You complain of a great many defects [in yourself] and that complaint is the highest recommendation I could desire to make me love and esteem you and desire your friendship. And if I were now setting out in the World, I should think it my great happiness to have such a companion as you, who had a true relish of truth…and, if I mistake not, you have as much of it as I ever met with in anybody. The right and the necessity to inquire freely and fearlessly into all subjects, especially religion, is important to human testimony. The superstitions of peoples throughout the World and also the infinite numbers of pretenders to the divine revelation of freedom, with tongue in cheek created some thoughts. In the sixteenth century, a new Christian theory developed based on Christian theology, canon law, and philosophical ideas. This theory was that a witch had made a deliberate pact with the Devil—almost a form of a personal arrangement—but that witch did not act alone. The Christian witch theory demanded that more of these witches be found, and arrested and that black witchcraft be effectively ended. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9

The authorities of the time believed that even healing had to be a result of a pact with the Devil, so white witches were also persecuted. The arrest of one witch almost certainly led to more arrests, as torture was allowed to be used on suspects to find out the names of other witches. Freedom had exorcised the witches that so plagued James I and Charles I: Witchcraft was a criminal offence in Scotland prior to 1590 and great numbers of witches had almost annually executed in England, from the remotest antiquity to the late Revolution; when the liberty given, and take to thin freely, the Devil’s power visibly declined, and England as well as the United Provinces ceased to be any part of his Christian territories. All enemies of freethinking were branded crack-brained and enthusiastical, malicious, ambitious, inhumane, ignorant, or brutal—or courters of priests, women, and the mob. Three hundred witches had allegedly gathered to plot the murder of James. It is known that James had a morbid fear of violent death. Therefore, these trials were of especial interest to him, and he suddenly developed a very keen interest in demonology and witch craft. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9

Evidence for these crimes seemed outlandish. Witches were accused of attempting to drown James by calling up a storm while he was at sea with his new wife. Other charges included trying to kill James by melting a wax effigy of him. They were also accused of performing perverted rituals in a church in Berwick—though it is not clear that this had to do specifically with trying to kill the king. However, when James became king is 1603, he claimed that he never had been responsible for hunting and killing the witches. Yet, evidence suggests differently. In 1591, King James showed a particular interest in the trial of Mary Napier—she was arrested for consulting a witch and linked to treasonable activity. Mary Napier claimed to be pregnant at the time of her arrest. James wrote a court order to find out if Mary was pregnant and if she was not she was to be burned. Mary Napier was also a friend of Earl Bothwell’s and legend has it that James was willing to use witchcraft for political ends. Nonetheless, the court acquitted Mary Napier—much to the anger of James. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9

While the witches were accused of classic witchcraft, the main issues as far as James was concerned was the plan to murder him—treason. The trials also had a major political aspect as there was an attempt to incriminate Earl Bothwell in the proceedings. One theory put forward is that the whole story was a plot made up by those nobles in Scotland who wanted to devalue the standing of Earl Bothwell within Scotland—and expand theirs. In 1597, James felt sufficiently knowledgeable about witchcraft that he wrote “Daemonologie.” The book dealt with intellectual topics such as magic, sorcery, witchcraft, spirits, and ghost. There were 25 witchcraft trials a year from 1603 to 1625, nearly 450 total. Half of the witches accused were found guilty and executed. As society became more civilized and ancient texts were examined scholarly and in a critical manner, the discourse concluded with a refutation of the standard objections to freethinking. Atheism is not, after all, the worst of all evils; enthusiasm and superstition hold that title. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9

The connection between morality and theoretical science, namely, that theoretical science reflects moral practice. King James was really quick to distance himself as an expert of witches, ghost, and demons because England was viewed as more civilized of a society, where intellectual discussed issues of a philosophical nature—but that did not included witchcraft. For James, any association with the topic was seen as potential embarrassment. The classical conception of politics is to bring humans out a state of nature into a state of civil society. Essentially, political life is a process in which nonsocial community (i.e., the state of nature) is transformed into a social one. This cannot happen unless the rulers understand that social life is a life in which people freely engage in joint enterprises. Civilization is a process whereby a community undergoes a change from a condition of relative barbarity to one of civility. Barbarism is hostility to civilization; but although barbarous communities always strive to destroy civilized ones, in the long run the defeat of barbarism is certain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9

The Bible, consequently, is not to be taken seriously when it portrays God in human terms; certain parts of the Bible are to be accepted, while others are to be rejected. When the Bible is thought to suggest that it is acceptable to murder or harm or to shun people who are good from society, this must be viewed as fraudulently when contrary to reason. The appeal to mystery and to things above reason simply will not do. The error detected was that what King James and others were doing was for speculative reasons, with no proof firmly established in reality, and it was alien to the mind of philosophers. Given any piece of evidence, more than one reconstruction can be made of the action of which it is a relic. However, each reconstruction, take together with other knowledge, will entail consequences different from those of its fellows. A given reconstruction is established if no consequence that can be drawn from it conflicts with the evidence and if every other reconstruction has some consequence that does conflict with it. If a historian cannot show that one reconstruction, and only one, can be reconciled with the evidence, one must suspend judgment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9

To discover that an act took place includes discovering the thought expressed in the act; and discovering that thought explains the act. Why is one view of nature replaced by another? Natural science must come first in order that philosophy may have something to reflect on. Art is something preconceived. Works of art may be, and commonly are, also works of craft. However, what makes something a work of art and determines whether it is a good or bad one is not what makes it a work of craft. A work of art is an imaginative creation; the function of imagination is to raise what is preconscious (for instance, mere feeling) to consciousness by giving it definite form. Imagination and expression are identical. All expressions, in any medium, is linguistic; for any form by which the preconscious is raised to consciousness is linguistic. Language thus begins in the cradle. Children speak before they learn their mother tongues. The primitive language of the cradle has not yet officially been decoded, but we can get a sense of what infants and babies are singing and talking about; it must be enriched by intellectualizing it so that it can express thoughts as well as feelings. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9

An intellectualized language is one containing conceptual terms, and conceptual thinking is abstract. An intellectualized language does not cease to be expressive; rather its range of expressiveness is increased. Art is, therefore, not an activity cut off from, say, science. Every fresh linguistic utterance is imaginative and can be considered a work of art. There is poetry without prose, but no prose without poetry. And since it is the nature of art to be expressive, good art is successful expression. Bad art is the malperformance of the act of bringing preconscious thoughts and feelings to consciousness, a malperformance that misrepresents what is thought and felt. It can arise only in a corrupt consciousness. Critics can detect bad art, works of corrupt consciousness, by comparing them with successful works. Consciousness if a feeling and it belongs to a higher order. There is primitive consciousness, appetite, desire, free choice, and reason. One can become conscious of an act of consciousness by introspection or inner sense. All acts of consciousness are linguistic; mind is the child of language. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9

We are not here to work for God because we have chosen to do so, but because God has laid hold of us. Keep your soul steadfastly related to God, and remember that you are called not simply to conveys your testimony but also to preach the gospel. Every Christian must testify to the truth of God; there must be the loving grip of God’s hand on you. The fearful abounding at this time in this country, of these detestable slaves of the Devil, is weakening humanity and making them unfit, and making it abound in others, more than the ordinary course of nature would permit. And such like in all other particular sicknesses. However, I will pray thee to observe in all these places, where I reason upon the Devil’s power, which is the different ends and scopes, that God is the first cause, and the Devil as his instrument and second cause shoot at in all these actions of the Devil, (as Gods hang-man). For where the Devil’s intention in them is ever to perish, either the soul or the body, or both of the, that he is permitted to deal with: God by the contraries, draws every out the evil glory to himself, either by the wreck of the wicked in their injustice, or by the trial of the patient and amendment of the faithful, being waked up with that rod of correction.  #RandolphHarris 9 of 9

The Winchester Mystery House

Entombed within these walls are stories of the dead and the strange. Many have experienced for themselves the hauntingly beautiful Winchester Mystery House. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

 

 

 

 

There is nothing more likely to succeed with an audience than a good history of witchcraft, or somethings so marvelous, as to do violence to common sense, before we give it our faith. A high degree of refinement does not seem to subdue our wicked propensities so much after all; and were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the World to remain unchanged. Scientific laws are always practically inexact. By this notion, it is wished that we point out that a scientific law is never exactly confirmed by the evidence for it but rather is confirmed within the limits of experimental error. A law is accepted on the basis of experimental evidence even if that experimental evidence does not exactly coincide with what, on the basis of deductions from the law, one might expect to be confirming evidence. This is so simply because all measurement of evidence in modern scientific practice involves taking into account errors of measurement, and such errors of measurement must be factored out before a definite conclusion is reach as to the relevance of the evidence. 

