p. 4 | Scientific Mysticism by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 21, 1904

Scientific Mysticism

By William Ambrose Spicer

Present-Day Revivals of Ancient Errors—No. 5

Scientific Mysticism

“THE world by wisdom knew not God.” 1 Cor. 1:21. When men did have a knowledge of him by revelation and faith, they lost it by a philosophy that vainly attempted to reach the same point by process of human reasoning. It seemed too simple to be taught like a little child. It would glorify human wisdom to find a way of knowing God that could be called rational and scientific. But in the attempt the natural and the spiritual were confused. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” 1 Cor. 2:14. When Paul repudiated any thought of presenting Christian truth after the wisdom of this world, he did not refer to a system of philosophy that was endeavoring to escape from God. The ancient wisdom of the natural man sought to apprehend God, but sought in the wrong way. The result was a commingling of light and darkness, of good and evil, all the more deceptive because it turned the truth into falsehood.

We are witnessing in our day the revival of the ancient wisdom that knew not God, though it professes to have found a way in human reason by which all may know him. The effort to exalt the natural into the spiritual produces mysticism, a mixture that is neither natural nor spiritual. It can be classified only as mysticism. This system of philosophic mysticism has been strikingly described to us by the spirit of prophecy as an eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Instead of true knowledge, it is a mixture that destroys faith and blinds the mind to truth.

Concerning these dangers in apostolic days, Paul gave Timothy the warning: “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith.” 1 Tim. 6:20, 21. The mixture of light and of darkness in the false systems of apostolic times was founded on nature study and a philosophy of God, just as in modern systems. As one historical writer says in commenting on the text just quoted: “It must have been a doctrine professing to make a science out of the Christian faith.” It was tinctured with the pantheistic philosophy of the East also; for, as King of Cambridge says:—

So long as philosophy was cultivated in Greece . . . India was often regarded as the ultimate and purest source of the “True Wisdom,” the knowledge of things divine.

These seekers after wisdom talked of great truths revealed to them, and of principles high and holy. But the phraseology of truth is often used to cloak ideas utterly opposed to truth. Augustine, a few generations later, told of his experience with the Gnostics in their search through nature for a scientific philosophy of God:—

They used to repeat, “Truth and truth,” and so did they repeat her name to me, but she was nowhere amongst them, but they spake false things, not only concerning Thee who art the truth, but even concerning the elements of this world of ours, thy creation, concerning which even the philosophers who declared what is true, I ought to have slighted for the love of thee, O my Father. . . . There were set before me, in these same dishes, splendid phantoms, than which it were even better to love the Sun himself, for he was true as regards one’s eyes, rather than to love these fictions whereby the soul was deceived through the eyes.”

It has ever been the old story of Eve before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The command of God and the way of faith were simple and plain. Instead of loyally taking the word of God as final, she watched and studied the deceptive workings of the evil one until it appeared to her truly that larger and wider knowledge was within her reach. She was searching for more truth in the way of the natural mind, and not by the way of faith that hears the word of God. She ate, and at once it seemed that new and broader views were hers. So came sin into our world. Satan has been working ever since to persuade men to follow his phantoms of wider knowledge and wisdom. He only asks men to study and investigate the evil system with open minds; for when that study begins, the mind turns from the word of truth, and loses its defense. The shifting flashes of light and intermitting darkness, and the flattering appeals to the vanity of human reason lure the soul on into wider, broader fields—all but a mirage wrought by the bewitching power of the evil one.

It is evident that the ancient mysteries were originally but schools to teach a philosophic conception of God by a study of nature. All their abominations that the apostle said could not be mentioned were but the natural fruitage of a refined philosophy. One writer sums up the course of study:—

In ancient mysteries, life was the problem. The candidate was first concerned with knowledge of physical law, as in his own body; then of his relations, on the physical plane, with his fellow men. Then came instruction on the “soul plane,” a knowing of the great mystery of life itself, “for in these he became an unselfish servant of humanity.”

