8 THE GIFT OF \ A^yjiP.&.^..7- i.7/.(t/9--i^.... Cornell University Library BL530 .R46 Natural history of immortality oiin 3 1924 029 127 292 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY ' ' When we once know those exceedingly great and precious things which are freely given unto us, love is thereupon largely shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost ; under the influence of which we are free and happy, all-affecting workmen, overcomers of all tribulation, the servants of our neighbours and yet nevertheless lords of all things." — Luther on Christian Liberty. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY JOSEPH WILLIAM REYNOLDS, M.A. RECTOR OF SS. ANNE AND AGNES WITH ST. JOHN ZACHARV GRESHAM STREET, LONDON PREBENDARY OF ST. PAUL's CATHEDRAL LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST i6th STREET 1891 {All rights reserved) UNIVlHS'TV ' LIBRARY ,/ K.^OLip - ^]jum j 3 c " Wfc assume, not that we are intruding by oiit own reason into the awful secrets of the Divine nature, but that God has been graciously pleased to reveal His nature and His will to us, in a certain measure, and under certain limitations . . . the Christian faith reveals the pro- foundest truths ever opened to human ken, those who reject such an illumination must condemn themselves to a proportionately profound darkness.'' — Prebendary Wace, TAi Foundations of Faith, Bampton Lectures, pp. 66, 67. ' ' Thought is never satisfied with what it has gained, nor has it ever to weep because there are no new realms to conquer. Like the gods of the Indian legend, it dives downward and soars upward for ever, and yet the reality which it surveys stretches infinitely beyond through all eternity."— Alfred Barry, D.D., D.C.L., Manifold Witness for Christ, ch. iv. p. 261. yM> TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND FREDERICK TEMPLE, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF LONDON. My Lord, I thankfully, with your permission, dedicate this work to you. You are aware that experimenters in Physiology disconnect the nerves, or remove from an animal that portion of the brain which puts to use the animal's sensation of sight. The animal continues to live and to see, but sees as not seeing ; he does not and cannot avoid hurtful obstacles, but dashes against them to his own injury. I humbly endeavour to rescue those doubters who say, ' ' We can't believe;" and to rebuke those unbelievers who say, "We won't believe ; " that they may escape from that Evil One who blinds " the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the Glorious Gospel should shine unto them. " Dealing with unwonted themes, strangest marvels, Demons and Demonology, Dreams, and Healing by Faith and Prayer, I respectfully show that the most advanced Science ends with phenomena ; touches not those jealitieT of' which the phenomena ^e representative ; and thu s leaves us to face them as best _we. may, JEhe^e^ realities, the universal conscience, intuitigns,_nioral and mental functions of mankind, do everywhere apprehend. It seems well to show the prudent and temperate view of our Church as to these marvels, lest the minds of men, weary of the unbelief and materialism of false teachers, fall into superstitions not less gross. I would that my efforts were more worthy of presentation to one whose learning and experience are so well known and honoured. I remain, my Lord, Your most obedient and humble servant, JOSEPH WILLIAM REYNOLDS. a 2 " O Go4 of unchangeable power and eternal light, look favourably on Thy whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery ; and by the tranquil operation of Thy perpetual Providence, carry out the work of man's salvation ; and let the whole world feel and see that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and all things are returning to perfection through Him, from whom they took their origin, even through our Lord Jesus Christ." — Gelasian, Ancient Collect. "Christ compared Himself to a king who kept open house . . . almost all the genuine worth and virtue of the nation was gathered into the Christian Church. " — Ecce Homo, 5th Edit. , part i. p. 59. CONTENTS. Preliminary Facts. Raising Life to a Higher Level i Past Discoveries Warrant Great Expectations i Tlieologians becoming more Accurate ; the Scientific more Devout 2 No Conflict between Religion and Science 2 Physical Science advancing our Knowledge of Scripture ... 3 Application of Scientific Methods to the Higher Facts of Religion 4 Abandonment, Partial, of Physical Theories as to Mass ... 4 ,, ,, as to Atoms Evolved from Mass ... 5 ,, ,, as to Continuity without Break .... 6 Great Fact received by all : Visible Things are Emblems ... 6 II. The Higher Service of Man. Life's Evils not of Easy Cure 8 The Ancients Looked Back to a Golden Age 9 We Look for a Great Future ' . 9 Our Feeling as to Eternal Things a Parable of God .... 10 How we are Carried to Something Beyond 10 Our Picturing of the Best Man n The Great Life, a Reality 11 Perfection the Embodied Thought of God 12 Adam, Image of a Divine Idea ; Christ was that Idea Realized . 12 Greek Notions of the Sublime and Beautiful 13 Our own Spirit's Thought as to the Natural and Supernatural Perfect 13 A Boundless Possibility of Existence and Service 14 viii CONTENTS. III. The World's Governing Power. PAGE What we are Depends upon the World's Governing Power . . 15 Power is Known, and the Law of Mechanical Force . . . . IS Things known solely by their Interactions and Mutual Relations . 1 6 The Physical knows nothing of Essentials and Causes .... 16 llistorical View 16 Assertions of Scientific Men not always verifiable 17 Matter is not known' apart from Force, nor is Force known apart from Matter 17 Mechanical Force does not fully interpret the Phenomena of the Universe 18 Mere Mechanical Displacements of a Primal Homogeneous Mass would not change the quantity and quality 19 The Eternal Power is more than Nature 20 Mental and Moral Power lead to Acknowledgment of the Higher Rule 22 IV. The Highest Aim and Attainment of Man. Perfection in Every Thing 24 The Moral of Religious Teaching 25 The Aim of every Life 25 Enforced by Natural Facts 25 The Perfect Man 26 That to which we are being led , . . 26 Looking into a Glass 26 Lesson from the Eye 27 Godlessness Works Dangerous Conceits ... .... 28 Secular Moralist's Aim : Enlargement of it 28 Fellow- Workers with God 29 V. Christ, and our Following on Whither He Is. The Youngest Day of Eternity 31 The World's most Glorious Being 31 The Perfecting of Human Nature in Him 32 The Divinity of His Person 33 CONTENTS. iic PAGE The Mystery is Known Somewhat 34 A Special and General Truth : Concentration as to the Universe . 35 Our own Growth even into Divine Sonship 36 High Gradations of Men by Divine Power 36 Mystery of the Divine Nature Wrought in Human Nature ... 36 The Crowning Glory 37 High Place and Service : Noblest Times and Noblest Work . . 37 VI. Going Beyond the Visible. Light Sufficient, and Darkness, for all Who will 39 None Born Perfectly Good nor Wholly Bad 39 Reading Men's Countenances 4° Genius and Natural Aptitude : No Favouritism 40 Opinions of Sir Frederick Leighton and Sir John E. Millais . . 