spiritual wickedness. When men, like Balaam, pervert their God-consciousness; and speak lies-not from infirmity, as Peter did; not from cowardice, as Jacob did; but from a desire of earthly gain or of pleasure, a seal is set upon their character-Judas and Balaam stand forth. Men of noble form adorn their natural and mental position with moral and spiritual beauty. They know 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, the Ascent of Elijah. They do not live as creatures of a day, but for the world to come. They say “ Our intellectual and moral structure promises and seems to render necessary an afterstage of expansion. The natural is pierced and pervaded by the spiritual. There is a beauty transcending all beauty, concerning which even our dreams are not wholly false; a joy above all joy, which we hope to attain by a graciousness of God exceeding all other graciousness." These men-whether at the Bank, on 'Change, in the mart, by the forge, with the plough, or in the dust and smoke of battle-are well known, of sound understanding, to adorn and replenish the earth. They exult in the light and beauty of a promised new and fair creation. They regard the spirit's birth into the world of matter as a ineans whereby, even through solid extension and mechanical properties, the soul is made more personal, more exact, and possessor of joys which disembodied spirits cannot share. These joys to come break in upon them by anticipation, rendering things ever and ever new, revealing the universe in its meanings, beauties, glories, immensities, and God as All in all. STUDY XIX. THE INVISIBLE. "We have a visionary gleam; We have now concluded that portion of our subject, the Divine Narrative of Creation, special study of which leads to the conviction of Divine operation, and to demonstration that Religion, which embodied the highest thought of the time, 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, a glorious temple of the Almighty, and the present life as that wonderful stage on which, by due exercise of our freedom, we are fitted for an exalted future existence. The dogmas of our Faith, being experimentally verified, shine with a light that was never on sea or shore-the light of a new world. The remaining Studies 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-the assertion is not to be utterly rejected. Some of us detect in the best photographs a peculiar delicacy, possessing within the surface a spiritual relief which we at once recognise as a true likeness of the inner man. Heinrich Zschokke, we are informed, was able to describe many particulars of an individual's past life. Certainly, nerve-force may exert itself from a distance and bring the brain of one person into direct dynamical communication with that of another. This power, which we know to be exercised, seems akin to the link which unites the invisible universe, so that it becomes part of our consciousness. There is, at times in some of us, a delicacy and acuteness of hearing-a subjective sensation producing ideas-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 other ears inaudible, insect music, and that 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 experience of an inner faculty, nor destitute of 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. The scientific exercise in which we now engage will call into use our highest faculties, those specially with which genius effects her greatest triumphs. 1 "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." 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. Such facts must not be regarded as fortuitously presented. There are many instances, thoroughly well attested, in which knowledge of 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 "Mental Physiology:" W. B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R. S. Procession from the Unseen. 371 every principle of philosophical and of forensic evidence, to be admitted as furnishing proper proof of an invisible interference." 1 Can these things be scientifically measured, or must we confess that they escape both hand and eye? Doubtless, they can be known according to the measure and kind of a man's ability“ πᾶν τρᾶγμα ἔχει δύο λαβάς.” 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 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 at the same time belonging to the invisible leads a true life. A scientific man formulates the fact somewhat in this fashion-The doctrines of the Conservation of Energy, and Uniformity of Law, require that there be no sudden wrench, or absolute break anywhere; nevertheless, 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 not a series of smooth continuity and invariable uniformity; but that infinitely various and complicate operation by which all things visible and invisible are wrought in splendid unity. 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, from the invisible. 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 ever-unfolding phenomena. "Physical Theory of Another Life," cap. xvii.: Isaac Taylor. 2 "Bible Psychology," p. 63. If we look inward, we cannot remember how consciousness began, nor can we examine the essential nature of the consciousness that at present exists, nor shall we know its end: the beginning, continuance, termination, are equally mysteriousan impenetrable mystery lies under all. To ignore everything but what is visible breaks the doctrine of continuity and disrupts the grand chain of entity. To be told that the visible universe is only a huge fire which burns itself out, and leaves nothing but ashes-dead worthless residuum -is enough to startle every one. Science must modify the doctrine of Continuance by acknowledging the kindling, as it owns the quenching of the fire; must allow that the visible is the realisation of the unseen, and possibly forms but an infinitesimal part of that whole which we call the universe. Put the fact in three shapes. I. Did the visible spring out of an order, or no order of things, with which it had no connection? II. Will it pass into an order or no order of things, wholly unconnected with it? III. Is it a transference from the invisible; which, passing from grade to grade of realisation, becomes transposed into some other order of things with which it is intimately connected? Now, if the scientific affirmation is correct, that the requisites for existence connect every organ and organism with the past-we must hold, as the very root of our life and the foundation of all existence, that the scientific doctrine of Continuity, if true, is proof of a transposition of the past into the present order of things; and of the present into some other order with which it is connected. The third proposition therefore is true; so when "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Shakespeare. there will be a continuance, or state, into which the present visible existence is an avenue. Those who, in the name of science at one end, or in the name of religion at the other, would wall up the path and affix a placard-" No Road This Way," mistrust their own principles.1 The physical properties of matter have been well called "The Unseen Universe," p. 211. |