how I conceive the soul to be connected with or related to the body—to matter. I reply, I know not. I only know that God is good, and that this goodness cannot exist without a state of reward and punishment hereafter to mankind. This makes me certain that, in some way or other, man will exist after death: but how the Deity has not given me faculties to comprehend. And if I wanted a proof of this latter proposition, I have only to go for it to the unsatisfactory nature of the Doctor’s Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit, from which I think any unprejudiced person must see that he has involved himself in inextricable difficulties, from not attending to Mr. Locke’s doctrine, and from attempting that which is beyond the reach of the human understanding.
If my reader will pay a little attention to what passes in his own mind, he will soon see, that when he talks of Spirit or Ghost, he generally has no idea of any thing. This is one of the subjects of which he can acquire no knowledge or idea through the medium of the senses. Therefore, as might be expected, a great confusion of terms prevails. In the foregoing examination, the truth of what I have said will be instantly apparent. The terms betray, in their origin, the grossest materialism. I think the reader must now see that if the spirit of God mean any thing, it is a mere figure of speech, and means that God has so modelled his law of creation, that the patient shall have a good disposition, or a good spirit. And if it be said that he has a spirit of prophecy or of foretelling future events, I reply, the expression may as well be, that he has a flesh to foretell as a spirit to foretell. If God have ever given a person a knowledge of what will happen at a future time, this has no more to do with the spirit or the air in motion, than with the flesh. Jesus said, the gates of hell should never prevail against his religion. According to your accounts, Christian doctors, they have prevailed and continue to prevail. But I say, No. They have not prevailed, and never will prevail; the pure, unadulterated doctrines of Jesus will stand for ever. They have only prevailed against the corruptions with which you have loaded his religion. The fine morality and the unity of God, which you would have destroyed, can never really be destroyed, though your idols, your relics, your saints, and your mother of God, will all pass away, like yesterday’s shadow of a cloud on the mountain.
9. It is now time to return to the Persians.
After enumerating various other instances to prove the existence of an Indian Trinity, Mr. Maurice says, “Degraded infinitely, I must repeat it, beneath the Christian, as are the characters of the Hindoo Trinity, yet in our whole research throughout Asia there has not hitherto occurred so direct and unequivocal a designation of a Trinity in Unity as that sculptured in the Elephanta cavern: nor is there any more decided avowal of the doctrine itself any where to be met with than in the following passages of the Bhagvat Geeta. In that most ancient and authentic book, the supreme Veeshnu thus speaks concerning himself and his divine properties: ‘I am the holy one, worthy to be known.’ He immediately adds, ‘I am the mystic (triliteral) figure Om; the Reig, the Yagush, and the Saman Vedas.’[1] Here we see that Veeshnu speaks expressly of his unity, and yet in the same sense declares he is the mystic figure A. U. M., which three letters the reader has been informed, from Sir W. Jones, coalesce and form the Sanscreet word OM.” A little after, in the same page, Mr. Maurice tells us, that the figure which stands for the word OM of the Brahmins, is designated by the combination of three letters, which Dr. Wilkins has shewn to stand, the first for the Creator, the second for the Preserver, and the third for the Destroyer.[2]
M. Sonnerat also states that the Hindoos adore three principal deities, Brouma, Chiven, and Vichenou, who are still but one.[3]
