is as preposterous as is the same law in the wheels of ma- 
 chinery; the motion of the planets must be kept up by constant, 
 external force. And, thirdly, how could it happen in the vagrious, 
 sun-tossing sport, that the worlds were thrown off in such and 
 regular order? Although the theory of the Nebular Hypothesis 
 cannot be the true one, yet we must admire the unique and con- 
 cinnate conception, and the originality of the mind which gave 
 it birth. However, it is plain, when considered from a new point 
 of view, that the same originating means which produced the 
 original solar 'cloud,' must still continue in the production of 
 new matter ; and the same all-comprehending force which effected 
 the condensation of the primitive nebulae, must still continue to 
 effect solar consolidation and the consequent contraction of the 
 planetary orbits. 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 53 
 
 in the number of moons revolving about them. Why is 
 this ? Saturn, the third outside the earth, has eight moons. 
 Jupiter, the second planet outside ours, has four moons. 
 Mars, the first outside our planet, has two moons. It is 
 needless to say the earth has only one moon; while Venus 
 and Mercury, the planets between the earth and sun, have 
 no nocturnal companions whatever.* Why is this? Why 
 has a tree, late in autumn, less leaves than it had in mid- 
 summer? The cause is very apparent. The leaves have 
 fallen. So it is with the moons. The planets late in the 
 year of their existence have their satellites all fallen down. 
 Unfledged science mav lisp that the present condition of the 
 solar universe is fixed and unchangeable, but we know it is 
 not. It is forever changing. Evolution is the fixed and un- 
 changeable law of all matter, and evolution implies con- 
 stant and perpetual change. The present is only one pass- 
 ing mode of condition in the perpetual and incessant change 
 of all nature, matter, worlds. 
 
 But the duration of cosmic time is so great that the 
 progress of these transpirations are imperceptible to us. 
 The age of man on the earth is of comparatively such a 
 little time ; six thousand years are but a second of eternity, 
 a swing of the cosmic pendulum ! The change is so small 
 and the works of God so immense, that human obser- 
 vation during a decade of only a few thousand years is not 
 able to detect any permanent change in either the form 
 nor magnitude of the solar fabric, while the more prying 
 
 *It is probable that those extreme members of solar activity 
 have more satellites than they receive credit for. On account of 
 their extreme distance it is difficult to see those little bodies even 
 with the best instruments. 
 
54 INTRODUCTION 
 
 observation of instruments is in vogue not more than a 
 few centuries. Indeed, the knowledge of the workings of 
 the solar system, like that of almost every other depart- 
 ment of science still in its infancy, has been for the most 
 part a grand mystery to the naturalist and astronomer. 
 
 The process of concentration and consolidation is the 
 most important one which transpires with respect to the 
 evolution of matter, after matter has once originated, and 
 is the very factor of investigation which, above all, has re- 
 ceived least attention. This argument of the disappearance 
 of satellites proves conclusively that the planets are all by 
 degrees descending to the sun, and that the older members 
 are nearest the solar maelstrom. That the members with 
 many satellites are the newest, largest, rarest and remotest 
 from the sun, and vice versa, those near the common center 
 are small, dense, old members whose moons have long since 
 fallen, collapsed! 
 
 Who will say the earth never had any moon but one? 
 Will anyone say the beautiful planet Venus never had any 
 satellite to lighten the sky of her night? Or that Saturn 
 shall forever have eight moons to illuminate his nocturnal 
 dome? Or will anyone declare that the sun and solar 
 system never had any other planets, or never shall have any 
 other than it now has ? Will anyone say, on seeing a great 
 tamarind blooming in midsummer verdure, that those 
 leaves are the only ones which that tree has ever had, or 
 ever will have ? Like a great solar Tamarind, this convex 
 system has had many planets (cosmic leaves or fruit) which 
 during secular ages of the past have, one by one, convolved 
 down to the sun and become annihilated. And likewise, 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 55 
 
 during the future half of the sun's eternity (the duration 
 of which cannot be reckoned) millions and billions of un- 
 seen, unborn worlds shall wind their way down out of the 
 labyrinths of solar immensity, and in turn be burnt up ! 
 The surface of the sun, that fiery pool burning with brim- 
 stone, is the solar incinerary where is consumed the rubbish 
 of the solar system, and the common and dignified title of 
 the place is Hell ! 
 
 The perpetual process of creation and destruction is 
 the one grand history of solar cosmogony. Matter comes to 
 the sun in the form of planets and worlds, and departs in 
 the form of heat and light. All the matter of the solar 
 system is forever being thus transformed into radiation and 
 sent back again into the vast convex of the solar depths, or 
 farther. All matter begins in the form of water and ends 
 in the form of fire. A planet originates in the form of a 
 water sphere and ends in solar combustion by being de- 
 voured on the sun. Thus the perpetual process of creation 
 and destruction is the solution of the mystery of the uni- 
 verse of matter. And the purpose of a planet's creation is 
 that a new angel (for many spirits make an angel) be de- 
 rived therefrom to finally take his place as a denizen in the 
 solar Heaven. Neither is there any dwelling place in the 
 whole universe of creation on which any being may live 
 and dwell, except on spheres. Spheres, great spheres, celes- 
 tial spheres, cosmic spheres, or whatever name we may call 
 them by, are the only habitable places which there are or 
 can be, for gods, angels or men. There is no place where 
 any living being may dwell or subsist unless it be on, or in 
 a cosmic sphere. All the rest is void; the void, the blank 
 desolate element and 'graveyard' of universal death. And 
 
56 INTKODUCTION 
 
 when a planet has completed the mission of its creation, the 
 worthy souls thereon are taken into the Heaven; the rest, 
 all the rest, matter, spirit, etc., is simply cast into the solar 
 furnace and consumed. 
 
 The sun's great globe grew to its present size from the 
 aggregated deposition of fallen planets during the solar 
 past, until its present volume is computed to be about equal 
 to 1,300,000 globes the size of the earth. Eeckoning from 
 this standpoint alone, it is evident that at least 1,300,000 
 planets of average size are now compiled in the sun's mass. 
 But when we know that by far the greater portion of solar 
 matter thus amassed to the center has been radiated back 
 again into space in the form of heat and light, and that 
 the growth and accretion of the central body is simply and 
 singly the result of the excess of this descended matter, then 
 how shall we attempt to ascertain the approximate number 
 of planets, of worlds that have been, which originated in 
 the solar system and fell to the sun ? The figures must be 
 enormous, if expressible at all, practically numberless. 
 
