God is the timeless, the invisible, for us is visible through faith, the intangible, the impassible who for us was made accessible through revelation. The principles of geometry are known instinctively by the heart, and reason employs these principles to establish certain theorems. Both heart and reason yield results that are certain, but by different routes, and it would be ridiculous to require proofs of the heart’s instincts and intuitions or intuitive knowledge of what is proved. The inability of reason to establish first principles serves to humiliate reason, but not to undermine our certainty. The realization of the limitations of reason helps us to recognize our own wretchedness, and the greatness of humans is that one alone is capable of such recognition. We have no assurance of the truth of any first principles apart from faith and revelation except that we feel them within us. This natural feeling is no convincing proof of their truth, since apart from faith we cannot tell whether people were created by a good God, an evil demon, or by chance. “To the LORD your God belong the Heavens, even the highest Heavens, the Earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD sets his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all nations, as it is today. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes,” reports Deuteronomy 10. 14-15 and 17. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5

Know then, proud humans, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself, weak reason. Silence yourself, foolish nature, earn that humans infinitely surpasses human, and hear from your master your real state to which you do not know. Hear God. The problem of knowledge becomes a religious one. Only through submission to God and through acceptance of his revelation can we gain completely certain knowledge. The greatest achievements in science and mathematics rest on a fundamental uncertainty, since the basic principles employed, know through instinct and intuition, are open to question. Skeptical probings can only reveal the human predicament in its fullest and prepare us to submit and accept a religious foundation of knowledge. To live always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in lie, and can be applied only with some faith. “Yea, and how is it that they have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all things according to his will, for the children of humans, if it so be that they exercise faith in the Lord? Ans if it so be that we are faithful to the Lord, we shall obtain the land of promise; and we shall know at some future period that the word of the Lord shall be fulfilled,” reports 1 Nephi 7.12-13. God is uncontained, without needs, incomprehensible, eternal, imperishable, and invisible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5

God is eternal, without beginning (what begins also ends) or end (what ends is destructible); the Lord therefore ungenerated, uncreated, immutable, and immortal. The Lord has no defects nor needs; he is not contained nor measurable but contains all; God is immobile (he could not move from one place to another); and he is absolutely Wisdom and wholly Mind. God has no name, form, or parts. God is completely transcendent, since the Universe cannot speak of him nor contain the Lord in thought; Go cannot even be called ineffable. The soul is innately immortal, and its reminiscence of the eternal World stems from premortal times. If there is stagnation in our spiritual life, it is important that we get into God’s presence and find out the reason for it. The stagnation could possibly be linked to the fact that we have been interfering in the life of another—advising when we had no right to advise. When we do have to give advice to another person, God will advise through us with the direct understanding of his spirit. To do even the most humbling takes to the glory of God takes the Almighty God incarnate working in us. “Your eyes will see the king in his beauty and view a land that stretches afar. In your thoughts you will ponder the former terror: ‘Where is that chief officer? Where is the one who took the revenue? Where is the officer in charge of the towers?’ You will see those arrogant people no more, those people of an obscure speech, with their strange, incomprehensible tongue,” reports Isaiah 33.17-19. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5

God sees entirely, knows entirely, hears entirely. Human welfare and an objective perfection are the ends (meaning) of life. The good life is thus grounded in the will, not in feeling. In determining the valid ends of conduct, the individual must be guided by the historical tradition, which may be trusted ultimately to destroy evil and to bring about the survival of the good. Ethical thought involves the problems of evil, of freedom, and of God. Evil is justified in a monistic World, because by overcoming evil we find the way and the will to the good. Although human freedom is real, it is never a motiveless freedom of action. The psychological theory of freedom is correct in finding the ground of free action in the human will or in human’s determining one’s conduct through deliberation and resolution. The metaphysical theory of freedom, which denies that there are causes of the will, must itself be defined. Morality, in its historical development of responsibility and a sense of duty, comes to require a higher will with a right to command and the provides an argument for the existence of a deity who is also implicit in the evolutionary account of nature. “For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but the Lord is unchangeable from all eternity to eternity,” reports Moroni 8.18. The moral law does not consider our weakness as human beings, it simply demands that we be absolutely moral. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5

Principles of ethics are rational in the sense that they arise from the conditions of life. They need not determine one’s metaphysics, but teleological ethics demands an evolutionary teleology in which the purpose of nature is fulfilled in human reason. Mind and body are distinct aspects of a unified All-One, a mental process of which history and nature are the two series of modifications. This identity is affirmed of God in the relationship to nature and to history. Science is limited to the phenomenalistic aspect of nature. Although God enters into interaction with lesser spirits, the concept of personality must be purged of its human limitations before it can be ascribed to God, who is to be thought of rather as a superpersonal source of energy and reason in nature and humans. “Now om who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving. This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God’s people, but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescrible gift!” reports 2 Corinthians 9.10-12 and 14. It remains absolute for all time and eternity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5