It is a long known anatomical fact that there is an original predisposition to bisexuality, that in the course of development this changes to monosexuality, leaving only slight remnants of the stunted sex. A spokesman for the masculine inverts stated the bisexual theory in its crudest form in the following words: “It is a female brain in a male body.” However, we do not know the characteristics of a female brain. The substitution of the anatomical for the psychological is as frivolous as it is unjustified. It is more likely that the bisexual predisposition supplies the individual with male and female brain centers just as somatic sexual organs. These centers develop first towards puberty mostly under the influence of the independent sex glands. We can, however, say that same over, we do not even know whether we can assume for the sexual function separate brain locations (centers) in the same way as for the speech function. Bisexual predisposition may also be presumed for the inversion, though we do not know what it consists beyond the anatomical formations; and, secondly, that we are dealing with disturbances which are experienced by the sexual instinct during its development.  

 Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, when a man will but give it fair play, and discover it when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistake. In every man there exist male and female elements. In the determination of sex, as far as heterosexual persons are concerned, some are disproportionately more strongly developed than others. There is a firm belief that in every woman there are male, and in every man, there are female germs and qualities. In Mandarin Chinese, the term “women” means “we” because men are from the womb of a lady. However, the first man, Adam, was created by God. Then God duplicated Adam, and removed his penis (rib) and that cause the lady to become more softer and develop characteristics that are feminine such as breast, hips and things because she was softer than a man. Uninformed individuals, who are not willing to accept their sexuality succumbs to the charms of the emanating from the manly qualities of body and mind; he feels himself like a woman and seeks a man.  

Good heads and good heart generally go together, but they are not inseparable companions. Among the Greeks, where the most virile men were found, it is quite obvious that it was not the masculine character of the boy, which kindled the love of man, but it was his physical resemblance to woman as well as his feminine psychic qualities, such as shyness, demureness and the need of instruction and help. As soon as the boy himself becomes a man, he ceases to be a sexual object for men and in turn becomes a lover of boys. The sexual object in this case as in many others is therefore not of the same sex, but a union of both sex characteristics, a compromise between the impulses striving for the man and for the woman, but firmly conditioned by the masculinity of body (the genitals). Although psychoanalysis has not yet given us a full explanation for the origin of the inversion, it has revealed the psychic mechanism of its genesis and has essentially enriched the problems in question.

In al the cases examined we have ascertained that the later inverts go through in their childhood a phase of very intense but shortlived fixation on the woman (usually on the mother) and after overcoming it, they identify themselves with the woman and take themselves as the sexual object; that is, proceeding on a narcissistic basis, they look for young men resembling themselves in persons who they wish to love as their mother has loved them. We have, moreover, frequently found that alleged inverts are by no means indifferent to the charms of women, but the excitation evoked by the women is always transferred to a male object. They this repeat through life the mechanism which gave origin to their inversion. Their obsessive striving for the man proves to be determined by their restless flight from the woman. Psychoanalytic research very strongly opposes the attempt to separate homosexuals from other person as a group of special nature. By also studying sexual excitations different than those manifestly overt, it discovers that all men are capable of homosexual object selection and actually accomplish this in the unconscious.  

The bisexual men are attracted to women because of a chemical attraction, but they like other men, usually boys because they are innocent and need guidance, and it is considered a problem. The determination as to the definite sexual behavior does not occur until after puberty (13-25 years old) and is the result of a series of as yet not observable factors, some of which are constitutional, while some are of an accidental nature. The behavior is altogether controlled by an archaic constitution and by primitive psychic mechanisms. The importance of the narcissistic object selection and the clinging to their erotic significance of the anal zone seem to be their most essential characteristics. We found the sexual rejection or the early sexual intimidation and the existence of both parents plays an important role in the child’s life. The disappearance of a strong father in childhood not infrequently favors inversion. However, there is also a certain degree of independence is unmistakable also in this relation.  

The term Homosexuality should be replaced by better one which is Homoerotic because it is a number of different condition that are grouped together and have quite variable significance both from organic as well as psychical point of view because the one symptom of inversion is present. There are but four very marked differences at least between two types of subject-homoerotics, who feel and act like women, and the object-homoerotic who is masculine throughout and only has (mistakenly) exchanged a female object against one of the same sex. We have obtained an insight which can become of greater significance to us than the solution of the above problem. Our attention is called to the fact that we have assumed a too closer connection between the sexual instinct and the sexual object. The sexual instinct is probably entirely independent of its object and is not originated by the stimuli proceeding from the object. And some people are attracted to youth who are not legal because they an impulsive urge (uncontrollable at the time) and are using them as a substitute because they cannot secure the proper object.   

Still, it throws some light on the nature of the sexual instinct, that should permit such great variations and depreciations of its object, something which hunger, adhering more energetically to its object, would allow only in the most extreme cases. The same may be said of sexual relations with animals—a thing not all rare among unindustrial civilizations—where the sexual attraction goes beyond the limits of the species. For esthetic reasons one would gladly attribute this and other excessive aberrations of the sexual instinct to the insane, but this would not accord with the facts. Experience teaches that among the later no disturbances of the sexual instinct can be found other than those observed among the sane, or among whole races and classes. Thus, we find with gruesome frequency sexual abuse of children by community leaders, trusted people in the community, teachers, and servants merely because they have the best opportunity for it. The insane present the aforesaid aberration only in a somewhat intensified form; or what is of special significance is the fact that the aberration becomes exclusive and takes the pace of the normal sexual gratification.   

This is very remarkable relation of sexual variations ranging from the normal to the insane gives material for reflection. It seems to me that the fact to be explained would show that the impulses of the sexual life belong to those which even normally are most poorly controlled by the higher psychic activities. One who is in any way psychically abnormal, bet in in social or ethical conditions, it, according to experience, regularly so in one’s sexual life. However, many are abnormal in their sexual life who in every other respect correspond to the average; they have kept abreast of the human cultural development, but their sexuality remained as their weak point. As the general result of these discussion we come to see that, under numerous conditions and in a surprising number of individuals, the nature and value of the sexual object steps into the background. There is something else in the sexual instinct which is the essential and constant element. The most pronounced difference between the love life of antiquity and our lies in the fact that the ancients placed the emphasis on the instinct itself, while we put it on its object. 

 The ancients extolled the instinct and were ready to ennoble through it even an inferior object, while we disparage the activity of the instinct as such and only countenance it on account of the merits of the object. The union of the genitals in the characteristic act of copulation is taken as the normal sexual aim. It serves to diminish the sexual tension and to quench temporarily the sexual hot sheets motel desire (gratification analogous to satisfaction of hunger). Yet, even the most normal sexual act, certain addenda are distinguishable, the development of which may lead to aberrations described as perversions. Thus, certain intermediary relations to the sexual object connected with copulation, such as touching and looking, are recognized as preliminaries to the sexual aim. These activities are on the one hand pleasurable as such, and on the other hand, they enhance the excitement which persists until the definite sexual aim is attained.  

One special form of contact, which consists of mutual approximation of mucous membranes of the lips in the kiss, has received a sexual value among the civilized nations, though the parts of the body do not belong to the sexual apparatus and merely form the entrance to the digestive tract. These addenda, therefore, supply the factors which allow us to bring the perversions into relation to the normal sexual life, and are available also for classification. The perversions represent either an anatomical transgressions of the bodily regions destined for sexual union, or a lingering at the intermediary relations to the sexual object which should normally be rapidly passed, on the way to the definite sexual aim. The fascination with breast, and large breast in particular, for all kinds of reasons, goes back to infancy, a charge of excitation that we eventually eroticize because they provide so much pleasure and nourishment to babies, or reminds them of the warm heartbeat the felt when their mother held them close to her chest. The increased pull towards breasts starts usually in the teen years. Homosexual men also like big breast because they remind them of a booty.   

