An Invisible World. 193 perfect type of existence in the universe, they are like minnows mistaking their native rivulet for the outlying ocean. True men know that these rivulets have their origin in waterthreads drawn from the mountain-side. They ascend the mountain, guided by the thread, till finally they arrive at the vast snow-fields of the summit. There, where earth ceases, they stand perplexed, thrilled, awed-they worship; worship the great God who makes the thread of light, the cloud of spray, the leaping cataract, the flowing river, the sea-wave, the floating mist, the snow-flake, to be embodied histories. Of the innumerable combinations of matter in infinite space, and of the progressions of energy, we know but little. To assert that "yonder hundred million spheres" contain no forms of existence transcending manhood-as manhood transcends life in the rain-drop, that our intelligent will is not a sparklet of the Intelligent Will, is not so much a height of unwarrantable assumption as an abyss of folly. We are sure that there is a vast outlying invisible World. No merely ideal production, though beyond the range of actual presentation. The domain of the senses is almost infinitely small in comparison with the vast regions which can be traversed by the intellect. Some of these regions are in strict accordance with the visible, and may be dealt with in confidence; or they may be disengaged from conformity with any rubric of the known, because-though affording a base-line for some proximate measurement of the parallax of the inaccessible—they yield only indistinct views of a spirit-world. A spirit-world not ceasing to be spiritual because it has means of passage to, and modes of action on, our intellectual and moral nature, even as refined and immaterial existences freely pervade the grosser. Our range of possible knowledge is practically infinite, nor must we allow Materialists to deprive us of those vast and glorious operations which belong to intelligence, nor to shut us within the bars of that which we touch, taste, see, hear, smell. Further The constant change by which the pole of our earth revolves round the pole of the ecliptic, so that the polestar of to-day will not be the pole-star 3000 years hence, is a regulated process extending to all things, even to those which seem lawless. The two hundred and seventy or more volcanoes constantly or intermittently throwing out steam, hot ashes, lava; the story of the submergence of an ancient continent, whether fabulous or true; the Atlantis of Plato, even if but a myth; may be accounted for by law. Law, infinite in variety of operation, making of the sea a continent, and of the continent a Polynesia; interspersing catastrophes with uniform operations, so that no catastrophe is too great or too sudden to be theoretically inconsistent with the reign of law; variations in flora and fauna being wrought by some continuous influence acting for ages; or, it may be, at some special moment starting out on a new line; or a comparatively swift energy stamping old forms with a new type. One germ is microscopic, but it develops into a highly organised animal. Another germ is also microscopic, in no wise distinguishable from the other, but it becomes an animal altogether different. These changes are all governed by a deep and wide-reaching law, but we are absolutely ignorant of it. Must we say, because of that ignorance-" Law is Fate?" Certainly not. The world, in some respects, is inscrutable; but we know that our will avails something in it; know of God, and that His will avails much more. To say that the Supreme must not be accounted Intelligent because all our notions of intelligence are limited, is equal to the absurdity of declaring that there cannot be one infinite space, because space, however extended, must lie within another space. It has been well said "The undevout astronomer is mad." Why mad? Because he knows-no one better-that the worlds in space are manifestations of a Power to which no limits can be assigned, either in time or space. This is the scientific, fundamental truth as to Godhead, and the man of science knows that "the heavens declare the glory of God." To tell us we must not worship God because His essence, His energy, His infinity, His eternity, His omnipresence, are incomprehensible, draws forth the reply-" When our intelligence is baffled, when the Infinite confronts us, we worship: were He less, He would not be great enough for our faith and too little for our heart. Life in Other Worlds. "Great God, our littleness takes heart to play Is that Thou art so great." Faber. 