40 Natural and Moral Laws : Present and Future 41 Selective Providence 42 Rudimentary Organs, so called, are Relics 42 Small in the Great and Great in the Small 42 The Ungodly Miss a Great Gain 43 Seemingly Wrong may be Really Right 44 Material and other Mischances 44 vn. The Natural History of our Immortality : Truthfulness OF OUR Faculties. Materials of the History 4^ The Work is wrought with an Art partly Hidden and partly Known 46 It is Indicated by the Law and Order of the Universe .... 47 It is Dangerous to Neglect this Teaching, and the Verifying of it is our Duty and Privilege 47 That which is Essential to a Man 4* Discerning the Future of Individuals and of Nations .... 48 The Lesson to be Learned by the Natural History of the Future . 48 Physical Laws are not more Precise than those of Life and Mind infer use of Reason 49 Reasonable Liberty : Four Aspects of Power S° All Existences are Adapted to their State and Place .... 50 Further and Larger Adaptation Exceeding Present Uses ... 51 X CONTENTS. PAGE The Scientific Application of our Faculties is Nature's anH our own Stamp of Correctness S^ Present and Future give Proof of a Coming Time 52 The Great Example as to use of our Powers 53 VIII. The Natural History of our Immortality : Physical Facts Thereof. Deal not with Facts Treated of by other Men 54 The Ideal and Perfect are always Beyond us : a Straight Line . 55 Low Level of Superstition Raised to High Knowledge . . • • 55 Lesson from the Point of a Needle 5^ Everlastingness in Brevities 5^ Common Things are Full of Wonder 5^ Existence not the Sparkling Phantasm of a Moment .... 56 Duverney and a Carp 57 Instinctive Powers and those of Newton : a Fly and a Bee . . 58 Life's Consciousness goes Beyond all Phenomena 58 The Infinite Universe not Altogether to God : We Enjoy it too . 58 Nature and All in it Intertwisted and Combined by Providence . 59 All Things Grow as our Knowledge Grows .' 59 Language and Meaning of Nature 60 Our Persuasion as to a Future Life 60 Nature not a Bolt of Nothing Shot at Nothing 61 A Stream from Eternity to Eternity 61 IX. The Natural History of our Immortality : Physical Symbols Thereof. Symbols, What they Are and their Meaning 63 Mental Senses, even as Physical, based on Reality 64 The Universe a vast Symbol of God and Greater Life .... 64 Holy Scripture gives Highest Meaning to Nature 65 Gradations of Advance 65 The Eye and our Senses and all Things part of a great Unity . . 65 Language, Thought made Vocal, a Help to Immortality ... 66 L^ht, a Shadow of the Deity 67 The Meaning of a Blind Man made to see not Knowing his own Limbs 68 CONTENTS. PAGE Existing Laws Testify as a Natural History of the Future ... 68 The Great Factors in the Natural Advance 69 Death Calls us to more Life and Fuller 70 X. The Natural History of our Immortality: Threefold Existence. Man's Triple Character 72 In Relation to Three Modes of Life 72 Is Conditioned for Earthly Intermediate and Heavenly Life . . 73 The Natural History Embraces the whole Threefold State ... 74 The Bodily Existence : Reasons for it 74 The Intermediate State : Rather of Condition than of Locality . 75 For Advance of Knowledge 75 Specially as to a Higher State of Laws 75 A Growth towards Noble State 7^ Disbelief of this should be Removed 76 The Heavenly Condition : Not Destruction, but Reproduction . 77 A New Consorting, and of what 77 XL The Natural History of our Immortality : Leading Principles. First Principle : The Cause of all is the Eternal. The Histories of Nature and Men are a Biography of the Eternal 79 Second Principle : The Eternal is a Person. The Two Principles are Universal 80 Third Principle : The Process in Complex. The Nature of the Process 81 Records of it are Everywhere ^ . 81 Reproduction of the Past 81 This Proceeds to Give Account of itself in the Future . . 81 Fourth Principle : Process is Universal. Three Facts Connect the Present with the Future ... 82 Fifth Principle : Human Advance. Our Intellectual and Vital Conception of the Universe a Guarantee of Immortality 82 Conditions of Mind that Grasp this 83 CONTENTS. PAGE A Little Exercise in these High Conditions^ ..... 84 Two Experiences of the Supernatural . 84 Language, its Advantages as to Thought and Life . . . . 85 The Highest Style of Mind 86 3in. The Natural History of our Immortality : Prospective Enlargement of Powers. The Earth is Cradle of our Existence . 87 We Trace the Fact of our Going Somewhere 88 Pushing Aside the Veil which Suggests yet Conceals the Future . 88 Viewing the Past for an Insight of the Future 89 Future Life Based on Inner and Outer Facts 9° The Natural Prepares for the Spiritual 91 We are like the Sun 92 The Mutual Action of Body and Mind 92 The Fleshy Substance Made a Spiritual Substance 93 Sight and Foresight Vision apd Prevision 94 Expansion of all our Faculties 94 XIII. The Natural History of our Immortality: Further Enlargement of Powers. Interpreting Unknown Tongues 96 Outer and Inner Revelations of the Unseen 97 Cannot Rid Ourselves of the Miraculous 97 The Past not wholly Past, nor Future only Future 98 Continual Enlargement of our Powers gg Natural Transition is a Supernatural Narrative go Man's Natural Passage into another Stage is a Prophecy . . . 100 Entering this Life not less a Marvel than our Entering Another . 100 The Most Perfect Ideas are Clean-cut and Clear 101 No Instantaneous Total Change joi The Meaning of our Internal and External Character .... 102 Our Present Nature Submitted to a Naturalist 103 Bodily Faculty not Commensurate with the Spiritual . . . .103 The Influence of Hope 104 Our Sovereign Faculties are neither Deceived nor Deceivers . . 105 The Finite Exceeds its Finitude 105 CONTENTS. xiii XIV. Visions and Dreams as Glimpses of Immortality.— I. -Ti. PAGE The Faculty of Imagination lo8 To be Guided Discreetly log Every Man the Only Man of his Sort log Seeing of Wonders in Common Things 109 Thoughts and Dreams of Men Greatly Wondered at . . . . 110 Dreams, Ordinarily, are Valueless Ill A Mystery in Dreams : not Dream as you Wish 112 Can we Make Use of Dreams ? 1 12 May be of more Value in Dreams than when Awake .... 113 Should Carry Thought and Imagination to Perfection .... 1 14 Prospective View of our Future Dwelling 115 XV. Visions and Dreams as Glimpses of Immortality.— II. Some Causes of Dreams 116 In what Respect Dreams are Prophecies of Nature . . . . 117 Dream of Gennadius, the Sceptic 117 Dreams, as an Argument for Immortality 118 Soul Feels, Thinks, Acts, Apart from the Body 118 Not every Dreamer a Saint, nor yet a Prophet 119 Dreams a Testimony 120 One Dream, Certified, a Sufficient Proof 120 Dreams not always a Resuscitation of Thoughts 120 Power of Mind in and over Matter 121 Trivial Dreams to Match Trivial Thoughts 122 Interesting Fact as to Dreams 123 XVI. The Sacred History of Dreams. — I. Fellowship a Necessity of our Nature 124 Man, not Accept a God of Measurements and Calculations . . 