 The same goes to show the number of Angels and 
 spirit beings, created by reason of these banished worlds, 
 is likewise numberless. But though large as the concave 
 Heaven is, it could not contain numberless beings. Not- 
 withstanding the amplitude of the Empyrean, it is never- 
 theless insufficient to receive an infinite host. Hence, it is ob- 
 vious that angels are, at times being fallen and cast out of 
 Heaven and destroyed. Thus, again, is it conclusive that 
 as the perpetual process of creation and destruction is the 
 philosophy of material creation, so, likewise, is eternal birth 
 and eternal death, creation and destruction in perpetualis. 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 57 
 
 the grand law and history of angelic being* Not that any 
 being is predoomed. JSTo one shall fall, can fall, but 
 through the free agency and angelic prerogative of free 
 will. The invisible universe stands on the free exercise of 
 angelic free will. Should eternal beings cease to sin and 
 fall and be overcome on high, the pageantry of visible cre- 
 ation would in time cease to exist, perhaps, except the thin 
 transparent textures of empyrean spheres — though the 
 probability is that matter will never wholly become extinct, 
 since as beings may fall, they will fall. 
 
 But to return again from these metaphysical specula- 
 tions back to the physical, the earth being neither the 
 youngest nor the oldest of planets, has yet one moon left, 
 one only, because her satellites are all fallen but one. Our 
 planet has had many satellites in her day, and the periodic 
 fall and collision of these little orbs of destiny correspond 
 theogonically to the "Days of Creation" spoken of by Moses 
 in the initial of the Lord's Book. Here is another mystery 
 cleared up ! The Catalycisms of these moons were each and 
 severally the beginning and ending of a Creative Day. 
 The term 'day' as here used means a long period of time, 
 a geological age in the progress of the earth's natural his- 
 tory. St. Augustin, in the fourth century, called these 'in- 
 
 *Eternal Being. This appelation applies to the Supreme and 
 Angelic Being which has existed throughout eternity. But the 
 epithet does not imply that all such Being has always existed, 
 nor that all such shall always exist. It does mean that any and 
 all perfect spirit Being, either in the form of angels, archangels, 
 seraphim, paracletes, cherubim, may and shall exist forever, unless 
 such responsible being sin and fall and are destroyed. Such being 
 otherwise can and must live forever. Spirit being cannot die 
 unless actually destroyed by Hell's fire. 
 
58 INTRODUCTION 
 
 effable days, alterations of births and pauses in the work 
 of the Almighty, boundaries of periods in the vast 
 evolution of worlds/ Each day was in fact a world 
 birth and a world death, giving rise to as many 
 distinct and successive creations of animal and 
 vegetable life. Each of the several cosmic con- 
 vulsions probably destroyed and wiped out almost 
 every vestige of life and being then existing on the 
 face of the planet ; when the life of each 'day' was succeeded 
 by a new and higher type of existence, each cosmogony be- 
 ing the divine result of a special creative act; not a 'sur- 
 vival of the fittest/ but an absolutely new created stock; 
 each succeeding genera, fauna and flora being an improve- 
 ment on its predecessor. 
 
 Evidently the earth had six satellites. On the eve of the 
 first Day the first and nearest moon fell. On the close of 
 of the seventh great and greatest Day the earth will fall to 
 the sun. The planet will approach the awful Center to such 
 nearness that the energy of the sun's force will overwhelm 
 and dissolve the planet. An Icarian-like disaster, as if 
 the little world were wont to flee away in consternation 
 from the nearness of the horror of Hell ! Then shall be veri- 
 fied that which the prophet wrote,speaking of the earth's far 
 distant future, that he saw in the favored vision : C A great 
 ivhite throne from whose presence the earth and Heaven 
 fled away and henceforth could not he found/ And then 
 he said: 'And I saw the dead, great and small, standing 
 before the throne, and the books were opened/ Yes, after 
 time, cometh eternity ; after the world of man cometh the 
 world of God. 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 59 
 
 As a planet dissolves on its near approach to the sun, 
 just so and for the same reason do the satellites dissolve 
 when they descend to within a certain nearness to their 
 primaries. The physical cause is the dismantling of the 
 lesser bodies creative vortex, when the force of gravity 
 which holds its matter together is hereby made to cease. 
 Even now our moon has little or no vortex of her own, as 
 is proven by the subsidence of her axiel motion. However, 
 it will be i#any thousand years yet before the moon falls. 
 This, then, will be the 'end of the world/ or the 'end of 
 time/ so notably spoken of by the prophets. The 'end of 
 time' simply means the end of propagation or reproduction 
 of the race of man, for the precipitation of the shattered 
 satellite will, at that time destroy our race. This, in 
 quite the same manner as the fall of previous satellites, had 
 wiped out the living organic 'worlds' then existing, and 
 'evening and morning' will close the 'sixth day/ Then shall 
 the dead rise on the morning of the great Sabbath, or the 
 seventh great day. 
 
 Now the question most prominently arises : When will 
 the moon fall ? How long till the end of time ? How long, 
 how long, till the day of wrath cometh ? Well, science can- 
 not tell us this. Though science has told us many things 
 and wonders, yet she has so far failed to relate to us the dis- 
 tance of the end of time. We may, however, infer many 
 things relating to this question from astronomical lore. We 
 tnay infer that the moon will fall before the earth has 
 reached the present orbit of her next neighbor, namely, the 
 planet Venus. Venus is 66,000,000 miles from the sun, 
 while we are, as yet, 91,500,000 miles away. The distance 
 between the two orbits is 35,500 ; 000 miles, Somewhere 
 
60 INTKODTTCTION 
 
 within the limits of this cosmic domain shall the moon 
 'cease to give her light/ as the gospel fortells, and the earth 
 will become a moonless planet. But as to this precise time, 
 science stops short, or rather waits so as to allow her super- 
 ior and older sister, the Divine Word, to step in and march 
 in advance. 
 
 The great prophecy tells us that the two witnesses 
 (Moses and Elias) 'shall prophesy 1260 days' (xi 3). Also 
 it says: They shall feed the woman (i. e., the woman 
 clothed with the sun) 1260 days' (xii: 6). And at the end 
 of time the seventh trumpet shall sound. Yes, when time 
 the 'tomb-builder' has all the tombs built, and the graves of 
 the earth must render back their borrowed dead! Now, 
 the only question arises: What is the length of each of 
 these 1260 days? Decipher that and we have it all in a 
 nutshell. Well, here it is: the length of time required 
 for each generation of our race, is thirty-three and one-third 
 years. The length of the life of Christ, who is called 'The 
 ancient of days' (Dan. vii: 13) is also thirty-three and a 
 third years. This then will allow 1260 generations of our 
 race to rise and fall between the first coming of our Lord 
 and the end of time. One thousand two hundred and sixty 
 multiplied by 33 1-3 years gives an aeonian product 
 of 42,000 years. It is also foretold that the Beast shall 
 'act forty-two months/ each of which months shall, we un- 
 derstand, comprise a period of one thousand years. How- 
 ever, we must somewhat retract by saying that in Daniel's 
 prophecy, the stated time is one thousand two hundred and 
 ninety days (xii;6). But evidently Daniel phophesied from 
 the dedication of Solomon's temple, and which took place 
 one thousand years before the birth of Christ. This great 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 61 
 
 temple was the 'first house which was built to God on the 
 earth/ and from which the date of the Tioly city* com- 
 mences (see Daniel ix:24-27). This would allow 43,000 
 years from the completion of the temple until the last end. 
 It is noticeable that there are at least three discriptive days. 
 First the calendar day, consisting of twelve hours; second 
 the creative day, involving a grand period of 100,000 years; 
 and thirdly, the genessial day, or the day of a generation, 
 which obviously shows itself to consist of thirty-three and 
 one-third years. This calculation, then, will establish the 
 close of time at 42,000 years after the commencement of the 
 Christian era. 'Then thick hail shall be cast upon them 
 (the ungodly) from the stone-casting wrath: the waters of 
 the sea shall rage against them, and the rivers shall run to- 
 gether in a terrible manner.' (Wisdom v : 23.). 
 