Canon Cheetham says of the nature study in the pagan mysteries and of their philanthropic and humanitarian aims:—

Cicero seems to regard the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace as means of learning the secrets of nature rather than of the gods, and this we may believe was the prevalent opinion with men of Cicero’s class. . . . The mysteries [in their opinion] were the source whence gentleness and humanity flowed over men.

Rebold says of these ancient institutions: “Initiation into them was the entering of a school, wherein were taught art, science, morals, law, philosophy, philanthropy, and the wonders and worship of nature.” And Hatch, in his Hibbart lectures, says: “The majority of them had the same aims as Christianity itself—the aim of worshiping a pure God.” The final stage in the education of the initiate was a correctly scientific philosophy of God:—

The sublime mysteries of religion and the profoundest teachings of science were now revealed to him, and satisfied his thirst for knowledge, while the possession of power as one of the hierarchy gratified his ambition. . . . This was the real autopsy, or “bringing to light,” of the candidate in the mysteries.

Why was it that these mysteries—ancient training-schools in which morals and virtue and profound philosophy of Deity were taught—became the synonym for all that was evil?—Because the true revelation of God was missed; and God being removed, all was worthless, even though virtue was praised and vice repudiated. Human reason was led by the evil one ever deeper and deeper into the mazes of error.

Again men are mistaking devotion to the search after knowledge of the things of nature for a spiritual experience. A revival of ancient mysticism is casting over the whole intellectual world the spell of enchantment by which men have been deceived ever since Eve studied the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One evil agency, world-wide in its operations, is leading minds along similar paths, although the individuals may have no connection with one another. For a time the rationalistic element in our day scoffed at the mystical systems of philosophy that were springing up. But we have seen them winning their way in, and leavening intellectual thought. It is the master-working of Satan for the very last days. The modern search for truth means a way of finding God in nature that shall redound to the glory of human reason. The Unitarian philosophy as much as any other one influence, perhaps, has prepared the way. As Frothingham says of this movement (in his life of the leader of the Brook Farm experiment), it “set knowledge in advance of faith.” Yet only by faith can men know the things of God. Channing said:—

I am surer that my rational nature is from God than that any book is a revelation of his will. This light in my own breast is his primary revelation, and all subsequent ones must accord with it.

Just so Eve’s rational nature, by Satan’s hypnotic spell, led her to see plainly as true that which was altogether false. Now, confident that rational nature is guiding truly, the new philosophy is pressing along the beaten path of ancient apostasy. It is all in the name of a search for the divine, and men proudly say they will follow truth wherever it may lead. One recent writer says:—

Men once died for a dogma which they did not even understand. Men to-day give their whole lives to find out God’s truth. A brotherhood of men of science are committed to discover truth, and to tell it to us. It is their religion to follow truth. Was ever a martyr’s life holier than Agassiz’s or Faraday’s?

Thus men make a religion of the knowledge of the things of nature, deceiving themselves after a vain philosophy, “after the elements of the world [the things of nature], and not after Christ.” Col. 2:8. Speaking of the determination with which observers are delving into nature to find God, one scientific medical writer says: “To-day they stand in actual conscious presence of the immaterial.” Another medical writer, a confessed theosophist, speaking of the same line of investigation among the ancient mystics and scientists of the East, declares that no one who studies their work—

can otherwise than venerate the marvelous men whose penetration, sanctified by humble devotion and illuminated by celestial light, discovered the truths of nature and nature’s laws and principles, and actually fathomed many mysteries not only of the terrestrial world, but of heaven and of the Almighty.

This author advocates the theosophic theory as a cure for infidelity, and thinks it will help scientific men to believe the Bible. While denouncing infidelity, the new philosophy spreads the most dangerous form of unbelief. Still another medical writer says of the winning witchery of this religio-scientific philosophy:—

They know little of the forces at work, or the principles involved, who imagine that there is sufficient force in dissolving creeds, or in the dying throes of materialism, to greatly retard the progress of these truths by sneers or ridicule, or to prevent their triumph by any opposition they can bring to bear against them. They have waited for millennia, and their time has come.