124 He is Led by Mind to Mind 125 Either by Intuition or Experience 125 In what Manner we Study 125 Abimelech's Dream 125 Hints as to Discerning Truth of Dreams 126 b xiv CONTENTS. PAGE Dream of Jacob, as Wanderer 126 Dream of Jacob, as to Coming Prosperity 127 Application of these to the Mysteries in Ourselves . . . . 127 Dreams of Joseph 128 Dreams of Pharaoh's Butler and Baker, and of Pharaoh . . . 128 These Dreams were Parts in one Plan 129 Analogous Beauties and Powers in Ourselves 13° Krummacher Gives a Legend of Adam .130 All Things Touch the Miraculous : tlius we have a Natural His- tory of Immortality 131 XVII. The Sacred History of Dreams.— II. Best Guard as to Superstition 133 Midianite's, Solomon's, Nebuchadnezzar's Dreams . . . . 134 Nebuchadnezzar's Second Dream : a Rebuke and Warning . . 134 Daniel the Dream Interpreter 135 Dream of Joseph, as to the Immaculate Conception ; of the Wise Men, of Joseph as to Egypt, of Pilate's Wife .... 135 God's Marvellous Interferences 136 A Hell Club and Dream 137 The Victim : a Warning 137 Power Greater than all Powers 138 XVIII. The School of Satan. Count De Lavallette's Dream — March of the Dead .... 140 The Facts Represented 141 Christ and Satan, Appearance and Reappearance 141 Satanic Assault on Christ 142 How such Assault was Possible 142 Apparent Defeat i>asses into Reality of Victory 143 Scholars in the School of Satan 142 Sacred Testimony against them and their Master 145 Satanic Existence, a Reality 145 Why is Satan allowed to Exist ? I46 Warnings against him 145 Dreams, a Touchstone of Morals 147 The Worker of Good and the Worker of Evil 148 CONTENTS. On Losing the Power to do Good and to Think aright ... 148 Narrowness of Unbelievers j Cultured Unbelievers' Error . ... " ,^„ 149 XIX. Casting Out Devils. The Natural and Supernatural Point of Contact 151 General and Particular Government 151 The Supernatural Made Visible i C2 Supernatural Linking j -2 Maleficent Power . . ic-j Reality of Evil Power . . . i« Personal Opposition to Christ 154 Triple Narrative of Gadara or Gergesa 155 Facts Proving the Possession ijc Further Facts jec Destruction of the Swine 11-5 Proof that the Man was Possessed 156 The Swine-Feeders prove the Miracle i cy The General Refusers of Miracles i jg XX. The History of Satan : Introduction. Not a Balancing of the Doubtful Against the More Doubtful . . 159 Every Thing touches the Mysterious i6o Good and Evil Represent Conflicts 160 Good and Evil : Fourfold l6l Shakespeare and Milton stated Great Truths 161 Evil threw the Course of Nature out of Gear 162 Evil that is seen Represents the more Malignant Unseen . . . 163 Satan, a Personal Name 163 The World a Tangled Maze 164 Every one of us has a Devil about Him 164 A Touch of God Works Wonderfully 165 The World, as it is, Very Beautiful 165 XXL The Larger Hope — Existence and Nature of Satan. Strife to Attain Higher Life . 166 Good Obtained by Abnegation of Evil 167 xvi CONTENTS. PAGE Glimpses of High Control in Nature 167 Testimony as to this 167 A Lesson Everywhere l^° The Work of Satan 168 His Existence a Fact of Nature, of Science, of Philosophy . . 169 Nature of Satan : His Personality 169 Served and Worshipped as a Personal Devil 170 He is a Spirit and was of High Dignity 171 Remarkable Statements by Ezekiel I7I~4 The Mystery of Ungodliness and Personality of Evil with Elucida- tion in a Grander Life i74 XXIL Answer from Behind the Veil — The Power of Satan. The Corsican Brothers : A Mystery 176 Satan's Influence Differs in Degree, rather than Kind, from our own 177 Spiritual Presentiment 177 The.Hypnotic State 178 The Working and Authority of Satan 1 78 Satan's Men, " Worthships and Worships Unworshipful " . . 179 Christ gives Mastery to Men 1 79 Satan only Prevalent by Human Will Consenting 180 Cleverness of Some Wicked Ones 180 Satan Acts through an Evil Host 181 Best and Greatest Men Believe in Satanic Existence . . . . 181 Satan and Angels even now are Degraded 182 Good Work Done against Him 183 Prince and Possessor of this World 183 A Bond-Breaker and Setter at Variance 184 Can Act against a Sinless Nature 184 Present Conflict will end in the Universal Reign of Good . . 185 XXIII. The Low Verge of Life : Possession by Demons. Possession of one by another a General Fact 186 Possession Material and Spiritual 186 Man is of a Threefold Nature 187 He Became a Castaway 187 Our Present Evils a Challenge to Manliness ... . . 187 We are in Relation to Two Worlds 188 CONTENTS. PAGE Three Theories as to Possession by Demons i8 I. Only a Symbol or Figure of Evil 189 II. A Superstition of the Jews 190 III. A Terrible Reality 190 Possession not the same as Temptation 191 Report, .SifaMi/arf/ Newspaper 191 Possessed Men not always great Sufferers 192 Not, Necessarily, the Worst Men 193 Inordinately Wicked Men not always Demoniacs 194 Orestes and Hamlet 194 State of Demoniacs 194 Twofold Existence, Report of .... 195 Disorders may tend to Possession 198 fesus a Controller of the Evil Ones 198 All Evil is being Overruled to a greater Good 199 Fable of St. Anthony 200 XXIV. Procurers to the Lords of Hell ; Demons. Derivation of Word, Demon 202 Use of the Word 202 Denial of Demon Existences 203 Two Reported Falls of Spiritual Beings 203 Two Sorts of Powers in Nature and in Men 304 Nine Sorts of Bad Spirits 204 Every Evil in Nature a Manifestation of Evil Power .... 205 Gospel Statement as to Spiritual Evil Beings 205 Prevalent Jewish Belief 206 Agents in Satanic Work 2o5 Physical Science, not able to Investigate, does not deny the Supernatural 207 All in the World Representative of What is Beyond .... 208 Men are Travellers to another State 208 Longfellow's Translation of St. Francis Xavier's Hymn ... 209 XXV. The Man Possessed by Seven Devils. Belief has fewer Difficulties than Unbelief 210 The Person and Nature of Christ 210 xviii CONTENTS. PAGE The Narrative is of a Fact 211 A Wicked Man, the Devil's Palace 212 Wanderings of the Expelled Spirit and Return to Garnished Dwelling 2'2 Evil not a stress of Crooked Circumstances . . . . . • '213 Is it by our lU-combining of Good Things ? 213 Access of Evil Ones to Nature and Men 214 Not a Law of Nature that we must do Wrong 214 The Ruin Dire, the Battle Great 214 XXVI. Devils Entering the Swine. — I. One Central Evil, One Central Good 216 Old Testament as to Origin of Evil 217 New Testament Confirmation thereof . 217 Jesus did not Pander to a Jewish Delusion .... . . 217 Men are not Devils, nor was Adam the first Devil 2 18 A Remarkable Scene in Proof of This 219 Where the Miracle was Wrought . . 219 The Gospel Narrative 220 Evil Spirits Constrained by Power of Christ 220 Unbelief is a Sin ; Christ's Word must be Believed . . . .221 Unbelief, due in part to petty Cleverness ..... . 222 Physical and Mental Malady 222 Startling Wonders come continually into View 223 XXVII. Devils Entering The Swine. — II. Real Cause of Unbelief as to the Wicked One 224 Truth, Better than Error, not to be Dealt with Roughly . . . 224 The Evil an Interruption to be Done Away With . . . . . 225 Evil from more than a Human Source : Unity of Evil Power . 225 Reality of our Better Selves 225 Old Objections Refurbished 226 Destruction of the Swine 226 The Occurrence Incredible ? 227 Supported by more than Credible Evidence .... 