 As before explained, the moon will not precipitate bod- 
 ily against the planet, for such a world collision might cause 
 irreparable disaster, but in the form of calamitous and 
 earth-shaking showers of meteors large and small; 'great 
 hail/And the dreadful rock 'storm' will continue a consider- 
 able length of time, commencing with the great earthouake, 
 'when every mountain and the island shall be moved out of 
 their places (Apoc. vi: 14).* Another of these cataclysms 
 is described thus: 'And there was (in the vision) light- 
 
 *It is a noted fact that Geologists are unanimous in admit- 
 ting that the earth has, from time to time, undergone periodic 
 ordeals and convulsions of the most extraordinary and subvert- 
 ing character. Evidences of which are everywhere tracable in the 
 general broken irregularity of the terrestrial crust; and in the 
 various ages and formations of rocks and ledges, aqueous and 
 igneous, stratified and unstratified, all thrown promiscuously to- 
 gether at, or near, the surface; and in the presence of ores, er- 
 
62 INTKODTJCTION 
 
 nings and voices and a great earthquake! 'And there were 
 voices and lightnings and an earthquake and great haiV 
 But the final shock shall be the severest. 'And there were 
 lightnings and voices and thunders : and there was a great 
 earthquake, such as never hath been seen since men were 
 upon the earth: an earthquake so great, * * * And 
 every island fled away, and the mountains were not found/ 
 All these were prophetical visions of the future which the 
 sacred writer had seen. 
 
 In conclusion of this theme, it remains to be said that 
 the terrestrial revulsion caused by the precipitation of the 
 recent and last satellite, and which must have occured long 
 before the creation of man, undoubtedly left the earth's 
 crust in a fearful shape, so that the work of the elements 
 during centuries was necessary in order to subdue and even 
 the planet's surface after the wreck, to render it habitable. 
 Behold, herein is solved, with many others, the mystery of 
 the uprising of the present continents and the sinking of 
 the ocean beds. Likewise, herein, is explained the prob- 
 lem of the earth's protuberances, the upheaval of the 
 mountains and the cause of their origin. 
 
 rupted masses, fossiliferous remains; and especially in volcanoes, 
 ranges and mountain phenomena. In all this, science positively 
 asserts that something out of the ordinary course of nature has 
 surely happened. But, up to this, it is a no less singular fact, 
 that geology has failed to determine the secret which has led to 
 such catastrophisms, 
 
ARTICLE V. 
 
 The Origin of Man 
 
 'And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth 
 and breathed into his face the breath of life; and man 
 
 became a living souV (Gen. ii: 7). 
 On the question of the origin of our race, much indeed 
 has been said and written, and much more might still be 
 said without arriving at the core of facts. Also have vol- 
 umes been filled with endless endeavor to explain the mys- 
 tery of the 'Fall and Redemption/ Many claiming that the 
 'Trees' of Life and Knowledge, etc., were some common 
 species of the wooded forest and bearing such transcendent 
 fruit in those days in the paradise of that ancient Eden 
 as to be capable of conferring to the partaker thereof the 
 blessing of life or the curse of death. Others regard those 
 wonderful trees as of purely mythical origin, only symboliz- 
 ing therein certain attributes of our race. Others mistrust 
 the authenticity of the story altogether, disclaiming cre- 
 dence likewise to the described origin of man, as given in 
 tnose first chapters of the Pentateuch. They venture to 
 prove that the great wall of China and the E^'^tian pyra- 
 mids are anyhow more than 6,000 years old, and thus ante- 
 date the biblical story of our origin. Still others find that 
 the petrified remains of human giants testify that man was 
 created in a primeval state more than a million years ago. 
 Others again of the Praterist school imagine that although 
 the biblical accounts be true, and that although our race 
 has existed only 6,000 years, everything is nevertheless 
 
64 INTEODUCTION 
 
 already quite accomplished, and every new rumor of war 
 or report of a conflagration brings to them a portentious 
 sign that the end of the world is at hand. And some very 
 creditable naturalists, by the way, venture to show how we 
 are the descendants of certain quite honorable and rational 
 tribes of monkeys, which are said to still inhabit impervious 
 African jungles, and who, for some worthy scruples, refuse 
 to come forth and acknowledge their relationship to our 
 racial mediocrity. They cleverly deny that we are in any 
 way a 'survival of the fittest/ or the timely production of 
 any mode of development process. Ne plus ultra! Thus 
 the naturalist and the monkey are seemingly at war on the 
 subject. And in weighing the argument, our conviction is 
 that the monkey has the preponderance. Besides, the mon- 
 key stands on the side of revelation's Word, which the aspir- 
 ing scientist ignores, and will not condescend to accept as 
 being worthy his notice. Here, again, the ancestral chim- 
 panzee has the advantage over his untutored, anthropoidal 
 descendant, and the monkey scores the naturalist. 
 
 In looking over the field of science and of natural 
 history, one finds nothing definitely pointing out nor show- 
 ing the true time or manner regarding the creation of man. 
 Science here, as almost everywhere else, whenever she un- 
 dertakes to explain from natural cause and appearance, the 
 deeper problems, or to furnish salutary conclusions respect- 
 ing the abstruse mysteries of the origin and final end of 
 things, she falls short. This is because of the crude and 
 chaotic state of science, which has not as yet learned to 
 blend and reconcile herself with the eternal, unfailing 
 teachings of the omniscient Word. Hence, we must, as ever 
 in the course of our research go back again and again to 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 65 
 
 the old Book of the divine lores and wisdoms, or rather it 
 should be the product of our humble labor to here again 
 learn to combine and adjust the secular and divine. 
 
 Our Eace begun and originated almost 6,000 years ago. 
 The race then begun and continued to propagate for more 
 than 1,600 years, when it was destroyed by the waters of a 
 flood, after which it again commenced to propagate out of 
 the new. Not until now, after a course of 2,300 years or 
 more after the flood, the face of the planet begins to be more 
 or less all populated. Yes, man originated nearly sixty cen- 
 turies ago, but the creation of man will be consummated 
 only at the end of time. Man is creating, not created. Just 
 so with the world. The World shall be in all seven 'Days' 
 creating. The World is not yet created, neither is the Eace 
 of man. It will require, in all, a period of 46,000 years 
 to consummate the creation of our yet infant race. Then 
 will our full-fledged and new created progeny be regarded 
 by the eternal powers as a Oneness, a single being; 'Man' 
 created ! What little of this we behold, or is at any time 
 visible, is but the ever present progress of the race unfold- 
 ing itself. 
 
