CHAPTER III

THE DEITY.
When we lay down the existence of God as the first and greatest of our principles, it becomes necessary for us to define the sense in which we employ that much-abused, yet mighty word. We try to redeem it from the narrow limits imposed on it by the ignorance of undeveloped men, and to restore to it the splendid conception — splendid, though so infinitely below the reality — given to it by the founders of religions. And \ve distinguish between God as the Infinite Existence, and the mani- festation of this Supreme Existence as a revealed God, evolving and guiding a universe. Only to this limited mani- festation should the term "a personal God" be applied. God in Himself is beyond the bounds of personality, is
24: An Outline of Theosophy.
"in all and through all" and indeed is all; and of the Infinite, the Absolute, the All, we can only say "He is."
For all practical purposes we need not go further than that marvellous and glorious manifestation of Him (a little less entirely beyond our compre- hension) the great Guiding Force or Deity of our own solar system, whom philosophers have called the Logos. Of him is true all that we have ever heard predicated of God — all that is good, that is — not the blasphemous concep- tions sometimes put forward, ascrib- ing to Him human vices. But all that has ever been said of the love, the wis- dom, the power, the patience and com- passion, the omniscience, the omni- presence, the omnipotence — all of this, and much more, is true of the Logos of our system. Verily "in Him we live and move and have our being," not as a poetical expression, but (strange as it may seem) as a definite scientific fact; and so when we speak of the Deity our first thought is naturally of the Logos.
The Deity. 25
We do not vaguely hope that He may be ; we do -not even believe as a matter of faith that He is; we simply know it as we know that the sun shines, for to the trained and developed clair- voyant investigator this Mighty Exist- ence is a definite certainty. Not that any merely human development can en- able us directly to see Him, but that un- mistakable evidence of His action and His purpose surrounds us on every side as we study the life of the unseen world, which is in reality only the high- er part of this.
Here we meet the explanation of a dogma which is common to all religions — that of the Trinity. Incomprehensi- ble as many of the statements made on this subject in our creeds may seem to the ordinary reader, they become sig- nificant and luminous when the truth is understood. As He shows Himself to us in His work, the Logos is un- doubtedly triple — three and yet one, as religion has long ago told us; and as much of the explanation of this ap-
26 An Outline of Theosophy.
parent mystery as the intellect of man at its present stage can grasp will be found in the books presently to be men- tioned.
That He is within us as well as with- out us, or, in other words, that man himself is in essence divine, is another great truth which, though those who are blind to all but the outer and lower world may still argue about it, is an absolute certainty to the student of the higher side of life. Of the constitution of man's soul and its various vehicles we shall speak under the heading of the second of the truths; suffice it for the moment to note that the inherent divinity is a fact, and that in it resides the assurance of the ultimate return of every human being to the divine level.
THE DIVINE SCHEME.
Perhaps none of our postulates will present greater difficulty to the aver- age mind than the first corollary to this first great truth. Looking* round us in daily life we see so much of the storm
The Deity. 27
and stress, the sorrow and the suffer- ing, so much that looks like the tri- umph of evil over good, that it seems almost impossible to suppose that all this apparent confusion is in reality part of an ordered progress. Yet this is the truth, and can be seen to be the truth so soon as we escape from the dust-cloud raised by the struggle in this outer world, and look upon it all from the vantage ground of the fuller know- ledge and the inner peace.
Then the real motion of the complex machinery becomes apparent. Then it is seen that what have seemed to be counter-currents of evil prevailing against the stream of progress are merely trifling eddies into wrhich for the moment a little water may turn aside, or tiny whirlpools on the surface, in which part of the water appears for the moment to be running backwards. But all the time the mighty river is sweeping steadily on its appointed course, bearing the superficial whirl- pools along with it. Just so the great
28 An Outline of Theosophy.
stream of evolution is moving evenly on its way, and what seems to us so terrible a tempest is the merest ruffling of its surface. Another analogy, very beautifully worked out, is given in Mr.