227 The Belief a Grovelling Superstition : Not so 228 Men even are entered by a Swinish Spirit . . . 228 CONTENTS. PAGE Opinions of the Good and Great of the World, of Space, of the Stars, of the Galaxies, of Spirits 229 Natural History, of our Life Accords with these Opinions . . . 230 Our Setting out on a new Career 230 A True Tabernacle in us of the Living God, and sometimes a Shadowed Mind 231 The Earth a Cradle for our Infant Spirits, a Glimpse at their Completeness 231 Soon have Entrance to the Supreme Realities 232 XXVIII. Divine Healing a Universal Principle. All Things Pass into Death 233 Nay : all Things Change, but do not Die 233 Untying the Knot 234 Fac-simile of the World's Procedure 234 All Mysteries are Being Interpreted 234 Things are Wrought in Continuance by Eternal Power . . . 235 Our own Body in Especial 235 Wandering Stars are Corrected 236 Chemical Work 236 Lesson in Biology 236 Fact in Moral Philosophy 236 Other Paths into the same Truth 237 Differences in Work .... 237 The Material Side of Nature 237 Our own Personztl Life 238 XXIX. The Supernatural Healing of Sickness. A Brazilian Forest 239 Paradox of Silence and Sound 239 Strange Influences are Natural : The Enigma Near the Solution Far 240 Our Intellectual Light : Further Relations 24Q They are Proofs of our Susceptibility to Weird Influences . . 242 Jesus the Conqueror of Death 242 Healings are Variously Wrought ......... 243 XX CONTENTS. PAGE Are Meant to Fit us for the Powers of Divine Presence . . . 244 Present Life Concerns the Earthly and Heavenly Future . . . 245 We Have not less a Moral than a Material Heritage .... 246 Christ's Miracle of Self-Sacrifice Confers Miraculous Perfection . 246 Future Effects on us of the Healing Miracles 247 XXX. Divine Healing in the Old Testament. God is the Great Healer 249 Evil seems Universal in Creation . 249 Controlling and Remedial Powers 249 Research Discovers Preventives and Cures 250 Many-sided Evidence wide as the Universe 250 Features Discerned of the Healing Process 251 Divinely Laid Stepping Stones 251 Writings in Nature are as Cuneiform Inscriptions 252 We are taught more clearly in Scripture 252 The Two-sortedness of Things 253 The Fault of Evil Men 253 We are being led on to the Cure : Examples 253 The Pre-eminent Healer 255 The Gladdening One 255 Jesus Looking Down on Us 256 XXXI. Divine Healing in the New Testament. Jesus Christ the Greatest of all Healers 258 Considered as to Space with the Worlds therein 259 Christ's Supernatural Daily Work 259 Divine Healings are Frequent now 260 Disease not Healing is the Unnatural Thing 260 Marvels in a Cubic Inch of Air, God Acts Slowly, Christ Works Marvellously 260 Is Premature Death quite in Order? 261 Not less Natural to Awake the Dead than for the Dead to Die . 261 Why is not Divine Healing more Openly Displayed ? ... 262 Miracles of Elijah and of Jesus 262 CONTENTS. xxi PAGE The apparent Failure of Miracles, Men's own Fault .... 263 Divine Healing more Frequent than Men think 264 The Promise accompanying the Command to Preach was Fulfilled 264 All the World Looking on 264 Healings are by Powers given to the Church 264 Directions as to the Use of Healing Power 265 The Neglect to Use these Directions 265 By Divine Healing our Life is made a Divine Life .... 266 This Healing not a Gift of Earthly Immortality 267 A Whole Christ Centralized in every Believer 267 How we Apprehend This : Centralizations 267 The Final Result, a Grand Consolation 268 XXXII. Popular Objections as to Healing by Faith. Statement of the Case 270 I. Objection: If Faith can Heal, why do Men Die ? . . . .271 Reply : Faith is exercised to Preserve from Untimely Death 271 II. Objection: If Believing does all, why Work ? 272 Reply : Good Gifts to Good Men do not make them Bad . 272 Grace given to Use them Aright 272 III. Objection : Cases of Failure 273 Reply : They inculcate various Lessons 273 IV. Objection : The Power is not now Exercised 274 Reply : The Gift is Used, and was never Obsolete . . . 274 It is Extraordinary for Extraordinary Use 275 Divine Healing Rests on Definite Principles 275 I. Evil is not Natural and is to be Taken Away .... 275 II. In Disease there is more than our skill detects . . . 276 III. Healing and Redemption Belong to all Ages ... 276 God's Servants, by Use of these Gifts, are to show Unbelievers that God is with His People 277 XXXIIL Limitations of Divine Healing. I. Limitations are by the Divine Will 278 II. Limitations by Grades of Existence 278 III. Limitations are by Divine Purpose as to Men's Future Use . 279 xxii CONTENTS. rAGE IV. Limitations tend to Harmony and Completeness of the Uni- versal Plan 280 V. Limitations are Preventions of Unnatural Exploits . . . 281 Summary of these Limitations 281 The Providence of God Accords the Limitations of God . . . 282 Musing as to the Lost 283 Thought as to Setting Aside of all Restrictions 284 XXXIV. Application of Science and Philosophy. Verification by Facts 286 General Acceptance of Supernatural Cures . . . ... 287 Higher Experiences in Christian Life 287 Mode of Proof for the Inquiring 288 I. Daily Evidence of Divine Healing 288 Exercise of the Senses .... 288 Contact of Things Seen and Unseen . 288 Thought as to Wilful Men .... ... 289 The Conflict of Good and Evil ... ... 290 II. Confirmed by Scientific Investigation 290 1st Step: As to Nature of the Processes .... 290 2nd Step : Magnetic Conditions 291 3rd Step : Influencing Patients 291 4th Step : States of Consciousness 292 A Grander Fact : High Spiritual Condition 292 The Material and Mental in Relation to the Spiritual .... 292 Facts as to the Origin of Diseases 293 Further Facts 293 Diseases become more Complicated 294 Curious Sequels of Influenza . . . 294 Sleeping Twenty Days 295 All Known Causes go back to the Beginning 295 Why Certain Things Heal is not Known . . .... 295 Facts Carry Hypothesis into Certainty 296 XXXV. Further Application of Philosophy and Science. What We Learn in the Pathway of Experience 297 Of a destructive and Restoring Power . 297 CONTENTS. xxiii PAGE What is Discerned in the Orderliness of Nature ? 298 That there is Something Great to Do 298 Great Concentrations 299 Examination as to Reality of our Position 299 Linking of the World to the Indestructible 300 Do We Learn of Supernatural Cures? 301 Yes, in the Saving and in Losing of Life 3°' Objection : Age of Miracles is Past 301 No Warrant for that Saying 301 Natural Secrets Indicative of a Higher Good 302 Trying to Find the Instruction 3°^ In Mental and Sentient Powers 302 Physical and Psychological Experiments 303 Need of Sound-Mindedness 303 Higher States of it, and the Powers 304 Concentration in Scientific Achievement 305 The Universe is more than a Mechanism, more than an Organism 305 Scientific Philosophical and Religious Men : their Characteristic Work 3°6 The Base of Reasonable Faith 3°^ XXXVI. Conditions of Power as to Faith-Healing. Man is a Miniature of Nature 3°^ The Head and Heart of our Earth 309 Appearances of the First and Second Man 3°9 We are all Represented in those Two 3'° Power of the Great Healer— His Gift of that Power .... 