 At the close of the recent lunar Cataclysm, and long 
 before the origin of man, the opening of the sixth great Day 
 dawned. Up to that time man had not existed on the face 
 of the earth. Not only that, but the violence of the cosmic 
 shock then annihilated, perhaps, all previous organic life off 
 the earth. Besides, Scripture informs us that no cattle nor 
 four-footed beasts were created until the sixth Day. During 
 the earlier part of this, our great Day, the Lord God created 
 all quadrupeds. This organic genera would most probably 
 
66 INTRODUCTION 
 
 include all classes of quadrumana. That is, implying al- 
 together all those species still extant or extinct; the mam- 
 moth, the mastodon, the horse, the dog, the sheep, the cow, 
 the ape, the baboon, etc. The organic world of the sixth 
 Day was all begun during the forenoon, all completed by 
 noon. The 'Days of Creation' are the ages and pages of a 
 planet's natural history, and the number of moons indicate 
 as many originations and extinctions of species; in the 
 morning of each mystic 'Day" a series of species flash into 
 existence, and in the evening they flash out. Such is the 
 delphic lesson of the moons, and the mystery of the earth's 
 seven ages. On the sixth day 'God made the beasts of the 
 earth according to their kind, and cattle, and everything 
 that creepeth on the earth after its kind* And then God 
 created man. About the middle of the day, God created 
 Adam. 'And God said let us make man to our own image 
 and likeness/ 
 
 But this work, like that of the cattle and quadrupeds, 
 was, in itself, a 'special creative act' of the Almighty. 
 Man was formed from the dust of the planet, directly by 
 the hand of God, when God breathed into the man's nostrils 
 the breath of life and he became a living soul. Man was 
 at first formed, as the Scripture shows, both male and fe- 
 male in the one being, an hypostatic formation (if we may 
 
 *It is very probable that the force of the world-storm did 
 not destroy the forms of acquatic life then, or before, existing. 
 
 fEach and every special creation was not only a special cre- 
 ative act in its origin, but such was, according to the earliest 
 Scripture, a special and continuous creative act 'after its own 
 kind' (Gen. i:12, 21, 24, 25). No evolution of species in this 
 divine plan. Each species was divinely commanded to 'increase 
 and multiply after its own kind.' 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 67 
 
 so term it), until later on the Lord separated and resolved 
 him into two beings, according to the organic duplexity of 
 male and female. {For a full explanation on these ques- 
 tions see main part of the look, p. 212.) It will require the 
 entire 'afternoon' of the sixth day of creation's week to 
 complete the great work begun in the 'forenoon.' Then 
 shall be fulfilled the traditional account of evening and 
 morning, being the sixth day. Then shall follow the sev- 
 enth day, the great Sabbath, commonly called the Millen- 
 ium. Such is, indeed, both the biblical and rational 
 account of the Origin of man. 
 
AETICLE VI. 
 The Fall of Man 
 
 A 'Paradise of pleasure' was created at the birth-place 
 of man. This Paradise was created and kept by the hand 
 of God, or rather by the hand of his Angels, who had form- 
 ed and created man, and dwelt in the Eden. They formed 
 man at first and then reformed him into two distinct be- 
 ings. And they all dwelt in the Eden. Now, the Paradise, 
 or the Eden, was a small spot of earth supposed to have been 
 located somewhere in the western part of Asia. It was 
 small at first, for then the population of the globe was 
 small, probably not more than four — two of angels and 
 two of man. Now, it was also commanded them that they 
 should 'increase and multiply/ though not after their own 
 kind. There were at this time planted in that most beau- 
 tiful Garden c all manner of trees fair to behold: the tree of 
 life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowl- 
 edge of good and evil/ 
 
 It was at that time commanded of our first parents 
 that they should not eat of the 'Tree of knowledge/ and 
 that they should eat of the 'Tree of Life. If they ate of the 
 Tree of Knowledge it was assured them they would die. If 
 they partook of the Tree of Life they would live forever and 
 be translated into Heaven at the end of a certain time with- 
 out the penalty of death. These, were certainly an extraor- 
 dinary character of 'Tree/ to have power to confer such 
 qualities and properties on the participant. There is cer- 
 

 THE SEVEN AGES 69 
 
 tainly no tree that grows in the forest, nor in the vegetable 
 kingdom, like to these. 
 
 Now this is the Exegesis of the wonderful dilemma. 
 These were symbolical 'Trees/ indeed a figurative species. 
 This we know from the reason that they could not be any 
 other kind. They could not be otherwise than supernat- 
 ural in order to confer such attributes. They cannot be 
 trees of the vegetable character. ISTo natural fruit could 
 make our bodies immortal or save us forever from death, 
 nor could any vegetable quality bestow on the participant 
 the knowledge of good and evil. Besides there are many 
 other symbolical terms used in the Bible, such as beast, har- 
 lot, candlestick, days, lamb, rock, lamps, etc. The parables 
 are all aglow with tropes and epithets, and the prophecies 
 are everywhere incandescent with luminous figures. 
 
 The Tree of life, and of which Adam and Eve were 
 commanded to 'eat' was the angels of the race of God, and 
 which also dwelt in the Paradise. But the Tree of knowl- 
 edge which our first parents were forbidden to 'eat' of was 
 the human race, the beginning of which likewise dwelt in 
 the Eden. The Lord commanded them to partake of the 
 celestial Tree, whereby they might bring forth a race of 
 superior beings, half human and half divine, in a manner 
 not unlike to that of Christ himself, who was born of a vir- 
 gin and an angel.* But the great Serpent countermanded 
 the will of God by desiring and requesting Adam and Eve 
 
 *Such superior men would be the same as was the Messiah 
 up to the time of his baptism. But then, at that time, the entire 
 God-spirit-being entered into Christ, making him the first angel 
 incarnate; that is, the first incarnation from the seven Spirits 
 of God. 
 
?0 INTRODUCTION" 
 
 to produce from the Tree of knowledge, and thereby bring 
 forth a race of mortals, purely human beings, good and evil, 
 so that he, the serpent, might become possessor of a share 
 therein, and possess the evil portion; for he knew if they 
 sprung from the Tree of Life that he would then have no 
 share whatever, as there would be no evil in that species of 
 a race. 
 