Overestimation of the sexual object is the psychic estimation in which the sexual object shares as a goal of the sexual instinct is only in the rarest cases limited to the genitals; generally it embraces the whole body and tends to include all sensation emanating from the sexual object. The same overestimation extends to the psychic sphere and manifests itself as a logical blinding (diminished judgment) concerning the psychic attainments and perfections of the sexual object, and in a credulous yielding to the judgments emanating from the latter. The absolute faith inspired by love thus becomes an important, if not the primordial source of authority. The nature of hypnosis is to be found in the unconscious fixation of the libido on the person of the hypnotizer (by means of the masochistic component of the sexual instinct. This character is connected to the parent complex. It this sexual overvaluation, which is so incompatible with the restriction of the sexual aim to the union of the genitals only, and which raises other parts of the body to sexual aims.  

At the same time it is to be observed that sexual overestimation is not developed by all of the mechanisms of object choice, and that we will later learn of another and more direct explanation of the sex role of other bodily parts. The factor of excitement hunger explains the spreading of the sexual interests to other parts of the body than the genitals does not seem to me to deserve this significance. The different paths along which the libido moves, behave one to another from the beginning like communicating pipes, and one must therefore take into account the phenomenon of collateral streaming. The significance of the factor of sexual overestimation can be best studied in the male, in whom alone the sexual life is accessible to investigation, whereas in the women it is veiled in impenetrable darkness, partly on account of the conventional reticence and insincerity of women. In typical cases, the wife permits this sexual-overvaluation of the male to pass by but almost always makes up for it in the child born to her.  

Humans are driven by the laws of nature, which make them believe automatically in the possibility of experience. Knowledge of nature, to many, requires tearing down the insurmountable barrier fixed between a priori (being without examination or analysis) and empirical knowledge by means of one’s distinction between sensibility as receptivity and understanding spontaneity. It is also not unusual to support the working person’s longing for a decent living account to the law of humanity. We have been given directions to attend to faith, and fear, and self-restraint. There are two angels with an individual—one of righteousness and the other of iniquity. The angel of righteousness is gentle and modest, meek and peaceful. When, therefore, he ascends into your heart, forthwith he talks to you of righteousness, purity, chastity, contentment, and of every righteous deed and glorious virtue.  When all of these ascend into your heart, know that the angel of righteousness is with you. These are deeds of the angel of righteousness. Trust him, then, and his works.  

Look now at the works of the angel of iniquity. First, he is wrathful, and bitter, and foolish, and his works are evil, and ruin the servants of God. When, then, he ascends into your heart, now him by his works. When anger comes upon you, or harshness, know that he is in you; and you will know this to be the case also, when you are attacked by a longing after many transactions, and the richest delicacies, and drunken revels, and divers luxuries, and things improper, and by hankering after women, and by overreaching, and pride, and blustering, and by whatever is like to these. When these ascend into your heart, know that the angel of iniquity is in you. Now that you know his works, depart from him, and in no respect trust him, because his deeds are evil, and unprofitable to the servants of God. And once you fall victim to the ancient illusion, it will be hard to escape his deadly embrace, and you will flee into the arms of danger, dropping conditions essential to salvation.  

These, then, are the actions of both angels. Understand then, and trust the angel of righteousness; but depart from the angel of iniquity, because his instruction is very bad in every deed. If the angel of inequity is in your heart, you will think you must sin. On the other hand, be a man or woman ever so bad, yet, if the works of the angel of righteousness—sensibility and intelligibility—are in his or her heart, he or she must do something good. You see, therefore, that it is good to follow the angel of righteousness, but bid farewell to the angel of iniquity. This commandment exhibits the deeds of faith, that you must trust the works of the angel of righteousness, and doing them you may live to God. However, believe the works of the angel of iniquity are hard. If you refuse to do them, you will live to God. Morals have a basic science, jurisprudence, because the idea of justice is the constitutional law of this science. If there were no a priori law of justice, the sort of systematic knowledge of the law that the Romans assigned to iurisprudentia would not be possible.

 

 

 

How often is the term “savages” incorrectly applied! None really deserving of it were ever yet discovered by voyagers or by travelers. They have discovered heathens and barbarians, whom horrible cruelties they have exasperated into savages. I might be mistaken thinking that I am sitting in front of a blazing fire, but I could not be mistaken about it seeming true to me. I cannot be mistaken about the idea itself. Usually with pains, sensations, images, and other so-called objects of inner sense being included, it would be absurd to say, “I believe I am in pain, but perhaps I am not,” just as it usually is absurd to say, “I said it seemed so-and-so to me, but I was not sure whether it really did”—absurd, that is, unless the experience itself is indeterminate or borderline. Accordingly, sense statements (presumed to be sincere) are sometimes said to be incorrigible on the ground that one who makes such a statement cannot possibly be mistaken about his or her experience even though one may deceive others. My mother always taught me that it is ridiculous to constantly acknowledge the physical pain that you are feeling and that it could make it worse because one focuses on it more and that we should focus on things that generate happiness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9

Focusing on physical pain is a lot like focusing on a relationship that has ended, you will feel the pain more because you are thinking about it. However, you notice when a relationship ends, and even when you are experiencing extreme emotional pain, when your friends come around smiling and happy and playing music you like and wanting to take you out to have fun that it distracts you from your pain and you feel better about yourself. Just because you are distracted and enjoying life does not mean that the break up did not happen and that you are not hurting emotionally, it just means you are trying to heal and move beyond the pain. Actualization requires principle and material force. The idea seems to be that self-nourishment is the characteristic sign which we identify the presence of life, and that soul explains the presence of those features. The soul is substance in the sense of form or essence of a living thing. So, the soul is the actuality of a natural body that is potentially alive and we must also feel our soul with things that make us feel good and it will keep the body and emotions strong and alive. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9

A living thing’s soul is its capacity to engage in activities that are characteristic of living things of its natural kind and conducive to their well-being and survival.  Anything the nourishes itself experiences growth, movement and rest, perception, and intellect and the soul is what is causally responsible for the animate behavior (the life activities) of a living thing. The Great Ultimate involves both principle and material force. Principle is necessary to explain the reality and universality of things. It is incorporeal, one, eternal, and unchanging, uniform, constituting the essence of things; it is always for, and it is the reason for creation. Material force is necessary to explain physical form, individuality, and the transformation of thins. It is physical, many, transitory and changeable, unequally present in things; it constitutes their physical substance and involves both good and evil. It is the agent of creation. These are nested in the sense that anything that has a higher degree of soul also has all of the lower degrees. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9

The principle of duality is not accepted by everyone. Physicalist do not thing that mental states are brain states—or heart states—or bodily processes at all. Natural objects are given a form regardless of our perception. Reality that is of images, produced by us and dependent on our will, fantasy, and creative processes are impressionism. People use their knowledge about the World and depict reality as it is conceived at a given time. There is no one system of mathematics, but there are many mutually exclusive systems. Various geometries coincide. With accepted proofs not always establishing all the given causes or factors including bias being considered. When we build analysis based on logic, we can accept, reject, or accept the negations of some extralogical existence axioms of infinity, and the assumption of the existence of transfinite cardinal numbers. Logic itself should not decide any existence problem. Conflicting views are presented in long speeches, with few interruptions. Sometimes the clash of opinions leads to insult and denunciations when personal abuse is involved when views are examined on fear of death, on pain, on distress of mind, and on other matters. Nonetheless, dreams and goals and visions ensure preservation; they portray the virtuous soul enjoying a more perfect existence on Earth and in Heaven in the region above the moon. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9

 Happiness is to be found in living according to nature, which is revealed to us through experience; there is no absolute good or evil, as we may deduce from the multiplicity of customs and laws. Knowledge is acquired through our sense and has only relative validity. Only the truths of mathematics and reason are universal. Religious beliefs, however, do not spring from reason; it is reason also reason that should guide an individual in regulating their lives, establishing society and laws, and achieving happiness. Toleration and love of others is important, we were all saved by God’s love. Therefore, one who is both body and soul, is free and immortal, and one’s behavior should be governed by reason and by conscience. People should worship God and abide by the golden rule to treat others with the same courtesy and respect that you would like to be shown.  Truth has to be found in the individual soul. It is absolutely and undeniably certain that something has existed from all eternity.  There is something now, and since something cannot come from nothing, there must always have been something. There has existed from eternity someone, unchangeable and independent being.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 9

