Orson Pratt taught that instead of there being an “infinite regression of gods” that there was a “Great First Cause”. I quite like this perspective, and it has influenced my own theology.
Yesterday as I was studying the publication “Peep O’Day” (Specifically Vol 1, No. 2, pg 28) I stumbled upon an article called “Man A Proof of Deity” by E.W. Tullidge. To my surprise, this article was an extract from a manuscript of a book he had written called “The Great First Cause”.
I searched around to see if this manuscript has since been published, but it doesn’t look like it. I asked my friend Benjamin Park if he knew if it existed and he guessed it was either burned by his family or has been lost.
Since this article may be the only excerpt from this manuscript, I wanted to preserve it here on my website. I hope you enjoy it.
Every man is as conscious of the existence of God as he is of his own existence. Indeed, the latter is a proof of the former; for what is the Soul but a part of that universal spiritual existence which we call the “Great First Cause.” Every soul is so much of it as the extent and size of its own individuality; and in the proportion as its individual consciousness approximates to and partakes of the universal consciousness, so great a witness is every man of its existence. To say that we cannot comprehend God in His most abstract and universal meaning, is to say that which amounts to nothing. We cannot comprehend Him, abstractly, even in His most minute and individual sense. Can we abstractly comprehend that being which we call ourselves, or that very mystery which we call consciousness? And yet we know that we do exist, and it is that consciousness which constitutes our intellectual and spiritual life. Every man is an evidence of one great fact – the existence of God. And this is true through his recognizance of this fact should extend no farther than his own individual being and experience. Indeed, it is impossible for it to extend farther than these, for no man can realize a truth by the consciousness and experience of another. It is our individuality, our knowledge, our experience, and our consciousness, that become more enlarged and distinct, and not the universe or any part of it. It is God within us becoming more developed – it is our individuality becoming more universal, which constitutes our growth of consciousness in his existence. Although we should say that we do not comprehend the individual soul, neither the universal soul – God; though we should deny one or both, and make ourselves a sum of contradictions, yet what does this prove more than these facts are very great, and perhaps, that our consciousness of them is also great, but that our knowledge, and symbols, and language are inadequate to interpret them. And men have generally a pretty distinct notion in such case that they say what they do not exactly mean, and what is not consistent with their experience and consciousness. Indeed, they often quarrel with others for understanding them according to their own statements. They misinterpret themselves and their subjects, they say one thing and mean another, or they use language to which others attach a different meaning, and thus they mystify themselves, their subjects, and their neighbors.
Many of those who are called infidels and atheists will rank among the greatest witnesses to the existence of God. Their writings are manifestations of higher natures than those of the common class of men, and their ideas, and their attempts which they make to explain the big mysteries which are pressing upon them – to reconcile things as they are with their conceptions of truth, wisdom, purity, benevolence, and God – are only so many proofs that the popular interpretations of Him and His economy are below their standard of spiritual development.