150 



depreciate the study of Natural History on account of its supposed 

 tendency to infidelity : it seems to me a manifest absurdity to accuse 

 God's works of antagonism to His written law, and to assert that a 

 knowledge of His works could induce a violation of His law ! — that the 

 revelations of Nature could interfere with the revelations of religion ! — 

 that truth could clash with truth ! Absurd, however, as is the attempt 

 to bring Natural History into disrepute on the score of this imagined 

 clashing with religion, it is far less objectionable than the opposite 

 fallacy, now reduced to a science under the name of Physiophilosophy, 

 which professes to found a philosophical religion on the phenomena 

 of Nature, irrespective of Scripture and subversive of our faith in its 

 divine origin. This physiophilosophy supplies the very argument 

 wanted by the timid religionists alluded to above, and verifies and 

 irrevocably confirms their worst apprehensions of danger from the 

 science. On this ground alone, and not from any idea that the Bible 

 or religion require or can receive assistance from my pen, I have 

 ventured on these observations, and having expressed my strong dis- 

 approbation of physiophilosophy generally, I will now confine my 

 observations to its boldest and most fashionable exponent, Andrew 

 Jackson Davis. 



I have already said that I consider this man an imposter. I do not 

 give the slightest credence to the statement that he is an illiterate man, 

 or that any portions of his revelations are the result of mesmeric clair- 

 voyance, or that there is anything whatever in his state, or attainments, 

 or communications, beyond the combination of good memory, ex- 

 tensive miscellaneous reading, and fertile invention. I readily give him 

 credit for all this, but inasmuch as he denies such assistance, and 

 attributes his knowledge to a totally different source, I cannot but re- 

 gard him as an imposter; and I take up his work as the compilation of 

 a man who has brought much jumbled reading to his aid, and who, 

 where all information was wanting, has shown considerable aptitude 

 in the science of invention. 



Without attempting to answer the writer (and apologizing to the 

 reader for introducing the paragraph at all), I will show how this totally 

 illiterate man disposes of the Trinity. 



"The original conception of the Trinity arose from the three supposed 

 beings called Parama, Vishnu, and Siva. * * * This Trinity was not 

 established in the world until the Egyptian priests of the Sun, and the 

 Persian Magi, promoted the three beings to a higher degree of potency 

 than they originally possessed; and the conception was grasped by 

 Zoroaster, who immediately converted them into three united beings." 

 —ii. 552. 