 Consequently, the 'old serpent' set to work, using his 
 utmost efforts of seduction and persuasion, and by numer- 
 ous insinuations and lies endeavored to persuade this inex- 
 perienced and simple couple that the commands and warn- 
 ings of their Creator were unjust and false, till he finally 
 succeeded in convincing fair Eve that they would not die 
 the death, the threatened death, if they brought forth con- 
 trary to the will of God, but that instead they would become 
 as gods, knowing good and evil. He persuaded them in the 
 same manner as he now persuades men that there is no God. 
 The whole matter was left to the absolute Freewill of 
 the first man and woman, till the woman, who was the first 
 to be overcome by the wiles of the wicked one, consented to 
 obey the counsel of Satan and disobey the will of God ; when 
 she and the serpent together persuaded and overcame the 
 man and they both transgressed. Alas ! 'Caesar has crossed 
 the Eubicon, et jucta est aleal' 
 
 Now has Satan succeeded in setting up woman as the 
 goddess of the race and planet, and man the 'god' thereof ; 
 and he himself the triumphant Demiurge of the adoring 
 Beast. Now, verily, this was the DeviPs right, his God-given 
 right and privilege, and therefore, his just right, to thus 
 seduce the Protoplast of a new race, if he could, and finally 
 
THE SEVEN AGES ft 
 
 to take with him his apportioned share. If Providence had 
 ordained and decreed that those Angels were to produce a 
 race of themselves, incapable of seduction, then the Arch- 
 outcast of heaven would be deprived of his inherited right. 
 Besides, it is doubtful if the angels could produce of them- 
 selves, because of the total absence of animal nature. It 
 is even doubtful if they could become incarnated without 
 first having connection with the human, or, otherwise, be 
 born or reborn from the human. Otherwise there would 
 be no need to create planets at all, if generations could be 
 produced in heaven. But, no, this, the organic part of crea- 
 tion's functional work must all be done outside the walls 
 of the Empyrean. 
 
 Evidently the theory not only clears up the mystery 
 of the Fall and Eedemption, but it also shows the deviPs 
 position in the ranks of creation and being, that he is justly 
 a privileged character of limited extent, and an evil Demi- 
 urge, or in a manner a fallen and evil creator ! Likewise 
 it clears up and shows to mankind his true situation with 
 relation to God and nature, and which he never wholly 
 knew before. The theory gives fully the latitude and lon- 
 gitude of all these things. The God of all mercy granted 
 to the Devil this privilege in order to assuage and mitigate 
 the dreadf ulness of his doom ; and as a consequence we are 
 all born heirs to the fallen god, and so remain until wq 
 renounce allegiance to the infernal kingdom, and, through 
 Christ, become espoused to the kingdom of life. 
 
 But to return again to the subject ; they at once became 
 ashamed of their naked condition, and sewed leaves togeth- 
 er to make themselves aprons. Now why were they not 
 
?2 INTRODUCTION" 
 
 ashamed of their mouths if they had literally eaten of the 
 forbidden fruit, or of their hands if it were these members 
 which had transgressed ? No, but the parts which were the 
 instruments of violation became the organs of shame for- 
 ever! And when the angel accosted them that afternoon 
 they offered excuses ; Eve blaming the serpent for her mis- 
 fortune and Adam laying blame to the woman, 
 and the Lord pronounced on them the inevitable 
 imprecations, which, as a result, were sure to 
 folllow the sin and disobedience of their trans- 
 gression and elopement. Their posterity was to be 
 the sure and unhappy product of their sin, and was like- 
 wise doomed to share the judgment of sin and shame and 
 misery and death. Being a race of mortals, what else could 
 they expect ? Nothing celestial in them, nothing divine in 
 them, nothing but human, animal nature, their fate was 
 to be like that of the beasts of the field. Their first born 
 was a murderer. They are turned out of Eden forever, and 
 at the end of a little time they must return to the dust of 
 out of which they were formed, and all mankind with thejn 
 (see Ps. 213, etc.). 
 
 Such is, indeed, the grave situation, immutable, enig- 
 matical, paradoxical ! Such is the foundation of our race, 
 and such the foundation which might have been. Nay, was 
 not the information given us from heaven through the 
 prophet Moses, to acquaint us how our race begun? Cer- 
 tainly. The Lord never intended that we should be ignor- 
 ant of such an important truth. All things are foreshown 
 to us, all important things are made known to us through 
 the columns of the inspired text, only to discover them. 
 Such is indeed the stock from which we sprung. Nor 
 
THE SEVEN AGES U 
 
 is it for us to complain, but to make the best we can of a 
 fallen lot; nor does it behoove us to lament, for lamenta- 
 tions are anyhow vain. The constitution of the world is 
 unalterably fixed till the end of time. Maybe the ordina- 
 tion and destiny is in some way for the best, or not all for 
 the worst. There is a hopeful side to all things. 
 'There is never a cloud so black but has a silver 
 lining/ we are unable to comprehend the profound- 
 est ways of God, the inexplicable depth of Providence. 
 This loving, hating generation, this laughing crying, 
 praying sighing, hoping sinning, helpless, afflicted, turbu- 
 lent, mortal world of ours may not be for the worst. Have 
 mercy on us, Lord, we are still the work of Thy hand, 
 amid the echoings of the realms of time. We are still thy 
 children, Adam, erring man, nor shall we revile thy heavy 
 heart, thy repentant soul; and frail, wayward Eve, where 
 e'er thy spirit rests, thou art still our ancient mother. But 
 now this big round planet shall brood and nourish on its 
 broad, chaotic bosom a race of fallen mortals, and heaven's 
 sun shall ever rise and set on naught else but a race of 
 doomed mortals, unless by heaven's help, by heaven's 
 mercy there be something done ! * 
 
 *Originists may remonstrate, that it cannot be the part of 
 eternal Justice to thus impose the guilt of the Parents on the 
 irresponsible, unconscious Offspring. The argument for the 
 opposite side of the question would be, at least, in part, as fol- 
 lows: The offspring is the essential product of the parents and 
 of the parents will, and there can be no quality nor property in 
 the product but that which exists or existed in the oiginal fac- 
 tors. In the psychology of begitting, it is true that it is no less 
 the will of the offspring (though unconscious) to be begotton, 
 than it is the will of the parents to beget. The will of the one 
 is the will of the other. If it were the will of our first Parents 
 to produce a fallen race, it is no less the will of that race that it 
 
ARTICLE VII. 
 
 The Redemption 
 
 'Now, therefore, lest perhaps Adam put forth his hand] 
 and tahe also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for- 
 ever/ (Genesis iii : 22.) 
 'If any man eat of this tread, he shall have life forever: 
 and the bread which I will give is my flesh for the life 
 
 of the world/ (John vi: 52.) 
 
 The 'Tree of Life' in the Old Testament became the 
 
 'Bread of Life' in the New Testament. 'He that eateth 
 
 this bread shall live forever (John vii:58). And since we 
 
 failed of divine extraction in the beginning, we must of 
 
 may exist. No being is ever conceived against his own will. If 
 the individual enjoyed the exercise of free will at his conception, 
 he would have exercised it exactly as did his parents; in fact, he 
 was the very cause and spark which prompted the act of his own 
 conception, the desire existed in the embryo, even as it did in 
 the parents. The offspring is, indeed, a real and virtual part of 
 the parents; the whole human family, from the beginning to the 
 end of time, is but the timely, evolutionary fulfillment of the 
 original Pair. The blood which coursed through their veins has 
 become the sanguine fluid which nourisheth the whole race. In 
 this the function of Individuality cuts no separate figure. But 
 the individual may, nevertheless, make himself celestial if he will, 
 and cause himself to rise above the mediocre of his birth, and 
 that by the voluntary and divine rebirth. This is the privilege 
 of celestial ascendancy, the granted, God-given prerogative of the 
 individual, the conscious and voluntary act of the offspring. 
 Though originated solely of the Tree of Knowledge, the individual 
 may thus rise above his derivation and save himself by partaking 
 of the Tree of Life. However, all must suffer the penalty of the 
 proscribed 'death,' the virtue of the Rebirth not attesting itself 
 in the physical corporation until the new body is resurrected. 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 75 
 