That unchangeable and independent being, which has existed from eternity without any external cause of its existence, must be self-existent, that is necessarily existent. The only true idea of a self-existent being is the idea of being of a being whose non-existent being is an express contradiction. The self-existent being is infinite, omnipresent, intelligent, free, omnipotent, wise, good, and just. The fitness of certain kinds of behavior between persons is as manifest, as that the properties which flow from the essences of different mathematical figures have different congruities or incongruities between them. These fitting relations between person are the eternal law of righteousness. With respect to our fellow creatures this law is: so deal with every person as in like circumstances we could reasonably expect one should deal with us, and that in general we endeavor, by an universal benevolence to promote the welfare and happiness of all humans. The eternal law of righteousness is also spoken of as the Law of Nature and the right reason of things. The right reason to account for someone’s obligation to follow the law of righteousness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9

 Right reason distinguishes humans from beast and enables us to see that there is a natural and necessary difference between right and wrong and between just and unjust. It follows that a vicious person is someone whose reason has been either clouded by education or bad habits or overborne by selfish desires. Reason is the faculty that discerns the fitness of actions and impels our obligation. However, at the same time the role of reason in speculative matters and the role of reason in morality are not wholly similar. In mathematics, for example, as soon as one understands the terms and conditions of their compatibility, one immediately assents to those propositions in which the terms are properly combined. However, morality is a matter of both reason and will, and despite a person’s knowledge of the right reason of things one might nonetheless withhold one’s will from conforming to it. In founding morality on the fitness and unfitness in the relation of thins, God must discover the fitness and conform his will to it just as any other moral agent must. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9

Whenever our right becomes the guiding factor of our lives, it dulls our spiritual insight. The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but good choices which are not quite good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best. God answers prayers in the best way—not just sometimes but every time. God has chosen to order things as they are because this order makes for the best of all possible Worlds. Gravity is an act of will on the part of God, an instance of pre-established harmony. God is the primary cause of motion, and the quantity of motion in the Universe is constant. The planets are moved by vortices in the ethereal substance. Once our Lord was glorified in His ascension, the Holy Spirit came into the World, and He has been here ever since. We have to receive the revealed truth that God is here. The attitude of receiving and welcoming the Holy Spirit into our lives is to be the continual attitude of believers. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive reviving life from our ascended Lord. If truth and justice, and the better principles of our nature, cannot exist unless enforced by the statute-book, how are we to account for the social condition of the Typees? #RandolphHarris 8 of 9

 The good law will come with a better civilization; but before society can be civilized it has to be de-barbarized. If anything is a mystery to you and is coming between you and God, never look for the explanation in your mind, but look for it in your spirit, your true inner nature—that is where the problem is. Once your inner spiritual nature is willing to submit to the life of Jesus, your understanding will be perfectly clear, and you will come to the place where there is no distance between the Father and you, His child, because the Lord has made you one. After passing a few weeks in this valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. What is the sign of a friend? Is it that one tells you one’s secret sorrows? No, it is that one tells you one’s secret joys. Many people will confide their secret sorrows to you, but the final mark of intimacy is when they share their secret joys with you. Have we ever let God tell us any of His joys? Or are we continually telling God our secrets, leaving him no time to talk to us? The total being of our life inside and out is to be absolutely obsessed by the presence of God. God’s will alone is sufficient reason to account for things being where they are.  #RandolphHarris 9 of 9

 The Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester Mystery House in America is a source of many old ghostly tales. Frequent ghost sightings inside the mansion and on the estate’s grounds have turned it into a well – known haunted house. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

 

Our manners and customs go for more in life than our qualities. Choices may or may not involve mental acts and fundamentally are overt actions for which certain sorts of explanations in terms of purposes can be given. Choices, unlike beliefs, are neither true nor false. We rate choices by calling them good or bad, wise or foolish, and correct or incorrect when “correct” and “incorrect” mean that a choice is suitable or unsuitable for the attainment of some end, but we never rate choices by calling them true or false. Human beings can be sinful and some men and women are persistently self-centered and their highest moral achievements can be quickly corrupted by selfishness. Yet, although we thus fail, exhibiting a chronic moral weakness and poverty, our failure is not inevitable; we are ourselves, at least some part responsible for it. The fall of man is a myth that man was originally created perfect but fell by his own fault into our present state, in which he was divided both in himself and from his fellows and God. God’s free forgiveness, offered by Christ, all humans are released from guilt of their moral failure (justification) and are drawn into a real of grace in which they are gradually re-created in character (sanctification). #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

The past is such a curious creature, to look in its face, a transport may reward us, or a disgrace. Now I gaze at your eyes and you are so quiet that there is only hope for the future. I complain you do not cherish our connection while you claim I am too sentimental. Times goes by slowly, but your eyes are in my heart forever: they are as pure as crystal, as light as the moon, as deep as abyss and as white as the snow. My beloved, let us bury the sweet whisper of the past years in our deep hearts and turn them into beautiful memory. No matter how far away I am from you and how many years before we meet again, I am always missing and blessing you in my heart. Heaven is eternal, spontaneous, nameless, and indescribable, at once the beginning of all things and the way in which they pursue their course. It is nonbeing, not in the sense of nothingness, but in the sense of not being any particular thing. It is absolute and mystical. When it is possessed by an individual thing, it becomes the thing’s character or virtue. Because of one’s innate ability to do good, one necessarily extends the innate knowledge into action. Knowledge and action are really identical; one is the beginning and the other completion. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

A named etched in a plaque may not pass into posterity, nor may the one carved in a slate in eternity, but the name of our God impressed in the recesses of our hearts will stay there forever. It is you who open the window of my thoughts. It is you who melt the frost in the bottom of my heart. This poem of love, passion, and imagination is as deep as the blue sky. Can these bright stars be your eyes? Your eyes are stars to me, in the vast ocean of life, navigating me to the dawn. The most beautiful face in the World is yours, the warmest chest in the World belongs to you, the strongest arms in the World are your, the purest heart is the World you possess. The ideal life of the individual, the ideal order of society, and the ideal type of government are all based on Heaven and guided by it. As the way of life Heaven denotes simplicity, spontaneity, tranquility, gentleness, and most important of all, nonaction, or, rather, letting Nature take its own course. We will find spiritual freedom and peace, a place will we show love to all. Universal love benefits Heaven, spiritual beings, and all living beings. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

And on Earth one should show special affection to one’s own parents. Otherwise there would be no difference between other people’s parents and one’s own, family relationships would collapse. The only way one can get to know the truth of God is to stop trying to find out and by being born again. If one obeys God in the first thing He shows you, the He instantly opens up the next truth to you. God will never real more truth about Himself to you until you have obeyed what you already know. Our Lord took on Himself the sin of the World though identification with us, not through sympathy for us. God deliberately took on and endurance the cumulative sin of the human race. Jesus Christ reconciled the human race, putting it back to where God designed it to be. And now anyone can experience that reconciliation, being brought into oneness with God. The will of Heaven is that human beings should practice humanity and righteousness, be economical, and practice universal love, and it is our duty to obey the will of Heaven. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

Erroneous thoughts and erroneous attachments are similar to clouds hiding the Sun. When they are removed the original nature will be revealed and great wisdom obtained. The way to discover the original nature is calmness and wisdom. Calmness does not means not being carried away by thought in the process of daily life and being free from characters while in the midst of contemplation and experiencing life. When the mind is unperturbed by selfishness or deliberate effort and is left to take its own course, it will reveal its pure nature, and enlightenment will come suddenly. This World is good, focus on the original goodness of nature that takes place in the midst of daily affairs, and keep your mind focused on self-realization. The nature and destiny of human beings and things will be correct in their differentiated state if they all follow the same universal principle. As new things appear, new principles are realized and in the production and reproduction in the Universe the process of daily renewal never ceases. When principle is endowed in humans it becomes their nature. Human’s nature is originally good because we were created by a benevolent and loving God who is the source of all goodness.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