195 Not ignorantly, not measuring the Creator by the creature, we adore Him as that highest absolute Being in whom all possibilities of existence are comprehended. We consecrate memories of the illustrious dead-those who, under God, have made us what we are. We rejoice in that communion of saints, unseen yet real, whose heroic sufferings rise to heaven as a sacred prayer-whose heroic actions are a psalm of praise; and our enthusiasm grows into devotion, reverence, majestic grandeur, when assembled myriads worship. We take facts as we find them. Butler said "Things are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be; why, then, should we desire to be deceived?" The facts are evidence of a far-extending purpose; every part seems worked with much art, and assigned to appropriate place. Blind necessity must always and everywhere be the same unreasoning thing, cannot be more than inert dead equilibrium, cannot produce complex exquisite beauty and order. "If men of piety were also men of science, and if men of science were to read the Scriptures, there would be more faith on the earth and more philosophy." We should be led in a more direct and simple way to the feet of our wise and loving Father. A true foundation would be laid by knowledge, love, obedience, for happiness in every individual life, and for rendering beneficent the growing complications of human society; while our study of Nature would be rendered more honourable by possessing the dignity of an inquiry into the ways of God. The duration of life on our globe is but a single pulsation of the mighty life of the universe. Nay, the duration of the planetary system itself is scarcely more. Life, then, is a very small matter; yet, for life the whole scheme seems planned. Countless other systems, unless science is utterly at fault passed through their processes and died out, that our sun and his family might be formed of their nebulaæ; and countless 1 Hamilton, "Royal Preacher." others will be built when our habitation of life has fallen to ruin. The infinite universe is, and must be, so far as we can understand, without beginning and without end. The centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. Not suns only, but systems of suns, and galaxies of systems, are passing to higher and higher orders-connected with time intervals infinitely great and infinitesimally small. Infinitesimally small as compared with eternity in which they are lost. Infinitely great in comparison with the duration of our earth, and the yet smaller span of its existence as a dwelling for life. Nevertheless, it is at the least "probable that every member of every order-planet, sun, galaxy, and so onward to higher and higher orders endlessly-has been, is now, or will hereafter be, life-supporting after its kind.'" It is, therefore, utter unwisdom to suppose that our earth is the only inhabited orb of the universe. Though, when we scan the sky, millions of lifeless worlds are found for every life-sustaining star; and though the life-sustaining condition of stars and suns and galaxies is a period short indeed as compared with their duration; yet, that life-period is their flower and fruit time. It seems, indeed, as if the support of life was Nature's great purpose. Land, water, air, teem with life. In the bitter cold of Arctic regions, with strange alternations of long summer day and long winter night, frozen seas, perennial ice, life has a hundred forms. The torrid zone, blazing with heat, parched with drought, fierce raging hurricanes driving away oppressive calms, contains myriads of living things. Mountain summits, depths of valleys, mid-ocean, arid desert, warm and salt springs, are all inhabited. So, likewise, in past ages there was abundant life. No trace remains of millions and millions of the primitive living creatures in the earliest eras; yet, from the remains of other eras we know that life abounded in the sea -forming strata after strata; and that multitudes fed on the land. This incalculable multiplication of life on earth is greatly due to solar agency; and physical laws, like those ruling our planet, are traced everywhere; the unbounded diffusion of sun and star light warrants our faith that there is life in many 1 "Life in Other Worlds: " Richard A. Proctor. worlds. The same physical laws operate, so far as our science extends, wherever matter is; and we reasonably conclude that the same moral power exists in every abode of mind. Why may not the universe be aglow with the lamplight and hearthlight of many happy homes? The suns are not mere gilded shows, nor blazing points. They are sources whence flows the physical power by which advances are made through low grades of being to high corporeity. The material universe is a palace of the King, vast in extent and duration, rich with varied existences of intelligent creatures. Our own home is only a hamlet on the side of a great mountain range; but the magnificent bodies of light, scattered over infinite fields of space, worlds and worlds suspended in heights and depths, are palaces lit up with splendour. We cannot but think that Intelligence, at the very heart of things, is conducting many families in the paths of love. Life is not a continual struggle with brute irresistible force, but a process whose work is the survival of the best. Our thoughts, when gone, are not dead; or if dead and buried in forgetfulness, recollection, the angel of memory, raises them and they live again. Shall not all the dead be raised? Are we not as lasting on the spiritual as on the physical side of our nature? "My heart is renewed within me when I think Of the great miracle that still goes on In silence round me-the perpetual work Of Thy creation, finished, yet renewed William Cullen Bryant. |