 frail necessity be born over again. No one can be saved 
 who remains purely human, wholly mortal. In this state 
 we fall a sure and easy prey to the evil One. We of ignoble 
 derivation, are too gross, too sensual, too animal, if not 
 ingrafted by the divine nature, to be ever able to ascend. 
 Hence, unless we are redeemed, unless we avail ourselves 
 of the fruits of the Eedemption, we cannot be saved. Not 
 one can be saved unless redeemed. We must be lifted up 
 by partaking of the divine nature from above. By laying 
 the above two quotations of Holy Scripture side by side, 
 we see that the Tree of Life' and the 'Bread of Life' hath 
 the same significance, picture and power over mortal death. 
 Because of the original error, we must indeed be 'born again 
 not of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God/ 
 'Amen , I say unless you be born again of water and the 
 Holy Ghost ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven/ Those 
 who are born again constitute the Church, whille those who 
 will refuse to be born again shall constitute the Beast. There 
 are only two, namely : the Church and the Beast. The first 
 because they will eat of the Bread of life shall rise up glor- 
 ified on the last day. The rest shall not rise up glorified 
 because there will be nothing glorified in them. They will 
 not be redeemed. They will refeuse to share in the Redemp- 
 tion. 
 
 If a man were seen walking up and down the streets 
 through the town swaying his arms with emphasis and cry- 
 ing : 'Hear ye people, you must be all born again ! You 
 must be all born over again or you cannot see everlasting 
 life V If such a thing should happen, 'Why/ they would say 
 'that man is crazy ; arrest him ; he is a nuisance V Well, so 
 it is ever with the world. However, the man would not be 
 
76 INTRODUCTION 
 
 crazy ; he would only be inspired to preach God Almighty's 
 truth. No truer words ever fell from the lips of man. No 
 benefactor ever gave wiser alarm to his fellow-man. For 
 the God of the earth himself has told us in plain language : 
 ' Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, 
 he cannot see the Kingdom of God!' (John iii : 3) . Well, if 
 our origin and birth at first were according to the divine 
 will, there would be no need that we be born again. Orig- 
 inally, we are purely animal, there is nothing divine in us. 
 The human should have been engrafted into the divine Tree 
 at the beginning, but since that failed to have been done, 
 it is now, happily, incumbent on us to engraft the Divine 
 into the human. We must propagate from the two-fold 
 extraction of gods and men. 
 
 However fair we are mortal; however brave we are 
 bestial; however wise we are not celestial; however great 
 we are not divine ; however loving we are sinners ; however 
 strong, however fearfully and wonderfully made, we are 
 subjects of death and corruption. Indeed, unless we receive 
 of the divine nature in us we are empty creations of noth- 
 ing worth; nor worthy or fit to join with God or angels 
 because of the baseness of our nature and origin. First, 
 we must be divinely recreated, then must good works follow. 
 Then let the strong lift up the weak, and let the rich di- 
 vide with the poor; yes, now, while yet there is light 
 and day, for soon the night of death comes on, when we can 
 work no more. 
 
 The Church of Christ is presided over by the 144,000 
 vestal Knights or pillars of the Church, mentioned in Apoc. 
 xiv:l-5. Their number is found by multiplying the num- 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 77 
 
 ber of the twelve Patriarchs by that of the twelve Apostles, 
 and that product by 1,000 gennesial 'days'; into whose 
 hands is given the 'continual sacrifice' of the real presence 
 of the Body and Blood to bestow on all whomsoever will re- 
 ceive during the thousand days. Then the 'continual sac- 
 rifice shall be taken away/ when the 'abomination unto des- 
 olation shall be set up/ After the expiation and atone- 
 ment of a God suffering in the human, we mortals must be 
 baptized and become divinely initiated in the name of the 
 Spirit of that God, which was denied in the rivalship 
 of the 'Fall/ and we must eat of the bread of the 
 Tree of Life, which was rejected at the time of the 'Fall/ 
 
 The grand function of the Eedemption was to restore 
 the Tree of Life. The blood of Jesus alone hath power to 
 ransom sinners. This bread alone hath power to confer im- 
 mortality on mortals, and to bestow celestial nobility and 
 seraphic dignity on the children of fallen man. We shall 
 be saved by bearing in all things the light burden of the 
 Gospel of Jesus Christ, and by carrying the sweet yoke of 
 His Church ; and by good works here build a home in an- 
 other sphere. He that believe in Christ shall be saved, but 
 he that believe in Christ will keep His commandments. 'He 
 that loveth me/ said the Savior, 'will keep my command- 
 ments/ We cannot believe the one and deny the other. 
 And His Church is the perpetual and only divine institution 
 on the face of the planet, the boon of salvation, the perpet- 
 ual Eock which the thunders of hell cannot shake, es- 
 tablished as the sole medium of redemption by regenera- 
 tion, or rebirth. The Church is the divine mother of all 
 'who are born again.' She is the triumphant lady 'clothed 
 
78 INTRODUCTION 
 
 with the sun/ a young tree of life, and commencing with 
 the immaculate Mary, our second Eve, our faithful Eve. 
 For further discussion on the question of the orthodox 
 Church see pp. 269 and 329, etc.) 
 
 It is very discernable from several passages of the 
 Scriptures that one-third of our race shall be regenerated 
 and redeemed, and whose names shall be written in the 
 'book of life/ But in order that this proportion be saved, 
 the Church will be obliged to much increase the number of 
 her fold between now and the time of the reign of King 
 Antichrist. Probably not much less than one-half the 
 entire population of the globe must necessarily be included, 
 on an average during the aeon of the Christian era, until the 
 day when the abomination of desolation will make all 
 (holy) things desolate, when the Son of perdition will 
 triumph over the whole earth.* 
 
 Conversely, it is equally plain that two-thirds of our 
 unfortunate race will refuse the fruits of the Redemption, 
 and deny the bread of divinity. Which adverse and unre- 
 deemed major fraction of the world is spiritually called the 
 'Beast/ the Beast of Revelation. Their wild unsanctified 
 spirits shall hereafter perish in a manner even as the spirits 
 of the beasts of the field, f The conjointed, unified form 
 
 *It will be understood that the Redemption of those who lived 
 before the Christian era, and, of course, others, shall be procras- 
 tinated until after the resurrection. Possibly all shall be given 
 a second trial and chance. 
 
 |The life, or spirits of the animal kingdom below the age of 
 man are all, after long periods of time, destroyed in the form 
 of lightning after death. (For a full discussion on this subject 
 see TheoryX, page 51.) That the phenomenon of lightning is due 
 to the explosion and combustion of animal spirits in the firma- 
 ment by aria} friction caused by the force of cosmic pressure, is 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 79 
 
 of which theogonical being shall be that of a prodigious 
 serpent, even like that of its father and spiritual sire, the 
 dragon, the 'old serpent/ As the Church shall possess an 
 upright, angelic formation, as designated in the lady of 
 the sun, so the incorrigible Beast shall produce a prone, ser- 
 pentine formation (for sin will make him prone) and de- 
 scribed as having 'seven heads and ten horns/ 
 