 Evil arises when feelings are aroused and we deviate from the laws of God. However, through moral cultivation selfish desires can be eliminated and the principle of Nature realized. Our Lord’s temptations and ours are in different realms until we are born again and become His brothers. The temptations of Jesus Christ are not those of us mere human, but the temptations of God as Man. Through regeneration, the Son of God is formed in us, and in our physical life He has the same setting the He had on Earth. Only the Spirit of God can detect temptation of the Devil. Many of us turn back from going on with Jesus Christ from the very moment we have an experience of what He can do. Watch when God changes your circumstances to see whether you are going on with Jesus Christ or siding the negative forces, the flesh, and the Devil. The mind is originally good and endowed with the innate knowledge of the good and the innate ability to do good. The mind fills the whole Universe. A simple, easy, and direct method of recovering one’s originally good nature consists in having a firm purpose, stabling the nobler parts of one’s nature.  #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

The daily renewal and incessant change is a reality of endless transformation of closing and opening, which constitutes a process of unceasing production and reproduction. Every day we have a chance to be better people and make healthy changes in our lives, which will result in many beneficial manifestations that are in various aspects of the mine, will, and consciousness. Christ suffered in his own person the punishment that was justly due to humankind. However, God’s forgiveness does not need to be purchased by Christ’s death, but this brings home to the human heart both human’s need for divine forgiveness and the reality of that forgiveness. God has acted toward humans in three distinguishable ways—in creation and providence, in redemption, and inner guidance and sanctification. People are freely accepted by God’s gracious love, which one only has to receive in faith. Individuals have only to accept the fact that although unacceptable even to oneself, one is accepted by God. What separates the enlightened person from the ignorant? Is civilization a thing distinct, or it is an advanced stage of barbarism?  #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

 

We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people. It is truly wonderful how easily Society can console itself for the worst of its problems and difficulties with a bit of a clap-trap (contrived but foolish talk). The father of lies is the Devil—mischief and the Devil are never far apart. The good or evil we confer on others very often recoils on ourselves. The distinction between good and evil arises when human nature is aroused and manifested in feelings and actions and when these feelings and actions abide by or deviate from the mean. The chief task of moral and spiritual cultivation is to calm one’s nature through absolute impartiality and the identification of internal and external life. To achieve this end, one must advocate sincerity and seriousness. It was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom that the wisest of us all should outwit ourselves. Principle is a fundamental idea or general rule that is self-evident and self-sufficient, extending everywhere and governing all things. It is laid before our eyes. It cannot be augmented or diminished. It is a universal truth, universal order, universal law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

Most important of all, principle is the universal spiritual capacity of creation. It is dynamic and vital. Human beings and all things form one body because all of them share this principle. It is identical with mind and with the nature of man and things. Since principle is the natural ability of creation and since life-giving is good, principle is the source of goodness. To be good is to obey principle. Thus, principle is both natural and moral and both general and specific. It has meaning as an abstract reality, but more so are the moral law of humans. We must learn to maintain a strong degree of character in our lives, even to the level that has been revealed in our vision of Christ. The lasting characteristic of a spiritual being is the ability to understand correctly the meaning of the Lord Jesus Christ in his life, and the ability to explain the purpose of God to others. Readiness for God means that we are prepared to do the smallest things or the largest thing—it makes no difference. Material force is the physical aspect of principle.  Impulsiveness needs to be trained into intuition through discipline. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

Every moment of time solicits to be employed in the important business of love. Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. In the process of creation each operation is new, for material force is perpetually generated by Origination. (Origination is comparable to creation, except that it is natural and self-caused and is not an act of being.) The intellectual approach of understanding principle is balanced by the moral, for whereas the pursuit of learning depends on the extension of knowledge, self-cultivation requires seriousness. Humans are a complex chemical compound whose behavior is strictly subject to the law of causality, who in every action seeks one’s own pleasure, and whose character is determined by the features of the environment within which one is obliged to act. Radical reconstruction of the social environment is needed to create happy and productive individuals. Human beings are organs and instruments of a universal spirit and under certain conditions, a nationality (narodnost) may become an individual person. On the other hand, human beings as rational creatures and bearer of the Absolute is an end in oneself and must not be treated as a mere instrument. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

Not society, but individuals, think, feel, and desire; the monstrous notion that society is a higher organism, an all-devouring Moloch, whose function is to make humankind happy by putting it in chains is false. However, there are encroachments by the social and political spheres on the private and personal realm; the individual life is the foundation-stone of the entire social edifice—as a single spiritual substance, possessed of reason and free will, and hence of a moral worth and dignity that demand respect. The dialectical movement of both thought and being are a passage from initial unity to final multiplicity, through two intermediary stages of relation and combination. The superior being is one who is wise, humane, and courageous, who is motivated by righteousness instead of profit, and who loves other people. A person is good by nature, but only by nature people are alike, but through practice they have become far apart. All children know how to love their parents and a person seeing a child about to fall into a well will instinctively try to save him because human nature is originally good.  #RandophHarris 4 of 7

Remember principle: no expediency, no compromise. The four main principles of humanity are altruism, righteousness, propriety,  and wisdom—and the innate knowledge of the good and the innate ability to do good. Evil is due not to one’s nature but to bad environment, lack of education, and casting oneself away. The superior person is one who develops one’s mind to the utmost and nourishes one’s nature. The nature of some is essentially evil. They seek for gain and are envious. Because conflict and strife inevitably follow, rules of propriety and righteousness have been formulated to control evil and to train humans to be good because propriety and righteousness has to be taught to some as their native nature has been corrupted and they abuse people and do drugs because they to recognize humanity and righteousness originated with Heaven. It is the will of Heaven that people should practice humanity and righteousness, be economical, and practice universal love, and it is human’s duty to obey the will of Heaven. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

The harmonious development of the individual in society is through the investigation of things, the extension of knowledge, the sincerity of the will, the rectification of the mind, the cultivation of the personal life, the regulation of the family, national order, and World peace. The goal is a harmonious World in which people and society are well developed and adjusted. The virtues, such as kindness, benevolence, and affection are the way in which we can get a life that has no lust, no self-interest, and is not sensitive to the ridicule of others. Humanity is the moral character, which enables humans to attain true fellowship. The moral character is developed in oneself and in one’s relations with others. A person wishing to establish one’s own character, also established the character of others. This is the two aspects of conscientiousness and altruism. By this time a clear distinction between what is good, correct, or proper and what is evil, incorrect, or improper has be made. God wants the innate sense of correctness fully exercised through the precision of and distinctions made in law, rules of propriety, and music. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

The Spirit of God witnesses to the redemption of our Lord and nothing else. The Spirit witnesses only to His own nature and to the work of redemption, never to our own reason. If we are trying to make God witness to out reason, it is no wonder that we are in darkness and uncertainty. Throw it all overboard, trust in God, and God will give you the witness of the Spirit. We have to correct errors in our hearts (moral errors). Centrality in the individual is the state of equilibrium in one’s mind before the feelings are aroused, and harmony is the state after they are aroused. In society centrality and harmony together mean complete concord in human relations. Ultimately, through the moral principle, Heaven and Earth will attain their proper order and all things will flourish in a harmonious universal operation. When the individual behaves correctly and society operates in the right manner, the way of God is aid to prevail. The way of God is the moral law, and moral order. It is the way of Heaven. Heaven is the Supreme Reality. Love levels all distinction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

 The Winchester Mystery House

Why would a ghost haunt anywhere? If there is an afterlife, it must be more interesting then here. However, this is not a science with clear-cut rules. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Real love can only arise where there is either a void in the heart, occasioned by the falsehood or indifference of a once favorite object, or where love before has never been admitted. The crime of loving is, when that love leads us to the injury of others. God is essentially rational. To be a good Christian is to share in God’s rationality, as distinct from blindly obeying an omnipotent will. God, being rational, will ordain what is good, but what he ordains is good in its own nature, not because he ordains it. To go against Reason is to go against God; it is the self-same thing, to do that which the Reason of the case doth require; and that which God Himself doth appoint: Reason is the Divine Governor of Human’s Life; it is the very Voice of God. Reason hath too much given to it. It is not the least evil attendant upon the frequent exhibition of this last dread punishment, of Death, that it hardens the minds of those who deal it out, and makes them, though they be amiable people in other respects, indifferent to, or unconscious of, their great responsibility.  