Sadly true it is that the time has come for Satan’s final stand. He knows

that he hath but a short time. His false gospel of a perverted natural science and spiritualized philosophy is preparing the way for his coming as the great humanitarian and reformer, as surely as the final message of the everlasting gospel of Revelation 14 is preparing the way for Christ’s second advent. Surely the crisis is imminent—even upon us. Human minds are ready to trifle with Satan’s deceptive philosophy. Men and women delight to peer into it, just as Eve loitered round the forbidden tree. They laugh at warnings of danger, even while the very plague is upon them. And in the vanity of the blinded mind, they are fearless in pursuing the path of a natural philosophy of God, to find a rational basis for faith in human reason. Dr. Buck declares:—

A large number of persons have reached, on the intellectual plane, the state of manhood; and are capable of partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. There is no reason why this old philosophy should be longer concealed.

And Pike, the jurist and philanthropist, whose gifts the city of Washington has honored with a statue on one of its thoroughfares, wrote:—

The secret of the occult sciences is that of nature itself, the secret of the generation of the angels and worlds, that of the omnipotence of God. “Ye shall be like the Elohim, knowing good and evil,” had the serpent of Genesis said, and the tree of knowledge became the tree of death. For six thousand years the martyrs of knowledge toil and die at the foot of this tree, that it may again become the tree of life. The Absolute, sought for unsuccessfully by the unsensate and found by the sages, is the Truth, the Reality, and the Reason of the universal equilibrium.

The temper of Eden is throwing over the whole earth the hypnotic spell of the final deception. In an age of enlightenment the greatest darkness shall cover the earth. Christendom is being replenished from the East, as Isaiah’s prophecy of the last days declares. New and old are commingling. Our only safety is in listening to the plain counsels of God, and holding to the work that he has given us to do. The experience of the advent people in the three messages is as a sheet-anchor to the soul. We see the end of our work before us. Satan would delight to persuade people to look aside and try to study out the mazes of false philosophy. Its name is legion. Drive the nail of truth through one phase of it, and, behold, that is not it at all, say its votaries. It is something else altogether. We can not follow all the serpent-like windings and sophistries of error, but we can proclaim the truth that bears the solemn warning against error in all its deceptive forms. Many a soul starts in to study the depths of the philosophy, feeling that its errors need not affect him, only to get entangled in its mesh-like deceptions. Now

it shows an aspect of truth, and then of error. It touches the truth, and then, overpassing it, turns it to falsehood. It is a mixture of knowledge of good and evil that first flatters and then snares the unguarded mind.

Our safety is in keeping our eyes fixed upon the special message and work for this day. One crossing a stream upon a narrow log may look down at the whirling waters and find the head growing dizzy. It is not wisdom to continue looking down in the effort to persuade the mind that the swirl and the rush of the torrent need not affect one on the log. The safety lies in keeping the eyes upon the point where the log touches the goal of solid earth. All about us Satan will wave the whirling lights and shadows of his final deceptions. There is ruin below for every soul who falls from the firm platform of truth set for the advent believers. Our safety is in keeping our eyes straight before us upon Jesus and the end of that way, even the city of our God. There is the Eden that man lost when he turned from the way of faith, and allowed the evil one to persuade him that his own reasoning faculties could discover a way to broader knowledge. Faith, the gift of God, even the faith of Jesus, as any little child may receive it, shall guide our feet in the way till Jesus comes.

The evil one has made a systematic effort to wreck this advent movement by the same methods that he has used in leavening and ruining every reformatory movement since God began to call men out from apostasy. But there will be one reform movement—the last one—which will have the vitality to purge out the evil leaven. This advent movement is not to be turned aside, and the remnant church, shaken free from every entanglement, will stand at last undefiled before God on Mount Zion. God’s holy Word declares it. W. A. S.