 Now, the first 'Head' of this fearful creation was cut 
 off by the Noachian deluge. At the time of Christ, five 
 of the heads were fallen, 'one is/ which was the Koman 
 Empire; and one was 'yet to come/ the Occident. The 
 seventh head is in the Western Hemisphere, which is des- 
 tined in time to rule the whole world. Then the ten Horns 
 shall begin to grow on this cosmopolitan head, and their 
 dynasties shall rule the world till the end of time, when the 
 calamity of the falling satellite shall close the era of their 
 reign. The 'ten Horns' shall, in united and resurrected cos- 
 mogony, constitute the enormous 'trunk' of the wonderful 
 beast serpent.* (See illustration, p. 402.) The souls of 
 
 explained and proven by the fact, that the flash of explosion is in 
 the form of a line, or a streak. The action of a mere electric ex- 
 plosion would be in all directions from one point, like that of a 
 charge of dynamite. (Mere electric fluid or heat element goes 
 from the clouds in the peaceful manner of radiation, not explo- 
 sion.) But the tenacity of the spirit, or living 'volt/ causes the 
 meandering charge to more or less cling together for the instant, 
 and go in one direction; a spirit being burning in the course 
 of transit. Electric fluid will not follow a line unless led by a 
 conductor, no more than will the fire of a common blast. On 
 this question of animal spirits enduring after death, consult, 
 Ecclestiastes iii : 21 and Esdras vi: 49-52. 
 
 *The prophetical transition from the seventh Head of nations 
 to the ten Horns thereof, or even the constitutional revolution 
 already imminent in the seventh 'Mars' itself, is a difficult prop- 
 osition to determine, at present, from any available data, except 
 
80 INTKODTTCTION 
 
 this cosmic Giant goeth, with their fallen angels, into the, 
 Sea and into the bottomless Pit, from which sequestered 
 resting places they shall usher forth again at the resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 Our race is destined to build life and being for two 
 Kingdoms, the kingdom of Light and the kingdom of Dark- 
 ness, and the creating world must needs hasten and race and 
 pace and toil during yet 40,000 years, ere the measure 
 of the two kingdoms be fulfilled. We are practically still 
 at the beginning of time. At this, our age of the world, all 
 that dwell on the face of the earth are but a handful to 
 those that sleep in its bosom ; yet the living and the dead to- 
 gether are but a handful to the number who are yet to be. 
 Yes, Egypt dead is greater than the Orient living; but 
 Egypt yet unborn is mightier than all the nations born ; for 
 the progeny of progenies is yet to come. This mystic term 
 'Time' signifies the aeon of the birth and death of our pro- 
 creating race, the era of begetting and burying, aye, too, 
 and the resurrection of the dead, and all this work must be 
 finished when the Seventh Trumpet sounds ! 
 
 that there will be new forms and new discoveries of government, 
 such as will supercede any devise of state or statute heretofore 
 framed on the planet. Possibly the latter change will introduce 
 itself in some form of Socialism. Without dilating on the sub- 
 ject here, there can be little doubt that the auspices of the ten 
 'Horns' of the world shall be a fixed decumvirate of Mammonian 
 or Bonanzan imperialism. But the famous Eighth Head shall 
 surely usher in a most radical regime of Socialism, such as even 
 to abolish all supremacy of Bank, Church and State. But this 
 era cannot come until after the 'Battle of Heaven/ or thousands 
 of years to come. 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 
 
 Embracing 
 
 A New Development of Science and Theology 
 
 The foregoing Articles of this Pamphlet are mere in- 
 troductory Extracts from a work recently written and pub- 
 lished and entitled "The Seven Ages." The full title of 
 which book is, "The Seven Ages of Creation, or Cosmos 
 and the Mysteries Expounded." The title of the work 
 very clearly expresses its character, and shows how the 
 evolution of all matter consists of a seven-fold series of 
 progression. 
 
 The first stage, or phase of material existence, as pre- 
 viously shown, exists in the 'Age' or condition of infinite 
 Space. The second stage thereof consists in the Age of 
 Water. The third stage of material existence is manifest 
 in the great organic or Life Age. The fourth stage of Cre- 
 ation is seen in the solid form of great Spheres, or what 
 is termed the Plutonic Age. The fifth Age of the book 
 shows that all matter is again resolving itself into the ele- 
 ment of Heat at the interior region of all great Spheres. 
 The sixth Age shows that the element of Light always at 
 first originates from the destruction of universal fallen 
 spirits on the universal suns. The Seventh and last Age 
 treats of the nature and derivation of all living spirit and 
 Universal Being. Then the second half, or 
 
82 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAET II. 
 
 of the work treats of the Apocalypse and Eevelations of the 
 Scriptures Expounded; or, in other words, it explains the 
 Mysteries of Theology ! The last book of the New Testa- 
 ment, and which was written at the beginning of the Chris- 
 tian Era by St. John the Divine, on the island of Patmos, 
 while under banishment by decree of the cruel 
 Emperor Domitian, might well be called the 'Book of 
 Mysteries/ The many commentaries which have appeared 
 during these centuries on the Apocalypse are truly said to 
 be 'unnumbered if not numberless f after all, leaving the 
 mystic volume remaining almost still in its primeval state 
 of obscurity, practically a 'sealed book/ Now, for the first 
 time has the writer taken up the subject, registering and 
 treating each chapter severally in a running commentary, 
 and from an entirely new standpoint and evolving an en- 
 eirely new line of thought. He finds that the work of ter- 
 restrial Creation is the production of seven Arch-angels 
 of the Sun. Hence, also, the title of his book. In all 
 things is the earth a seven-fold production. He finds that 
 the Divine Testimony plainly shows where the human soul 
 goes after death ; how the resurrection shall take place ; how 
 the second coming of Christ shall be. How Antichrist shall 
 overthrow the Church at the end of one Thousand great 
 Days, and set up the 'Abomination of Desolation/ 
 
 How there will be three Eesurrections of the dead. 
 Explaining the Constitution of the resurrected being, whom 
 naught less than the 'two-edged sword' can kill. How the 
 Devil shall take a third part of the whole race ; how Satan 
 shall take a third ; and how the Lamb of God shall possess 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 83 
 
 but a third part. Explaining the mystery of the incarnation 
 of the 'God of the earth/ Who King Antichrist shall be. 
 The Reveries of the Beasts of the Sea and of the Pit. Pro- 
 ducing several new and unfailing Evidences of the true 
 Faith. The Orgies of the risen dead in Babylon of the 
 prophecy. How the solar Serpent shall be captured and 
 bound in the nether abyss. The myriadic number of the 
 Dragon. These wonders are all explained in this book, the 
 heretofore unwritten pages of human wisdom, such as con- 
 founded sages and scientists since the world began. The 
 Prodigies of the falling Moon. The Marvels of the Celes- 
 tial Trumpets. The Conflagrations of the doomed City. 
 The final War of Wars. The teratical number six hundred 
 and sixty-six explained. This is only a brief synopsis of 
 the discoveries of this phenomenal book. Herein is ex- 
 plained the character of being inhabiting the other planets. 
 The marriage of the Angels of the Lamb to the first Resur- 
 rection of men during the Millenium. The City of new 
 Jerusalem interpreted. And then the final dissolution and 
 extinction of our dear, beloved Planet before the awful 
 presence of the 'Great White Throne* ! ! ! 
 
