" The Bible is the word of God to man: the Creed is the answer of man to God. The Bible is the book to be explained and applied; the Creed is the Church's understanding and summary of the Bible"
— Philip Schaff, D.D.

"There is but one Deity, the Supreme Spirit; he is of the same nature as the soul of man"
— Vedic Theology.

" It was in India that man first recognised the fact that force is indestructible and eternal. This implies ideas more or less distinct of that which we now term its correlation and conservation. The changes which we witness are in its distribution"
— Professor Draper.

"As for truth it endureth and is always strong, it liveth and conquereth for evermore"
— Esdras.

"One eternal and immutable law embraces all things and all times"
— Cicero.

"When the truth is made known, it will unwarp the complications of man's manufacture; and show everything in nature to be very simple"

— David Sinclair, author of" A New Creed"

[Page 23] " KNOWLEDGE," said Lord Beaconsfield, "is like the mystic ladder in the Patriarch's dream. Its base rests on the primeval earth — its crest is lost in the shadowy splendour of the empyrean; while the great authors who, for traditionary ages, have held the chain of science and philosophy, of poesy and erudition, are the angels ascending and descending the sacred scale, maintaining, as it were, the communication between man and heaven."

This beautiful imagery holds within it that seed of truth, which is said to exist in the wildest fable; for, although all great discoveries, pertaining to the material world, have been made gradually, with much starting on the wrong track, much false deduction and much worthless result, spiritual truths can be revealed to man in no other way than by that spiritual influence which maintains communication between the terrestrial and the celestial, or the material and the spiritual, "Truth is attained through immediate intuition", say the Aryan teachers; but only by those who have educated their sixth sense; as will be seen in Mr. Sinclair's new work, "Vera Vita; or, the Philosophy of Sympathy". While the imaginative scientist is puzzling himself about new natural forces and the apparent [Page 23] suspension of old and hitherto invariable laws, Sinclair, in his writings, shows us that it is because we do not recognise the elements of nature that their influences remain mysterious to us.

The Wigan Observer, in its issue of September 3rd, under the heading of "A Remarkable Work by a Local Author", prints a review of "A New Creed", which recently appeared in the columns of "Invention".