310 The Healing Process is Twofold 31° Conditions as to Healing 3'° Governing Conditions S'^ Elevating and Stamping the Character 313 Earnests of Greater Possessions 3I3 Of a Manifold and an Exalted Nature 3I3 XXXVII. Verifying of Divine Healing. By Facts that are Universal • • ■ S'S Best Seen in the Meek, and Loveliness of Things 31S What We Know of God 3i6 xxiv CONTENTS. PAGE How do We Know of Healing? V-^ By the Creation 316 By Continuance of Things 7>VI The Truth of it is our Light and Life 3' 7 The Truth Exemplified 317 The Truth as to the World and Men 318 The Healing Process is Supernatural 3"^ We are God-Made and God-Healed Men 319 Teaching of Jesus and the Endeavour of all Sciences .... 319 The Book of Job, a Parable of God and Satan 320 Creation is the Shadow of God and Laws are Representative of Things Greater 321 XXXVIH. Modern Experience as to Faith-Healing. General and Particular Examples 322 Experiences of Devout Men 322 Own Personal Experience 322 Others' Experience 323 An Interesting Fact 323 Many Answers to Prayer, Maintenance of Institutions . . . 324 Experience of a Frenchman 324 Experience of a Church Dignitary 325 Records of Experience 327 Statements to the Author 328 Knowledge of Facts 328 Healers may remain Unhealed Themseli^s 328 The Power not in Man but in God 329 Mesmeric and Hypnotic Healing 329 Analogous Natural Processes 330 Various Examples 330 General Witness and Attestation 331 Life a Theatre for Work of Vast Energy 332 Establishing of Faith in Us 332 Power from Jesus 333 XXXIX. A More Excellent Way. The Work of an Artist is a Discourse of Reason 334 Nature a Masterpiece — Our Memory a Blessing 334 CONTENTS. XXV PAGE Truth is Wrapped in Truth 335 In every Grief, somehow, somewhere, is Help for Grief . . . 335 Touches by the Master's Hand — Things not Fated 335 All the Great are many Smalls, and all the Smalls go Lessening and Lessening 336 Picture-Promises in Nature of our Future Condition .... 336 Best Men sometimes are Cribbed, Cabined, and Confined . . 336 View the Matter Closely 337 If We do our Best, the Best will be made of Us 337 Answer meets not all the Case 337 Wrong Estimate as to the more Excellent Way 337 We are in the School of Christ 338 Martin Luther's Discipline 339 Schooled for the Future by Common Facts 340 Death as Bringing more Blissful Life 341 Those who kill the Physician, and fee the foul Disease . . . 341 Fellows of an infinite Tongue with no Faith at all . . . . 342 The Central Figure of our whole Being 342 The Way more Excellent than Great Gifts 343 XL. The Practical Science of a Future State. — I. Evidence for Religious Truth is of all kinds 345 Man, a Complex Material and Spiritual Person 345 Existence Regarded as a Precipitate 346 Religious Men, as a Society, are the Home of Christ .... 347 By Whom we Know that we have Everlasting Life .... 347 Practical Art as to a Future State — Sociableness and Knowledge 348 Teaching by the Ancients and by Christianity .... 348 Jews Conserved the Ideas of Sin, of Propitiation and of a Saviour 349 Evidence as to the Truth of all This — Dogmas of Science and Religion 35" Primal Authority Convincing 35' Art and Science in Reasonable Deference to Authority . . . 352 The Abstruser Parts of our Faith 35^ God's Care of the Neglected Ones 353 xxvi CONTENTS. XLI. The Practical Science of a Future State.— II. PAGE Receiving Christianity by Right Use of it 3S4 Students of Christian and of Physical Science 354 Man a Mental and Moral Being : our Creeds 3SS Various other Evidences of Truth and of Delusions .... 356 Dream-States, Trances, Ecstasies 357 Extraordinary Exaltations of Imagination 35^ Vision of Hell and of Heaven 358 Christ's Resurrection is not Considered in its far-reaching Affinities 359 Lacordaire, as an example of larger View 360 Godhead and Manhood of Christ : Large Testimony .... 360 Lapse of Time Rather Strengthens than Weakens the Evidence for Christ .361 Nature of a Twofold Truth and the Effects 362 Our Faith the Practical Science of a Future State : an Object Lesson 362 Degrading Hallucinations are akin to Possession by Pemons . . 363 What it is that Creates a true Science of Future Life .... 363 The Universal Proof of Deity and Immortality 364 Our Claim for Acceptance and Use of Science 364 XLII. Occupations Hereafter of the Glorified. Growth of our Knowledge 366 The Spirit in the Great Ancient Men 366 Nature and Conditions of a Blissful Immortality 367 I. The Renewal of our Nature 367 By Christ Being Conditioned in it : His Death not a Failure 367 Perfected Man Carried Forward 368 Nature of the Life we now Live 368 This Life Perfected in its Characteristics 360 Our Body the Material Receptacle of Divine Glory . . . 370 II. The Enlargement of our Faculties 371 A Divine Strain of all we Possess 371 Instinct, Affection, Reason, in Perfect Obedience . . . 372 Transactions of the Glorified State 372 Be in Heaven as Christ is 372 Reconciliation of the Material and Spiritual 373 CONTENTS. xxvii PAGE Three Reasons for a Visible Material Society 374 I. Various Symbols of the Process Here 374 Christ's Preparation in Heaven of Mansions fit for Us . 374 Lessons from the Sacraments 375 Our Sway Universal 376 Present Excellence Perfected in Various Differences . . 377 II. Spiritual ; in being Rendered Incorruptible as Substantial 378 lII.,TheGlory that shall be Revealed 379 How We are Sure of it 379 Index 381 " Forasmuch as Nature itself has implanted in man a craving after the discovery of truth, (which appears most clearly from this, that, when unoppressed by cares, we delight to know even what is going on in the Heavens,) — led by this instinct, we learn to love all truth for its own sake ; that is to say, whatever is faithful, simple, and con- sistent ; while we hold in abhorrence whatever is empty, deceptive, or untrue." — Cicero, Di Fin. Bon. et Mai., ii. 4. "Learn the mystery of progression duly. Do not call each glorious change decay ; But know we only hold our Treasures truly When it seems as if they passed away ; "Nor dare to blame God's gifts for incompleteness ; In that want their beauty lies ; they roll Towards some infinite depth of love and sweetness, Bearing onward man's reluctant soul." A. A. Procter. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. I. ^reltminarD jfacts. " Be not as those who have forgotten Him ; For they are those who have forgotten themselves ; They are the evil doers. . . . Paradise is kept For those, thrice blessed, who have ears to hear." Sir Edwin AeMOLO, Pearls of Faith. T T E is the best and cleverest man who raises our A A ordinary life to the highest level, to the greatest use and enjoyment of all things in their most perfect form, discerning truth and use and beauty where not before observed. Only of late have we found, by the advance of science, that the evanescent of natural things, and the refuse products of our manufactories, may by care and skill grow to some- thing of great constancy, strange and admirable. Those are not credulous who, in the wonders wrought by steam, in the romance of electricity, in the miracles of telegraph, of phonograph; in our B 2 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. knowledge of the vast speed with which the seemingly fixed stars move, of their path for thousands of years to come, of our counting up the materials of which they are made ; anticipate greater things in the future.