HOW TREATISE CAME TO BE WRITTEN 25 

 present to the public such a distorted conception of biblical 

 and astronomical facts conjured up to produce such impossible, 

 improbable and illogical deductions. A week or two later be 

 persuaded me to accompany him to a meeting of the Theoso- 

 phical Society. The Chairman commenced the proceedings by 

 asking all present to pray for the grace of right thought. I 

 do not know if the others prayed from their lips only, but I, 

 fearing that I was in an atmosphere of very wrong thought, 

 offered up the prayer from the very innermost depths of my 

 heart and soul to be kept out of error. 



I then returned home and taking up Drummond's " Ascent 

 of Man," which had been lent me by a friend that afternoon, 

 commenced to read it. While so engaged, and without having 

 any connection with what I had been reading, or any of my 

 thoughts either then or previously throughout the day it was 

 a Sunday evening the following, to all appearance absurd and 

 ridiculous idea or thought came into my mind : " God the 

 Father and God the Holy Ghost marry God the Son." I tried 

 to banish this ridiculous collection of words out of my mind so 

 that I might be able to follow the trend of the arguments I 

 was reading, which did not seem to me to be too clearly ex- 

 pressed by the author. But all my efforts were in vain, for no 

 sooner did I banish it and start to read again, than back 

 returned to my thoughts what appeared to be a meaningless 

 affirmation, " God the Father and God the Holy Ghost inter- 

 marry with God the Son ' ' ; till in despair I threw down my book 

 and, with little thought of doing more than banish the annoy- 

 ance, so as to have some chance of getting to sleep, for do 

 what I might I could not get the thing out of my head, I 

 decided to take up a pen and a piece of paper and see what 

 the result would be if I were to work out a series of inter- 

 marriages between the different attributes of the Trinity of 

 God, treating all the attributes of God the Father and those 

 of God the Holy Ghost as being males, and the attributes of 

 God the Son as being female. 



After about half an hour or so spent in intermarrying these 

 attributes and their concurrent attributes, the result was that 

 the two tables, that will be found at the end of the chapter, 

 lay on the desk before my astonished gaze, on two sheets of 

 writing paper, produced almost without my comprehending 

 what I was doing or what it was going to evolve. I stared with 