A remarkable work this "New Creed", It should put those who will give it attentive reading on a new path of thought — a path which, at the present day, though pursued by some, is by very far the greater number ridiculed without being understood or without even an effort being made to understand the subject. The secrets of nature have ever had a huge attraction for a large number of the human family; and still more so the secrets of human thought and will — the propelling power which moves the world and actuates all that is in it. To deal with such a subject in ever so cursory a manner were a tremendous task indeed, and for the masterful yet lucid way in which the nameless author of this metaphysical treatise has grappled with the task, we have only the most unbounded praise. As may be imagined from the full title of the volume, the author examines his subject from the purely human and natural standpoint, taking as his axioms the incontrovertible facts that all men suffer, all men worship, and that all men believe "union is strength", while the key-notes of his argument are supplied in the two following brief quotations: — "The fundamental belief is that, ' in the creator is that sympathy which the creature, by created means made known to him, must imbibe as the requisite motive power for producing true human happiness" and "that 'man was made to mourn' is to me a mere mythology. I do not believe it". Starting on these theses the author proceeds to show how, in a natural and proper state, man was not meant, nor made by his creator, to be miserable; that this condition was nought but an accident of life, an acquired habit of mankind; and that this is so is very ably and painstakingly demonstrated. Passing on to the next division of the work, which takes as its basis the fact that all men worship, that mankind, no matter how intellectual or how depraved, pays divine honours to what they consider superior beings or gods, there being no such being as a non-worshipper in the world, albeit among some Christians the line between belief and unbelief is a very thin one indeed; we come in due course to the third division of the book, which deals with the axiom that union is strength and all men believe it so to be; the hoary truth of which we know from ancient history, the necessity for society having been acknowledged from the very earliest times, there being no people, either past or present, who have been or are so utterly uncivilised [Page 24] as not to see the necessity for combination, while, as events march, the necessity becomes still more marked. Having set forth the ground, the author proceeds to show how these three self-evident axioms had one and the same origin, and to demonstrate and prove the truth of his assertion the author is occupied. This originating element is of a more universal kind than any of those already known to science, which has not even been recognised, and yet which is the most widely spread and most powerful in all creation. "It is a volatile and spiritual-like substance pervading the realms of soul and body", so says the unknown author of what we cannot but consider a most ill-named work, "which is highly sensitive to every emotion and thought, a latent force in which lurks all the psychological secrets of nature". This is the matter with which the volume under notice deals, and in a manner convincing, thorough, demonstrable, and learned, which brings us face to face with a new factor in human thought. The following explanation thereof may well be quoted: — "It is not sympathy, yet it is that element in which sympathy can alone live, and is as essential to our true being as water is to a fish or air to birds and animals. It is an element existent everywhere, less substantial, but as real as air. As air is the medium of sound, light, and heat, so this element is a medium of great subtility, conveying even the unexpressed emotions of the mind, and transmitting instantaneously the pulsations of one soul to another. It is in all beings as certainly as there is electricity in the air. It is the immediate environment of all, and beyond it none can get. Through it the lower animals give their confidences and affections to mankind, and by it the soul communes with God". This may really be taken as the author's broad confession of faith, and upon it he proceeds to deliver a sermon, in which his reasons for this belief are given, to which those who are interested more particularly in metaphysical and psychological subjects are referred, conscious that they will find therein very much to impress. Our object, beyond paying our meed of praise to the work, is rather to place the matter of which it treats in line with the lifelong work of Keely, the Philadelphia scientist, and its present position. Perhaps no searcher in the fields of science has ever been so roundly abused as Keely, but followers and believers in the man and his work have always solaced themselves with the reflection that it has ever been thus with discoverers, from Galileo onwards. Thus the author of "A New Creed " says: — "The current of sympathy is a constant quantity in the etheriform element in every particle of human nature, just as there is electricity in everybody, but as electricity is only utilised by human instrumentalities, so must this sympathy be . . . . When men have this high belief in this elemental force, they will use their senses and prove it the greatest power in human life. This treatise claims for it greater power in the moral and spiritual world than is claimed for electricity in the material world". Keely thus writes on the same subject: [Page 25] — "The action of Nature's sympathetic flows, regulates the differential oscillatory range of motion of the planetary masses as regards their approach toward and recession from each other. These flows may also be compared to the flow of the magnet which permeates the field, existing between the molecules themselves, sensitising the combined neutral centres of the molecules without disturbing, in the least, the visible molecular mass itself. In the planetary masses — balanced, as it were, in the scales of universal space, floating like soap bubbles in a field of atmospheric air, the concentration of these sympathetic streams evolves the universal power which moves them in their oscillating range of motion to and from each other. This sympathetic triple stream focalises and defocalises on the neutrals of all such masses; polarising and depolarising, positive and negative action; planetary rotation, etc.. It is thus that all the conditions governing light, heat, life, vegetation, motion, are all derived from the velocity of the positive and negative interchange of celestial sympathy with the terrestrial". The italics are ours, and a comparison of the two quotations will show that, unconsciously, in all probability, the author of "A New Creed" and Keely are travelling the same paths of metaphysical research. Speaking of this universal ether, the former says: — "This etheriform agent is an invisible, but a great and wonderful power in creation, known to all by its influence and effects". Man must recognise that the wonderful mechanism of his life requires some motive power that is not in himself, and yet that will connect him with the divine source of his being, and with Him in whose image he is made. It is not a question to be settled by higher education or extraordinary scholastic intelligence, but one for common humanity. It is more than passing strange that two men — for we presume the author of the book under notice belongs to the sterner sex — placed in different hemispheres, should, unknown to each other, have started and travelled for some distance on the same track; and we unhesitatingly say that those who would rightly understand Keely and his work will find a study of "A New Creed" a very considerable help in that direction. We shall bring these somewhat lengthy notes to a conclusion, by quoting one of the latest utterances of Keely respecting his work, looked at from the mechanical, as apart from the metaphysical, point of view. He says: "From twelve drops of water a force can be developed that will fill a chamber of seven pint volume no less than six times with a pressure of ten tons to the square inch". And again: — "All molecular masses of metal represent in their intersticial molecular spaces incalculable amounts of latent force which, if awakened and brought into intense vibratory action by the medium of sympathetic liberation, would result in thousands of billions more power in foot pounds than that necessary to awake it. The resultant development of any and all forces is only accomplished by conditions that awaken the latent energy .They have carried with them during [Page 26] molecular aggregation". Those who have taken any interest in Keely and his work will find in this remarkable book — "A New Creed" — much that will help them to a better understanding of the nature of the element which Keely has been researching for many years, in his endeavours to utilise the unknown force in mechanics.