- We are not guilty of spendthrift use of tongue, if we say, though in what particular form is not soon found, " All the past seems the true avouch and harbinger of things more majestical : " " For thus the book of Nature saith — ' Though not a leaf but withereth, Yet life is stronger far than death, And reigns in perpetuity.' " lahn Cleland, Scala Natura : The Great Evolution. Science is giving more definite and practical precision to our theology, and theology is rescuing physical truth from its abuse by those who wish to be without God in the world. Our theologians are becoming more intelligent, as to nature ; and those who give themselves to research, finding God every- where, grow more sacred. The devout learn that the visible world is a vast revelation of the art, the science, the all-embracing wisdom of the Eternal ; and men, who thought it not, begin to see that the facts and doctrines of Scripture, like the objects in nature, like the forces, the atoms, the movements, are infinite both in meaning and effect. There is still a conflict : not between Religion and Science, That never existed. It was always a strife amidst men's opinions. Men of science have in every age changed their views. No sooner were their teachings fairly well received, so that the religious PRELIMINARY FACTS. 3 accepted them, or even before there was time to accept, than others arose who said of the generally- asserted facts, "Winnowed by common sense such corn is light as chaff." Not the truly religious, not the good men, but those counted best versed in science on a large scale, those whose experience had advanced them to high ecclesiastical state and civil position were the opponents of speculations which seemed to unsettle faith, morals, and civil govern- ment. It is a great and very uncharitable fault to charge persecutions on Christ-like nnen. Persecutors were always those whose knowledge and aims, selfish or unselfish, found it advisable, authoritatively, to resist innovations. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong. This stern and watchful conflict, daily toils, the skill in implements of war, the impress of sore tasks making holy days to be used in strenuous haste, what mean they all ? Who can inform ? It is the gross and scope of our opinion, that could we know, the graves would seem tenantless, and the dead walk amongst the living in our streets. The entrance of physical science is correcting, enlarging, and giving a natural meaning and con- firmation, to the ill-understood facts of Scripture ; and turning from the warped or narrow interpretations to accurate and wide meaning. Not less service is advanced thought effecting in secular pursuits. The denial of miracles is quieted by the unanswerable fact — that every, even the commonest event of life, when fully investigated, rests on miracle ; that at the bank, the anvil, the loom, and in the furrow of the 4 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. field, we are amidst the wonderful ; that heaven touches earth on all sides ; that no man can tell where to separate the natural from the supernatural, the visible from the invisible, life from death, the known from the unknown. Why, 'tis rank and impious stubbornness to deny it, gross and false to nature, to reason most absurd. We thank those thoughtful and praiseworthy men whose far-reaching and verified investigations lead to the application of their own methods, in an improved way, to the higher subjects of Religion, of God, of Immortality. Wjc . are now able .to present the grandest truths of our Faith with greatly the same kind of reasoning and accuracy as that used in the higher physical research ; and to show that wherein they are correct we are true also ; and that their own straying, not less than our own incapacity, are the causes of any existing opposition in the views of the best men as to God and man, as to our present life and the coming immortality. They have asserted that to construct an ultimate and exhaustive theory of the universe, all matter must be |[deprived of its properties and reduced to mere mass and motion. Now they see that out of such mass of nothingness, it is impossible to bring anything that has not previously been put into it. If worlds-are ,to be formed, then sometime, from some- where, by some one, changes must come in from without ; or mass could not become matter, nor matter grow into worlds. They told us that the exhaustive analysis of matter PRELIMINARY FACTS. S yields an aggregate of indivisible indestructible atoms, so small as to be beyond conception by thought ; so hard as to be no end of times harder than steel ; so strong that every one can and does resist the united forces of the universe ; and so soft, yielding, and resist- less, that they do not bend the smallest leaf in the forest. We are not told how these atoms and their properties are got out of the mass wherein are no qualities at all. True all things have that within which passeth show, but where things are not can be no show. To get atoms out of the ether, which is soft and mobile to please the chemist, and rigidly elastic to content the physicist, is but a play of scientific imagination. True scientific imagination identifies phenomena with familiar facts, but the vivid ideality which professes to interpret familiar facts by incomprehensible theories, whose difficulties are in inverse ratio to the truth, is not scientific. This viciousness of mind, which breaks down the fences and forts of reason, is mostly due to some evil habit which overleaps men's virtues. They are being corrected by those who know that it is impossible to tell all the differences between one oyster and another, and that it were a miracle to predict truly how any atom or any human being will act in every condition. Thus are we warned against those whose particular faults traduce truth to their own scandal. We hope that instruction will enter where the folly of unbelief now dwells : otherwise — " Tasks in hours of insight willed, Must be in hours of gloom fulfilled." Matthew Arnold. 6 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Those who assured us some time ago that the natural has been and is continuous without breaks ; that not a particle of matter, nor smallest force, can be destroyed ; were equally confident that there is no scientific evidence of any kind in favour of im- mortality. This delusion is going away. Without breaks in the order of nature, uniformity could never pass into variety ; nor likes become unlikes ; nor the wild goose lay a tame egg. Long ago the sun did not shine ;jthere was no sun. With regard to immor- tality, if no force perishes, why is the force of life wholly to cease.' If no material atom can be destroyed, being an in~destructible unit, why should that super-substantial atom, our mental and spiritual personality which outlasts many arrangements and material collocations in the body, pass away .' If the less lives on, why not the greater- continue ? We do well to take heed that we do not misuse our most sovereign reason, or, like sweet bells jangled, it will become out of tune and harsh. That which is now undoubtedly received is : visible things are emblems ; forms, bodies, creative thoughts in us, were themselves by Thought created. Living things are the flesh-garment of spirit and the whole universe a time-vesture of the Eternal. Infinity con- ditions Himself and reveals Himself in the finite. This explains the essential relativity of things ; forces do not rage wildly as beasts, nor is life a den of corruption. Our faculties of soul and spirit, antici- pating and preparing for the future, are not lying deceivers when they promise a crown and a palace. PRELIMINARY FACTS. 