The relationship between God and morality is a doctrine as a binding creed. Some cry out against sin even as the mother cries out against her child in her lap, when she calleth it slut and naught girl, and then falls to hugging and kissing it. Whispering and change of thoughts proves that sin is in the World. How can we argue about God’s power in the other stars from the laws which he has given for our rule in this one? As poisonous adders luck beneath the cover of the most delightful shrubberies, so falsity and deceit are concealed under alluring language.  Some are drawn by love, others are driven by terrors, to their Divine refuge. There is no genuine and proper effect of religion where the mind of the human is not composed, sedate, and calm. The distrust of enthusiasm can scarcely be more succinctly formulated. Platonists stand for the idea of a single church to which everybody can belong to who was neither an atheist nor a papist; this church is conceived as a broad Christian society within which humans can seek salvation in their own way rather than as a sect with an inflexible creed.  

Christianity, in the eyes of the Platonists, is a way of life; rituals and creeds can be assistance to godliness but nothing more. The nickname latitudinarian which their enemies fastened upon them is an admirable description of their religious attitude. Some believe that there is a distinction between reason and faith; and that religion is a matter of faith, not of reason. What has not reason in it, or for it is human’s superstition: it is not religion of God’s making. Nevertheless, both reason and faith are intertwined for they are both made morality dependent upon the will, even if in one case it was the will of the sovereign and in the other the will of God. And furthermore, experience and knowledge also are involved with both faith and reason. By carrying mechanical explanation too far—into the realm of the living as distinct from the inanimate—some threaten they spiritual interpretation of the Universe. The belief in witchcraft, which has been revived and strengthened in the twenty first century, leads several to believe that to deny witches and apparitions will lead straight to atheism.   

At times, many people display a degree of credulity which is somewhat startling even by seventeenth-century standards. Careful reasoning, exact argumentation, and liberality of spirit are joined with uncritical speculation, unscholarly interpretation, and fanciful legends to a degree which bewilders and confuses the modern reader. These characteristics are interesting and important though many of their ideas are, difficult and often very tedious. To ignore these ideas, however, is to run the risk of misunderstanding and grossly oversimplifying the history of British speculative ideas and moral attitudes, which are too often take to be wholly dominated by empiricist and utilitarian concepts. Undoubtedly, too, for all the vagaries, the general effect is to increase human’s confidence in rationality and their willingness to tolerate beliefs with which they disagreed. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individual natural life and win freedom into the spiritual life. The Savior has set us free from sin, but this is the freedom that comes from being set free from myself by the Son. We tend to rely on our own energy instead of being energized by the power that comes from identification with Christ.  

In movies and television shows, the specificity of the language that is used in rehearsal extents to the actors’ offstage speech. Their talk is riddled with the expressions from films and that sometimes if you are confusing your emotional experiences with your judgments, your work becomes vague. If you ask an actor, “How did that feel?” they will immediately say: “It felt good” or “That felt bad.” Both of those are judgements. So, we never say, “How did that feel?” at the end of a scene, because it invites them to go to the judgment part of their brain. Instead, when Ryan Phillippe directs a production he asks, “Did you notice any specific feelings that came up for you doing that scene?” That way they learn to name emotional experiences: “I felt angry when he said that.” “I felt scared when he looked at me and my heart started to hurt.” Becoming embodied helps actors realize that they have many different emotions. The more they notice, the more curious they get. They have to learn to speak so that can be heard. Their final performance means facing the community. Actors step out into the World, and experience another level of vulnerability, danger, or safety, and they find out how much they can trust themselves. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 6

Gradually the eagerness to succeed, to show that they can do it, takes over. There comes a point when an actor sense their intrinsic value of the experience of their jobs and as members in the community. Therapy and acting are intuition at work. They are different forms of research, where one strives to step outside of one’s own personal experience, even outside of their own bodies to test the objective validity of assumptions. What makes therapy effective is deep, subjective resonance and that deep sense of truth and veracity that lives in the body. Actors are able to combine the rigor of scientific methods, religion, and research with the power of embodied intuition to make their performances seem more real than your daily lives. We are on the verge of becoming a trauma-conscious society. Almost every day one of my colleagues published another report on how trauma disrupts the workings of mind, brain, and body. When it comes to healing ourselves, it is beneficial to be cautious. We become aware of all the guilt-mongers in our life and their deleterious influences. The true test of a saint’s life is not successfulness but faithfulness on the human level of life. We tend to set up success in Christian work as our purpose, but our purpose should be to display the glory of God.  

The Winchester Mystery House

Some houses do not want to be sold, and these types of homes have plans for their “guests.” https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience and a steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure calamity with patience, but remember that endurance must suppose pain. Conscience (conscientia), as a subjective mode of revelation, is closely related to the sense of divinity. Conscience too, is part of the native endowment of all humans, written upon the heart of all. It is sort of knowledge whose object is God’s will; or, equivalently, the difference between good and evil, the law of God, or the law of nature. Inward law written, even engraved, upon the hearts of all, in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the [Decalogue]. Decalogue is the Ten Commandments, the list of ethical principles in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:4-21 in the Holy Bible. It is a basic set of rules carrying binding authority. The Decalogue requires perfect love of God and of our neighbor. Of all liars and false accusers, a sick conscience is the most inventive and indefatigable. However, no evil is insupportable (unable to be endured; intolerable), but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. 

The subjective awareness of divinity and of its will can be supplemented by reflecting on the structure of the external World and the pattern of history. [God has] not only sowed in human’s minds that seed of religion of which we have spoken but revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole work-human-ship of the Universe. As a consequence, humans cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see God. The Universe is a large book, a mirror, and a theater for the display of God’s attributes—preeminently for the display of his goodness to us but also of his glory, wisdom, power, and justice. God can be known through his works, but not by speculation concerning his essence. It is by nourishing God’s sense of divinity and his conscience, with the contemplation of God’s works, that humans can in principle arrive at a knowledge of God. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly, we feel his presence when his works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where his Worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest his infinitude, his omnipotence, his omnipresence. 

When you would conceive of the great Being truly and fully, you must be able to realize the duration of eternity, obliterate the little periods of time and chronology, which require a starting and resting-place in our human minds—soar out of the reach of the sickly atmospheres which surround these little planets, and stand straight in the broad and fathomless light of God’s own atmosphere. Nothing, but vast wisdom and unlimited power should dare to sweep off humans in multitudes; for it is only the one that can know the necessity of the judgment; and what is there, short of the other, that can replace the creatures of the Lord? Human folly is not needed to fill up the great design of God. There is no stature, no beauty, no proportions, nor any colours in which humans themselves can well be fashioned, that is not already done to their hands. Humans only reap the harvest they have sown in the World. Even in this life, God is just. Long may it remain in this mixed World a point not easy of decision, which is the more beautiful of the Almighty’s goodness—the delicate fingers that are formed for sensitiveness and sympathy of touch, and made to minister to pain and grief, or the rough hard hand, that the heart teaches, guides, and softens in a moment 

Sin is a resistance to God’s demands. Thus, sin is not primarily ignorance about God; although such ignorance, or blindness will always be a consequence. Sin is an active willful opposition to God, as a positive refusal to acknowledge his demands of worship and obedience and as a deliberate alienation from him. Its prime characteristic is perversity, and its root is ordinarily pride and self-love.  A person who does not know God because he or she refuses to worship and obey him can still know or believe a variety of propositions about God that happen to be true. I hold with Christ that afflictions are not sent by God in wrath as penalties for sin. Human’s natural ability to know God is the greatest genius. Certainly, I do not deny that one can read competent and apt statements about here and there in the philosophers. However, knowing or believing competent and apt proposition about is not sufficient for knowing God; human’s proud refusal to worship and obey God led them to resist acknowledging the truth about God. Sin, although primarily a matter of the will, infects human’s reason as well. 

Perversity leads to blindness and distortion, and these people infected by sin always show a giddy imagination. Their seeing does not direct them to the truth, much less enable them to attaint it. Thus, human’s willful alienation from God is not merely that one does not know God, but also that one’s views about God are not so incomplete and distorted that nothing at all can be built on them. People who do not know God are always infuriated and ignorant because the effects of sin are far more pervasive then have been indicated. Not only does sin disrupt human’s relation to God; it thereby spreads corruption throughout the whole of human, animal, and plant life. Of course, sin does not impair the human’s natural faculties as such, not immediately, anyway. Reason and will are humanities chief faculties, and human beings in sin may be as intelligent and as capable of making decisions as the individual who knows God. The corruption is to be found, rather, in the use we make of our native capacities. The greatest spirits, when overwhelmed by their afflictions, are subject to the greatest dejections. 