As Keely's work and Mr. Sinclair's are so closely associated in this criticism, it will be interesting to know that Keely himself, after reading Mr. Sinclair's book twice, writes in a private letter: — I consider it the most philosophical work I have ever read. In my estimation it conveys sound sense in its every line, and accords faithfully with every truth associated with sympathetic outflow and its environments".

The author of "A New Creed" had never heard of Keely's theories, nor of his existence even, when this book was issued, last June, which makes the similarity in their views of cerebral radiation and of sympathetic association the more striking. The same month an orthodox scientist, in "The Arena", touches upon these subjects, reasoning that if mental action is accompanied by molecular motions of any sort, it follows that there must be corresponding ether waves; and, therefore, that similarly constituted molecules in other bodies must, as necessarily, move in consonance with the first as if the source were heat-motion upon a similar molecule; drawing the inference that such phenomena as thought-transference would be looked for and explained as simply as the phenomena of the exchange of heat". Those who are familiar with Keely's claims, as a discoverer, know that he asserts there is a cerebral flow, or stream of will-force; and that the great universe of planetary masses, associated as it is with the celestial etheric sympathetic flows, bears the same relation to the physical organism, that celestial radiation bears to the will-force current emanating from the brain; illustrating the control which celestial mind has over terrestrial matter. The one fountain head of power is none other than the Omnipotent and All-pervading Will-Force of the All-mighty, which creates, upholds, guides and governs the Universe.

Were it not for this will-force eternally flowing into all created forms, the entire universe would disappear. In Keely's researches into the operation of the laws governing sympathetic etheric influence, he has found that the sympathetic flow, emanating from the normal human brain, comes in on the order of the seventh position of atomic-subdivision; compound inter-etheric sympathy the resultant: a condition of subtlety that readily and instantaneously permeates all forms of aggregated matter, from air to solid hammered steel.

With this explanation of what sympathetic association, or a flow of sympathy, implies, the reader of "A New Creed" will be better able to understand the nature of the unknown element which is therein declared to be more universal than all others. The writer says, — "It is a volatile [Page 27] and spiritual-like substance pervading the realms of soul and body, and is highly sensitive to every emotion and thought; a latent force in which lurks all the psychological secrets of nature. It is not confined to any particular part of creation, not an adjunct of nature only, but an element diffused through the whole universe; terrestrial and celestial, corporeal and spiritual; animal, vegetable and mineral. Its existence is as capable of proof as any scientific theory".