7 All worlds and all things are passing into new stages of being, and by study of things as they are we obtain a real, true, and natural history of that which is to come. Our life is a Pilgrim's Progress. " My gracious God ! when I must die, Oh, bear my happy soul above. With Christ, my Lord, eternally To share Thy glory and Thy love ! Then come it right and well to me. When, where, and how my death shall be. " B. Schmolk, Hymns from the Land of Luther. II. ®6e l^tgfiBr Sbabitc of iWan. " Thou hast been my Blood, my Breath, my Being ; The Pearl to plunge for in the sea of life ; The Sight to strain for, past the bounds of seeing ; The Victory to win through the longest strife." Sir Edwin Arnold, The Indian Song of Songs. "Thou shalt be called the Repairer of the breach, the Restorer of paths to dwell in." — ISA. Iviii. 12. THE evils of society and of individuals are not of so slight a nature that improvements in machinery, facility of dispensing with manual labour, and of spreading riches, can cure them. Marvellous have been those improvements, effecting astonishing production without hands, and for a century wealth has been distributed with speed and abundance un- equalled in any former times ; but, alas, to many of us life is terrible ! There is, as Carlyle said, " a Devil's regiment," who act as were life a grimacing dance of apes. Besides, there are millions, not yet enlisted in that force, who toil and moil in miseries. It is a time to make even the dullest consider whether these days may not be made days of new life and better for all. ( 8 ) THE HIGHER SERVICE OF MAN. 9 The ancients looked back on a golden age and a garden of delights so great and many that former old men were as youths in fulness of joy. In our own days, a ruined temple has often been taken for sample of the inevitable end that comes to all human handi- work. Every effort to plant a Garden of Delights, to build a Tower of Safety, and clothe all classes with the beauty of civilization, is scarcely begun before decay sets in to sap its strength. Nature herself decays. The universal empire of Death is the only empire to which all glory and greatness are subject. We do not any of us believe in our hearts that all things will pass away as if they had not been. Indeed, we know that throughout Nature all de- partures are for a new beginning — sometime, some- where. Every man has a future. The very loneliness some experience is proof both of want and of supply divine for the want. Those who do not use this sense of want, and make virtue lie greatly in the struggle, not alone the prize ; their ingratitude is that sponge with which the evil one wipes out from memory the favours of the Almighty. We are un- able to believe that the wisdom, power, and surpass- ing beauty, which combine all creation in one glorious palace, and decorate with sculptured ornament every adaptation, can be a work of v^ich the cost and purpose have not ^eeh' counted. We are sure, when strongest and wisest, that there will be some Repairer of the breach, some Restorer of paths to dwell in. This certainty of eternal things gives a great impulse to our intellect, a conviction that we shall 10 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. not pass away; but, as a spark of ethereal fire, brighten more and more. Having in ourselves, through our own spirit and the Divine Spirit, an inheritance in the invisible world, our horizon broadens infinitely; The One who made us loves us, keeps us, waits for us, fills us with glory and truth. There is no servant in the service of Christ but has this conviction, and it is a parable of higher service. The conviction of higher things expresses itself in many other ways. We talk of sorrows that men live by. There are truths rooted in our darkness which gladden every one and kindle light. We feel in the recesses of our soul that we live by those truths, and for them would die. Our hearts keep holiday because of them. Every science, and every art, in the variety and beauty of them, carry us to something beyond. There were a few wild species of the rose, but we studied the secrets of that flower-world, the effects of soil and climate, and our skill has made the rose transcend its former self. We have developed hundreds of sorts of every shape and size, and of colours from brilliant yellow to darkest purple. There are men who excel their natural state, whom poor clothing cannot hide, nor pressing toil depre- ciate. We know them as Ulysses was known. We thank God for them, thank Him for Bunyan, that wonderful dreamer ; and for Luther, the wakeful man, honest and bold. All good workers, all discoverers, are in their degree repairers and restorers, trans- formers of themselves and of others too. We think of them, and can improve ourselves by THE HIGHER SERVICE OF MAN. ii picturing the best man, the perfectly righteous, such as was seen of old. Not guilty of one wrong act, yet life- long labouring under the imputation of being wholly wrong, that his pure unselfishness might be fully tried and proved. Coming at last to bonds, to scourgings, to crucifying. The highest specimen of men. This Great Life we know as the Incarnation of God in Man. The Infinite took Personal Form, the eternal Power compassed Himself with Flesh. The truth was a light in the darkness of old philosophies. It is a reality in advanced science. The essence of man and of all things is in God. Of every thing, from a little flower to a great nation, there is an archetype some- where. The unseen contains the essence, the reality, of all that we see. The fashions of things for the wilderness Tabernacle were made by Moses to re- semble, so far as he could, what was in Heaven. When we think of an Eternal, then of a spiritual life, that spiritual represents the Eternal, of whom the mind is conscious. A workman embodies in some graceful form the shaping of a thing that must first be in his own mind. It came into his mind from nature, and nature is a revelation of the Eternal arrayed in finite garments. This should make every man see something wonderful in his work. Work is the product of a spirit of intelligence, is the outer fashioning of a something delineated in his own spirit, a spirit united for a season to his own body, applauding him when he runs, consoling him when he falls, cheering him when he rises, aifd always urging him for God's sake to pass on. 12 