Knowledge not Sufficient. 345 be confessed that, though making endless advance in knowledge, we are almost at a stand-still in moral goodness and spiritual-mindedness. Here we stand as if again in Paradise, in presence of the Trees of Life and of Knowledge. Too many rehearse the old tragedy; whereas, the reverse of the access to the trees should now be tried; and holiness taken as the way to become immortal. It is not enough to possess great knowledge, that may lie outside the centre of our being: a licentious scoffer may be very intellectual; but he cannot, at the same time, be spiritual. It is true that in such a man may exist a strange consciousness of God--but not much stronger than an exercise of ideality. "If you are content," said Professor Tyndall, “to make your soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of ordinary mechanical laws, I for one, would not object to this exercise of ideality." Men who thus speak of the soul-the organ of God-consciousness, are in danger, through disuse, of losing the Divine gift. They forget that there are three natures in man- the fleshly, the intellectual, the moral; and that there are three degrees of sin-sins of the flesh, sins of temper and intellect, and sins of spiritual wickedness. When men call evil good and good evil; when, like Balaam, even God-consciousness is abused to evil; and lies are spoken-not from infirmity, as did Peter; not from cowardice, as did Jacob; but by a speaking of his own from a love of evil; then a seal is set upon the character, Judas and Balaam stand forth. Men of noble form shrink not from their natural standing and mental position, but adorn it with moral and spiritual beauty, and advance with rapidity to new and higher ground. Knowing that the entrance of a human being into the world, by the common course of nature, is as real a manifestation of the power of God as were the Creation of Adam, the Translation of Enoch, and the Ascent of Elijah, they do not live as creatures of a day, but establish a good foundation in the world to come. They say "our intellectual and moral structure implies, and renders necessary, an after stage 1 Address, as President of the Midland Institute, at Birmingham. Reported in The Times, 2nd October 1877. of expansion." They feel that the natural is pierced and pervaded by the spiritual; that there is a beauty transcending all beauty, concerning which their dreams are not wholly false; a joy above all joy, which they hope to attain by a graciousness of God exceeding all other graciousness. Whether at the Bank, on 'Change, in the Mart, by the Forge, with the Plough, or striving in battle, they are well-known, and of sound understanding: are God-made men to adorn and replenish the earth. They will exult in the light and beauty of a new and fair creation in comparison with which that recorded by Moses is but as an outline. They pass intorealization of the truth that the spirit's birth into the world of matter was a means whereby, even through solid extension and mechanical properties, the soul is made more personal, more exact, and possessor of joys which even angels cannot share. These joys to come, break in even now by anticipation upon the soul, as if another spirit-power had been given, rendering things ever and ever new; revealing the universe in its meanings, beauties, glories, immensities, and God as All in all, 孽 STUDY XIX. THE INVISIBLE. "We have a visionary gleam; WE have now concluded that portion of our subject, the Divine Narrative of Creation, whose special study leads to the conviction that Religion embodied the highest thought of the time, and widens and deepens with our ever-growing experience. The explanations which were given of the universe are not childish guesses made by barbarous tribes, but are equally suitable for the infancy and the grandeur of human intellect. They reveal the universe as one splendid unity, as a glorious temple of the Almighty, and the present life as that wonderful stage of existence on which, by due exercise of our freedom, we are fitted for an exalted existence. The Dogmas of our Faith being experimentally verified, shine with light that was never on sea or shore, the light of a new world for men of pure heart. The remaining Studies are intended to give completeness and thoroughness to the whole subject. It is asserted, that there exists a power of perceiving what is passing in the mind of another, or of thought to read thought, which may be voluntarily exalted; but acts generally by unconscious interpretation of indefinable indications. Heinrich. Zschokke, we are informed, was able to describe many particulars of an individual's past life. Certainly it is not incredible that nerve force may exert itself from a distance, and bring the brain of one person into direct dynamical communication with that of another. There is, at times in some of us, a delicacy and acuteness of hearing that, when on the sea-shore or sitting in a meadow of stillness, the ripple of the waves in soft murmurs among the pebbles and the, to all inscudikle, other ears inaudible, insect music, and of grasses vibrating in responsive touch as they gracefully move, form sounds sonorous and grand as the thunder peal; or are full of sweetest harmony as had the melodies of heaven come from the upper fields. This cannot be put away as wholly a freak of the imagination; there are two parts in every sensation: what we get, and what we add to it. Some men have less feeling than others possess, but none are wholly without feeling as to the mystery of the universe, nor unvisited by thoughts of a life beyond the present, nor dead to the stirring impulses which excite belief that the sorrows of mankind will be remedied and their pleasures enlarged. "Even in the strictest of sciences-Mathematics-it can be easily shown that no really great advance, such as the inventions of Fluxions by Newton, and of the Differential Calculus by Leibnitz, can be made without the exercise of the imagination." 1 There seems to be in nature something like a galvanic circle, something that reveals itself in peculiar processes of thought-like that which suddenly solved the problem that for fifteen years had haunted Sir W. Rowan Hamilton. The sparks which fell being the fundamental equations between i, j, k. Such facts must not be regarded as fortuitously presented. There are many instances, thoroughly well attested, in which the death of a relative at a distance has been conveyed, with all the particulars, to persons during their sleep; and there are examples of some special information, buried in the bosom of the dead, being imparted in sleep to the living. "The singularity of the facts conveyed, and the impossibility of their coming through any ordinary channel, ought, on every principle of philosophical and of forensic evidence, to be admitted as furnishing proper proof of an invisible interference." 2 Can these things be scientifically measured, or must we confess that they escape both hand and eye? Swedenborg who, though dreamer, was yet a man of spiritual insight, states, "that the whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world collectively and in every part; for the natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual 1 66 "Mental Physiology:" W. B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S. Physical Theory of Another Life," cap. xvii.: Isaac Taylor. 2.66 Procession from the Unseen. 349 world, just as an effect does from the cause." Delitzsch says -"The creation realised in time is actually only the temporal realisation of that which was everlastingly present to the triune self-consciousness of God; and of the latter as of the former the same principle is true, that it is God in the totality of His nature from Whom and in Whom it has its ideal existence." It is the every-day experience of a devout man that only he who lives in the world as not of it, but as belonging to the invisible, leads a true life: 1 "There surely is some blessed clime, Where life is not a breath, Nor life's affections transient fire Whose sparks fly upward and expire." JAMES MONTGOMERY. The doctrines of the Conservation of energy, and Uniformity of Law, require that there be no sudden wrench, or absolute break anywhere; but actually the creation and existence of the visible universe from its first manifestation to the final overthrow, from the beginning in time to the end in time, are a series of breaks in continuity and uniformity. Science rightly pushes back to the furthest our knowledge of the Great First Cause; but cannot do away with the original production of the visible universe, which must be dealt with as any other phenomenon. Alike in the external and internal worlds, we are in the midst of changes, and can neither discover beginning nor end-so as to understand them. If we entertain the hypothesis that all nature once existed in a diffused form, we cannot conceive or know how this could be. If we speculate on the future, no limit can be assigned to the marvellous succession of phenomena which is ever unfolding. If we look inward, we cannot remember how consciousness began, nor can we examine the consciousness that at present exists, nor shall we know its end: the beginning, continuance, and termination are equally mysterious in their essential nature: under all things lies an impenetrable mystery. To ignore everything but what is visible, then to tell us that this visible is only a huge fire which burns itself out, and leaves nothing but ashes-the dead worthless body of the present living 1 "Bible Psychology,” p. 63. |