Again, taking up Keely's theories, we find confirmation in sympathetic physics of Mr. Sinclair's views, in these words: — "Sympathetic association which governs all the solids, holds the same control over all liquids; and again from liquid to solid, embracing the three kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral. If metallic mediums are brought under the influence of this sympathetic flow, they become organisms which carry the same influence with them that the human brain holds over living organisms. The composition of metallic and that of physical positions are the same; although the molecular arrangement of the physical may be entirely opposite to the metallic, on their aggregations. The harmonious chords, induced by sympathetic, positive vibration, permeate the molecules in each, notwithstanding, and bring about the perfect equation of any differentiation that exists; thus making them one and the same medium for sympathetic transmission".

Mr. Sinclair is as firm in his belief as is Mr. Keely that this element is the great connecting link between the Creator and the created, and that it is capable of rendering more marvellous services to man than all the discovered uses of electricity.

The coincidences in the theories of these two philosophers are the more remarkable, inasmuch as Mr. Sinclair's have their origin, as set forth in "A New Creed", in metaphysics; while "Keely's wide and far-reaching philosophy" (to quote the words of a distinguished physicist), "has a physical genesis, and has been developed by long years of patient and persistent research". But it is an undisputed fact that, in countries far distant from each other, different men have fallen into the same lines of research; and have made correspondent discoveries, at the same time, without having had any communication with each other: and never has there been a time when so many were testing all things that appear to give proof of the super-sensual element in man. "There is a very general impression all over the world", says Marie Correlli, "that the time is ripe for a clearer revelation of God and ' the hidden things of God' than we have ever had before".

It would seem, by an article in the Franklin Institute Journal for June, on "Cerebral Radiation", that its writer, Professor Houston of Philadelphia, is in danger of falling into Keely's tracks, as in that paper he sets forth, very timidly it is true, some conjectures of his own, which Keely has been [Page 28] for years demonstrating as theories, in his system of philosophy. Professor Houston's advance in this direction is the more remarkable as it is scarcely two years since he expressed his conviction that Mr. Keely was working with alternate currents of electricity. Within three months after this assertion had been made, Professors Brinton and Koenig, of the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Tuttle, a Baltimore physicist, tested the force handled by Keely and pronounced it to be neither electricity nor magnetism nor compressed air.

All persons who are interested in Keely's discoveries and the nature of the unknown element discovered by Keely and Sinclair, will find in the writings of the latter a more lucid explanation of sympathetic association than Keely himself has ever been able to give in writing.

"There is no conductivity in the ether lines", writes Sinclair, "for selfish desires and motives; for they are not of the soul, but are only sounds of the lips" (or wishes of the material part of us), "so that the established connecting-rod between the living soul and the source of life is insulated from desires that are not begotten in sympathy, and they at once run to earth. Where there is no connection there can be no communion. Without the natural sympathetic etheric connection between the Source of Life and the soul, there can be no communication". "A New Creed", like the sympathetic etheric philosophy of Keely, reveals the connecting link between the finite and Infinite, and teaches us that the primal law of evolution and of progress is slowly but surely preparing our race for the time when Christianity will be something more than a mere profession, and the brotherhood of humanity will no longer be the meaningless phrase that it now is. We are led to see, by this pure philosophy, that "our solar system is a type of a healthy social system; that in it each one affects, binds, controls, sustains, helps, makes free each other; that no star lives for itself alone; that man was not made to mourn; and that our sufferings arise from our ignorance of the laws governing the innate motive power within us.

"The times are not degenerate ! Men's faith
Mounts higher than of old. No crumbling creed
Can take from the immortal soul its need
Of something greater than itself. The wraith
Of dead belief, we cherished in our youth,
Fades but to let us welcome new born truth.
Man may not worship at the ancient shrine,
Prone on his face, in self-accusing scorn.
That night is passed; he hails a fairer morn,
And knows himself a something half divine !
No humble worm whose heritage is sin,
But part of God — he feels the Christ within !
No fierce Jehovah with a frowning mien
He worships. Nay, through love, and not through fear,
He seeks the truth, and finds its source is near !
He feels and owns the power of things unseen,
Where once he scoffed. God's great primeval plan
Is fast unfolding in the soul of man."

— ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.

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