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted for too long a series of generations in the same worn-out soil. If we are to state accurately what sin does to human’s use of their native talents, we must distinguish between human’s supernatural gifts, their abilities concerning Heavenly things, and their natural gifts, and their abilities concerning Earthly things. The supernatural gifts comprise human’s ability to know God, to worship him properly, and to obey him inwardly as well as outwardly. However, we have been stripped of these gifts. The natural gifts pertain to matters of the present life, such as government, household management, all mechanical skills, and the liberal arts. Concerning these, our abilities have certainly not been destroyed. Not only are ancient law, medicine, and natural philosophy worthy of the highest admiration, but humans, even in their estrangement from God, retains some sense of the laws that must be obeyed if human society is to be preserved. Humans, through natural instinct, are supposed to foster and preserve society.  

Consequently, we observe that there exist in all human’s minds Universal impressions of a certain civic fair dealing and order…And this is ample proof in the arrangement of this life no human is without the light of reason. However, although the human’s abilities concerning Earthly things have not been destroyed, they have been profoundly corrupted. Both reason and will have been gravely wounded; the mind is both weak and plunged into deep darkness. And depravity of the will is all too well known. If human’s natural gifts are to be restored, their sin must be overcome; they must come to know God. We have already seen that for this purpose human’s conscience, their sense of divinity, and their awareness of God’s revelation in the objective World are all inadequate. How can you remove God from a World he created, and expect people to behave? Because they are not God’s people. They worship meaningless paper, and will burn the flesh and spill blood for paper, because that is their deity. However, God’s people know, no matter what people put you through, all this pain and suffering is better than burning in Hell for eternity. 

Thus, if human life is to be renewed, it is necessary that God should choose some special means. This he in did by revealing himself with special clarity to the World, culminating in the life and words of the Holy Bible. When God leads people to respond to this revelation with faith, then humans again knows God. Indeed, faith, consisting as it does in clear knowledge about God coupled with proper worship and true obedience, is a certain sort of knowledge of God—that sort which focuses on Christ as interpreted in the Scriptures. Thus, there is never a contrast between faith in God and knowledge of God; rather, given human’s prior perversity, faith is the only kind of knowledge of God availed to humans. Also, faith is never understood in scholastic fashion as an assent to divinely revealed propositions. Rather, the object of faith is God as revealed in Christ. The death side—in the process of sanctification, the Spirit of God will strip me down until there is nothing left but myself, and that is the place of death. Lord, show me what sanctification means for me. He will show me. It means being made one with Jesus. Sanctification is not something Jesus puts in me—it is Himself in me!  

 

 

I hope there are not many in this World to whom the thought of honor being tied to money ever appears possible. It was not merely that works of art and culture provide the historian with the most fertile material for the interpretation of previous phases of human experience; history itself is (or should be) a form of art. The mechanical piling up of the results of specialized research, dear to scientific historians, is not enough; there must also be intuition, an imaginative ability to re-create the vision of life underlying the relics left by former times. To see the past in these terms is to see it as the expression of the inexhaustible creative power of the human mind—great individuals, great artistic achievements, great moments of civilization, all exemplified in different ways its potentialities. Scholarship, painstaking investigation, were indeed essential, but they must be properly used and directed. Only thus could a particular source or authority throw light on the character of a person, the significance of a style, the pervasive atmosphere of a period. Ultimately, the subject of historical study is humans themselves, not the hypostatized abstractions of the philosophers of history.  The historical process follows a fixed and predetermined course, betrayed a fundamental blindness to its most striking feature, the revelation of individual originality and creativity. Likewise, their astrological impatience to set the limits to its future by talk of the World plans and metaphysical goals are not only unwarranted, it failed to respect the very conditions of uncertainty and suspense that make human achievement possible. From this point of view, and insofar as the development of humankind is concerned, a future known in advance is an absurdity. The tide of historical speculation is starting to recede. Philosophers, rather than continuing to offer sweeping interpretations of the human past, have turned their attention toward examining the distinctive characteristics of historical thought and inquiry, with prophetic insights displaying in their analysis of contemporary trends the many subtle and individual observations.   

 When they depict the Universe, they draw a serpent devouring its own tail, marked with variegated scales. By the scales, they suggest the stars in Heavens. This beast is the heaviest of the animals, as the Earth is heaviest [of elements]. It is the smoothest, like water. And each year it sheds its skin, it [represents old age]. However, the fact that it uses its own body for food signifies that whatever things are generated in the World by Divine Providence are received back into it by [a gradual process of] diminution. Names are a special form of complex signs. A demon’s name is sometimes meaningful in a simple sense, that sometimes names of spirits are taken from those things over which they are set, being as it were borrowed from the stars, or humans, or places, or times, or such like things, the divine name. For example, Zedekiel is one name of the spirit of Jupiter, from the Hebrew name of Jupiter zedek, or if we call them [these demons] from the Latin words…Joviel. Names have a singular referent—a demonic names refer only to a single demon. At the same time, written names are aggregates, combinations of basic written forms to make up complex, representative structures. Moreover, names were impressed upon objects by Adam, and hence have an arbitrary symbolic character not dependent on the characters or elements of which they are constituted. Adam’s function as nomothete is well known, but it is crucial to recognize the relationship between Adam’s naming and the Divine nominative function. As the great operator doth produce divers species, and particular things by the influences of the Heavens, and by the elements, together with the virtues of planets; so according to the properties of the influences proper names result to things, and are put upon them by hum who numbers the multitude of the stars, calling them by their names, of which names Christ in another place speaks, saying, Your names are written in Heaven.  

Adam therefore that gave the first names to things, gave them all names influences of the Heavens, and propertites of all things, gave them names according to their natures, as it is written in Genesis, where God brought all things that he had created before Adam, that he should name them, and as he named anything, so the name of it was, which names indeed contain in them wonderful powers of things signified. Every voice therefore that is significant, first of all signifies by the influence of the celestial harmony; secondly, by the imposition of humans…However when both significations meet in any voice or name, which are put upon them by the said harmony or human, then that name is with a double virtue, viz. natural, and arbitrary, made most efficacious to act, as oft as it shall be uttered in due place, and time, and seriously with an intention exercised upon the matter rightly disposed, and that can naturally be acted upon by it. Therefore, names like signs in general, can be doubly powerful if they combine natural and arbitrary modes of signification. For Ancient Egyptians, the divine nature of the Universe was manifested in a multitude of ways. The process of syncretism, by which two or more deities were combined to form a single cult, was also central to religion in Ancient Egypt. Two of the most important deities, Amun and Ra, for example, were fused to create Amun-Ra, the god of creation. Amun-Ra means hidden light. He is the ultimate god of the entire Ancient Egypt; man of the Egyptians considered him as the God of Kings and King of Gods! He is the oldest and the most worshiped ruler of ancient Egypt. In the Ptolemaic Period (332-30 BC), Greek gods Zeus and Helios with Osiris and Apis, perhaps in a move towards political and cultural unity.  

The Ancient Egyptians worshiped a number of gods and goddesses, each of whom had different roles or functions, as well as a variety of creations myths. In keeping with the complex and varied nature of their religion, the Ancient Egyptians had several theories of the creation of the Universe. These creation myths evolved in the country’s major cult centres and usually concentrated on the role played by local gods. Ancient Egyptian theology rarely engages with the notion of the end of existence. Where it is mentioned, it is imagined as an apocalyptic destruction followed by a return to the state of the Universe before time began, in which only the gods Atum and Osiris survive. Along with the Sun god, Ra, Osiris, the primary god of the dead, was one of the most important deities in the pantheon. In Ancient Egyptian mythology, Osiris was killed by his evil brother Seth, and his dismembered body was mummified and resurrected by his wife, the Goddess Isis.  During the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC), the deceased pharaoh was identified with Osiris and was believed to experience rebirth in the same way that the murdered god did. During the First Intermediate period (2181-2055 BC), however, it seems that it became possible for commoners to be resurrected in the manner of Osiris, as a sort of ‘democratization of the afterlife’ took place. Mummification was designed to make the deceased resemble Osiris as much as possible, in the hope that this would ensure eternal life in the underworld. Osiris presided over the weighing of the Heart ceremony in the afterlife. In this ritual, the deceased made the negative confession, swearing that they had not committed any of a list of offences, then their heart was weighed against the feather of Maat, symbol of truth and harmony. Osiris judged the results of the ritual and was responsible for deciding whether the deceased was worthy of resurrection.  