 The Book of the Secrets expounded ! Some said this 
 could not be done: somebody's opinion! The Scripture 
 makes no such assertion ; such is only a religious supersti- 
 tion. Nothing could be more absurd than that an intelli- 
 gent Creator should bestow an important message to his 
 reasonable Creatures, with the implication that the same 
 should never be understood. And though many things re- 
 main to be yet explained, the Apocalypse or Revelation is 
 no longer a sealed book. Practically open now, so Tie that 
 
84 INTRODUCTION" 
 
 runs may read' this book of wonder and woe; Creation's 
 cardinal Song! 
 
 'Adding nothing or nothing extenuating/ the writer 
 once for all, accepts the 'seamless garment' of the Divine 
 Word whole and entire; and defines Eevelation as, God- 
 given testimony, or that manifestation which comes from 
 above and beyond all that which we of ourselves can hear 
 and see. It is the voice of Eternity made audible to man. 
 He unhesitatingly confesses the triune functional Factors 
 of theologic worship, namely : Eevelation, revelation's God 
 and revelation's Church; and then proceeds to prove and 
 substantiate the same on a systematic basis from Science 
 and Scripture interwoven into one. Obviously, the dis- 
 covery of the solar Heaven is the keystone of gnostic incep- 
 tion, and first step towards devolving an Apocalypse. When 
 the Heaven and Hell are found, the ice is broke in the way 
 of delving. These are, as it were, the Castor and Pollux 
 of vaticination. Hereby, only, are the true variations es- 
 tablished for reaching into the true understanding and real 
 depth of things. Behold, in these, the twin, sun-lit Peaks 
 of science and theology's remotest poles, like antipodal col- 
 umns of gold, piercing the skies of knowledge. Aye, whose 
 summits reach to the sun, for heaven and hell are only dif- 
 ferent aspects of the one Thesis pointing unto the Solar; 
 'tis, lo, the Eclipse of Theo-science budding in the crescent ! 
 
 Yet, in all this the writer has no pretentions to super- 
 natural agency or illumination; nor anything other than 
 mere insight and deductions from common reason. The 
 angel showed all these things to the prophet, he claims; 
 'tis ours only to interpret them. He holds that Hell is not 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 85 
 
 a place of endless punishment, but an universal crematory 
 for all sin and corruption, and a place of annihilation at 
 the end of a certain time. And that the suffering of a 
 spirit being is not at all to be compared to that of living 
 human flesh in fire. The intensest heat is capable of caus- 
 ing only comparatively moderate pain and wear in the 
 spirit subject. Hence, almost interminable ranges of time 
 are required in order to effect an utter extinction, in the 
 'second death' (Rev. xx-xxi). This will help to remove the 
 unmerciful, gruesome idea of unending torture, etc., so re- 
 volting to most people's minds. 
 
 We are all aware that the various departments of 
 Science and Scripture, up to this day, have remained, more 
 or less, in a dissonant, estranged and rather crude state. 
 Many things suggested and asserted with but few things 
 clearly or satisfactorily shown, leaving the thinking mind 
 filled with doubts and prejudices. Doubts against unproven 
 theories and doctrines, and prejudices against unseem- 
 ing tenets and creeds. The proposed object of the writer, 
 here, is, not to abolish, but to clear up and explain, and to 
 interharmonize the heretofore apparently opposing princi- 
 ples of the secular and sacred knowledges, resolving and 
 compounding the same into a newly and more thoroughly 
 developed System. The fruitful prospects of which effort 
 will be, it is hoped, to effect a move towards the proselyt- 
 ing and conversion of Christiandom into one Church; all 
 Israel (Jew and Gentile) into one Fold. 
 
 During the Autumn of 1898 a small trial edition was 
 edited for the express purpose of obtaining critical advice 
 and opinion. These embryo volumes were sent abroad to 
 
86 INTKODUCTION 
 
 educators and divines. Members of the Bench, Bar and 
 Pulpit of various denominations, and Kepresentatives of 
 science and literature responded. Not only was no word 
 of demur raised, but on the other hand flattering commen- 
 dations were everywhere enunciated. Some urged that the 
 work needed to be revised and the expression somewhat 
 simplified to accommodate the reading masses. During the 
 following years the work has been thoroughly overhauled 
 and rewritten, adding much explanatory matter and also 
 some new and additional theories. Until now, in the field 
 of scientific and doctrinal Exegetics, this book has no par- 
 allel. On all subjects of Physics and Metaphysics, History 
 and Mystery, here is a peerless relief from the quagmire 
 of misunderstanding and the nightmare of uncertainty. 
 For, here, the long sought and eagerly coveted Why and 
 Wherefore of things obtain, and the great and inexplicable 
 problems which so long vexed the world's brain are here 
 laid open and bare ! 
 
 The work was written in Iowa, revised in Colorado, 
 and published in San Francisco. The writer being in a 
 state of precarious health at times, during the protracted 
 siege of his many years' labor, was forced to seek changes 
 of climate, and finally was induced to come to the coast. 
 
 A large volume of 567 pages, much condensed, gilt 
 top, and bound in full silk. An ample Appendix, copious 
 footnotes with definitions of difficult terms. Eubricated; 
 Illustrated and Annotated; Embossed in silver and gold; 
 Price, net, reduced to $2.25 
 
 Sent to any address on receipt of price. 
 
THE SEVEN AGES 87 
 
 Also the foregoing pamphlet will be mailed to any ad- 
 dress for 25 cents 
 
 Remit by Express Postal Money Order, Registered Letter or Drafts 
 on San Francisco, or Chicago. Do not send Personal Checks nor Postal 
 Stamps. 
 
 RUSSELL'S WORKS 
 
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 123 Seventh Street 
 
 and by Book Dealers in general. 
 
 When ordering by Mail Address 
 
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 San Francisco, California. 
 
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 THE SOLAR SYSTEM 
 Showing the Sun, Planets and Moons 
 
COMPARATIVE SIZE OF SUN AND PLANETS. 
 The large circle represents the Sun. The small dark bodies 
 within represent the Planets. J. Jupiter, S. Saturn, U. Urannus, 
 N. Neptune, My. Mercury, V. Venus, E. Earth, Ms. Mars. How- 
 ever, the proportionate size of the planets here given is somewhat 
 larger than the reality. The Sun's diameter is 866,000 miles. 
 The earth's diameter is 7,925. 
 
W§2