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Love, the gay child of sympathy and esteem, is, when attended by delicacy, the only happiness worth a reasonable human’s pursuit, and the choicest gift of Heaven. We do not and cannot see our World as a theater of conflict between supernatural powers, the demonic seeking to possess and destroy us, and God intervening to secure our salvation. Moreover, miracle stories lie at the very heart of New Testament belief: If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain (I Corinthians 15.17). Thus, the crucial question is: must a human, in order to be a Christian, commit oneself simultaneously to two mutually incompatible World pictures—that of twentieth century science and that of the first-century prescientific speculation? To attempt this is to make Christian belief unnecessarily difficult. It is equally unrewarding to view Christianity as a strictly and objectively historical religion and anxiously to sift all the evidence for and against the recorded events of the life of Christ. The evidence is substantial enough to show that Christ indeed lived and that he made a quite extraordinary impact upon certain contemporaries. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

However, if religious faith is to stand or fall with the historicity of, say, the birth stories of the Easter narratives, if its degree of assurance must rationally be tempered with the historical probabilities, the assurance will be pitifully uncertain, and faith will almost certainly fall. Some people may properly grant that a very large part of the New Testament message is couched in mythical language and does not record objective history. This mythical material is not, however, an embarrassment, and it need not be discarded. It can be interpreted as indirect description not of the cosmos but of the conditions and possibilities of human existence. Historical studies derive their real seriousness not from sheer factuality but from what they discover about viable ways of life and viable options for human decision. Among such options, the Christian gives pre-eminence to that displayed in the accounts of the cross and the resurrection.  For it is through these that God makes available a distinctively authentic and free mode of existence to all humanity. It is also believed that freedom is a privilege, not a right.  #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

The only way one will have freedom is by obeying conditions and these conditions are both supernatural and human. The rules of God state that we must be good people and have right actions and thought and we will go to Heaven. The human laws state that we much behave sane and obey the laws to keep our privilege of freedom. What happens when we enter into the inner sense of the World? We leave the World of space and enter into the World of movement; the noun World is transformed into a verb. As spatial location is itself a quality of things, so motion from place to place is an objective fact. Our Sun is a star, and all of the stars give out without taking in. The aim of our soul is to increase porosity on the side of giving out and to reduce it on the side of taking in. A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved. However, all humans almost are villains in their hearts because we feel inauthentic life in and after the flesh, the life of the natural human who is alienated from God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

How Hell should become by degrees so natural, and not only tolerable but even agreeable, is a thing unintelligible but by those who have experienced it. The idea of eternal life is Hell is totally scary and this should be enough motivation for people to be good. Habit hath so vast a prevalence over the human mind, that there is scare anything too strange or too strong to be asserted of it. On the authentic type of existence, there is a total acceptance of the fundamental conditions of our life. This involves, for any human, a realization of one’s own death, not as some vague, unpleasant, but indefinite future event, but as something whose constant presence, in possibility, should modify one’s sense of one’s own existence at every moment. Christianity, too, speaks, of renouncing the World and a life entangled with the World, of dying to the life of self. It has, however—or ought to have—some very different thing to say about life eternal. People should see and accept the limitations on our freedom imposed by the given circumstances of our lives as so far lived (facticity); one sees the present moment as the locus of decision, and it is in the future that one will work out those authentic possibilities of existence for which one decides. Earth should not look like a halfway house. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

God speaks in a way that overwhelms us by revealing the depths of our ignorance. We show our ignorance of Him in the very way we decide to serve Him. Are we worshipping God in a way that will raise us up to where we can take hold of Him, having such intimate contact with Him that we know His mind about the ones for whom we pray? If we are not heedful and pay no attention to the way the Spirit of God works in us, we will become spiritual hypocrites. We see other people failing, and then we take our discernment and turn it into ridicule and criticism, instead of turning it into intercession. Such projects are the manifestation of a crude and vulgar optimism that springs us from the arrogant and egotistical assumption that our time is the consummation of all time and tended to justify the crimes and disasters of previous ages as necessary to the promotion of what came afterward. The role of moral judgment in history and life cannot be spirited away in this complacent manner; but neither, on the other hand should we allow our views of the past to be distorted by moral predilection peculiar to our own time and society. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

Be careful that you do not become a hypocrite by spending all of your time trying to get others right with God before you worship Him yourself. What is above all requisite for true historical understanding is a contemplative, disinterested sense of the abiding and tragic aspects of human existence. Only through such detachment from prevailing concerns and preoccupations could the historian transcend the barriers that separate the mental life of one age from that of another. It is not merely that work of art and culture that has provided us with the most fertile material for interpretation of previous phases of human experience; history itself was (or should be) a form of art. The mechanical piling up of the results of specialized research, dear to so-called scientific historians, is not enough; there must also be intuition, an imaginative ability to re-create the vision of life underlying the relics left by former times. Remember our way back to God takes a lot of work. When are born into the World, we sometimes forget our Godly ways, much like people with much like people with Dementia forget the World around them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

The Bible is a way for us to get back to God, much like how in the Netherlands, a radical idea is being tested. There are self-contained villages where people with dementia show, cook, and live together—safely. The village has things that will remind the Alzheimer’s suffers of the World they grew up in, there are Victorian houses, telephone booths, clock towers, cobble stone roads, and the village is closed to the outside World with gates and security fences. To see the past in these terms is to see it as the expression of the inexhaustible creative power of the human mind—great individuals, great artistic achievements, great moments of civilization all exemplified in different ways its potentialities.  So, this is how building and restoring your own faith in God will protect you from ways that are ungodly, it will surround you with God’s armor. Scholarship, painstaking investigation, are indeed essential, and they must be properly used and directed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

Only thus could a particular source or authority throw light on the character of a person, the significance of a style, the pervasive atmosphere of a period. My experiences are not worth anything unless they keep me at the Source of truth—God. Be relentless and hard on yourself if you are in the habit of talking about the experiences you have had. Faith based on experience is not faith; faith based on God’s revealed truth is the only faith there is. A new creed became mine—a belief in happiness. The wise order of providence has ordained that we shall makes others happy in being so ourselves. The happiness of some lives is distributed pretty evenly over the whole stretch from the cradle to the grave, while that of others comes all at once, glorifying some particular epoch and leaving the rest in shadow. I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8

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‘Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of love position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: It is the Lord’s to avenge; He will repay. If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if one is thirsty, give one something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. There is hardly a greater difference in intellect between angel and human, than there is between human and human.   

The World is in conspiracy to drive out what little wit God has given us. The causes of violence, like the causes of poor health, do not usually begin in the body. They pass through it, and the marks they leave are often subtle and vague. Sometimes the illusion of knowing is more dangerous than not knowing at all. For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Many the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow God, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the Lord. Not being reconciled to the fact of sin—not recognizing it and refusing to deal with it—produces all the disasters in life. In your human relationships and friendships, have you reconciled yourself to the fact of sin? If not, just around the next corner you will find yourself trapped and you will compromise with it. However, if you will reconcile yourself to the fact of sin, you will realize the danger immediately. I have the person in whom kindness produces no responsive affection, and injustice no swell, no glow of resentment. The knowledge of all law goes but a little way to the discerning the justice of the cause.  

The World, being in the constant commission of vast quantities of injustice, is a little too apt to comfort itself with the idea that if the victim of its falsehood and malice have a clear conscience, one cannot fail to be sustained under one’s trials, and somehow or other to come at last; in which case, though we certainly do not expect it—nobody will be better pleased than we. Whereas, the World would do well to reflect, that injustice is in itself, to every generous and properly constituted mind, an injury, of all others the most insufferable, the most torturing, and the most hard to bear; and that many clear consciences have gone to their account elsewhere, and many sound hearts have broken, because of this very reason; the knowledge of their own deserts only aggravating their sufferings, and rendering them the less endurable. Error and evil are not harmonious and hence are not real, but it is equally clear that they are not nothing. Although error and evil are discordant and hence not real, it is possible that they contribute to the harmony of the whole, and if this is possible then we must conclude that it is so even though we do not know how it is possible. For what is possible, and what a general principle compels us to say must be, that certainly is.   

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