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. It is very useful to think where we can find the permanent reality that corresponds with our idea of a perfect man, from whom we expect the higher, the perfect s ervice of a repairer, of a restorer. Astronomers teach that no finite |,being can fully and in detail realize all the great works in space and time. God alone can fill all in all. From those taking the large view turn to things microscopical. Here are life within life, recesses within recesses ; interior worlds of wonder, more and more inscrutable, go on and on until we lose ourselves. Only the Infinite, who com- prehends the vastness, can enter and know the minuteness. Hence that Infinite, even God, is the only One who contains in Himself the essence, the sub- sistence of the perfect man and of perfect things. They are the embodied thought of God. We in this way look at the reality of the truth, stated by Moses, about man being the image, the likeness of a reality, that is in God. Adam was the image of a Divine Idea, as every- thing in nature is the form taken by some power outside of nature working within nature. Christ, the second Adam, was not merely an image of the Divine Idea, but in His flesh was the Divine Idea itself. The Divine existence and subsistence being made flesh, the glory of God was seen in human form. Thus becoming one of us. He was a prey to human weak- ness, and at length that flesh expired on the cross of Calvary (Phil. ii. 6-8). " I do not always go where Thou dost lead, I do not always Thy soft whispers heed.. THE HIGHER SERVICE OF MAN. 13 I follow other lights, and in my sin I vex with many a slight my Friend within. Yet dost Thou not, though grieved, from me depart, But guardest still Thy place within my heart." Hymn by Dr. Hatch. The great old Greeks had pleasure, like Homer, in grand imaginations, and reasoned like Plato, in the splendour of philosophy, that persons specially owed their existence to God Himself ; and^that the perfect, the archetypaL inan, represents that Eternal and Infinite in whom is no growth, noj change, nor decay. Their notions concerning the beautiful, the sublime, the heavenly, were impressions of pleasant things very much what we think ours would be did we see the very realities of the spiritual, the intellectual, the moral. That spiritual not being only our own thoughts, not only our own intellectual abstractions, not only our physical and spiritual emotions, religious or other, but an influence from that Wonderful and Eternal who causes and contains all things. If it came as an inquiry into our spirit what the beautiful, the sublime, the heavenly righteousness was like, we should discern the beautiful character mingling with duty for duty's sake ; the sublime mind stooping to most menial acts ; the inward essence being con- formed to transform the outwardly degrading ; the highest mingling with most vulgar and commonest relations, as Christ mingled, "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." All this by help of the Spirit who rules the universe in righteousness ; loving, helping, elevating all into obedience to God's commands. We should as intel- 14 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. lectual Greeks, like Plato ; as strong Romans, like Cicero ; as holy Christians, take the same view as St. John, as St. Paul, become Hebrews of the Hebrews ; and regard Christ as that God-Man, perfect God, perfect man, the most natural, yet super- natural. His coming to love us, to guide us, to be the core of our being, to make us righteous persons like Himself; helping us to every perfection of body and mind, and quahfying us for that Higher service which raises the whole creation from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. viii. 21) ; would be the great splendour of our life ; the Holy of Holies built in the mysterious depths of our soul. Indeed, Christ's thought and character are reflected, and where willingly received are reproduced in every faithful life. There is a boundless possibility of existence and of service in the world. God not only comes afresh to us in every force and beautiful thing, binding the deepest instincts of our life with His own character so that all blessings extend from the present to the future ; but is, by the Holy Ghost, an indwelling Personal Help. He makes knowledge to be an un- sealed fountain. When we go right down into our work, we get up vastly in our knowledge. Christ is the measure of our personal existence. " I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the world and out of it." Robert Browning, The Incarnation. III. ^6c asaoria's CSfobnning ^ofotr. "The world is built somehow on moral foundations; in the long run it is weE with the good ; in the long run it is ill with the wicked." — James Anthony Froude. "It is not in man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born, and tends to aspirations as the sparks fly upwards, unless he has brutalized bis nature, and quenched the spirit of his immortality which is his portion." — SOUTHEY. THE question whether we are essentially of stuff so flat and dull, that the instinct of worship and the desire of immortality are a face without a heart, depends upon what is the world's governing power. Power is scientifically known as the world's energy, and force is the working of that energy. The law of mechanical force thus working is the correspondence and equivalence of changes. Whenever a change occurs there is a corresponding equivalent change in all other phenomena. There is never any moment, as nature now exists, in which innumerable changes do not occur ; and all are due to the eternal power represented by all forces, whether known or unknown. ( '5 ) I6 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. What we scientifically, that is, physically or me- chanically, know of the world is the deliverance by our thought, as to the presentation through our senses, of things in their interactions and mutual relations. Though " we have that within which passeth show," and though every outward thing is a mask of greater inner mysteries, these mysteries, beyond all show, are not taken count of by physical science. Things are known solely through their properties, and the pro- perties are solely exhibited by their interactions and mutual relations. This truth is very important. Physical science knows nothing of the real or essential existence of a thing, or the cause of a thing. All forms of reality, beyond their implications, are unknown ; things seen and temporal are only apparitions. There-Js__no absolute matter, entity, power,_mqtion, restj^_time, space, known to science. There is no mode nor form of material existence which is its own cause or measure, either quantitatively or qualitatively, nor do we know it otherwise than in ceaseless flow of changes. The universe, in its manifest existence, is but a group of relations in manifold interaction, by which greater and eternal things obtain sensible and true avouch. It follows that the assertion — " Mechanical power, or energy, or force, adequately accounts for all material existence " — is simply an absurdity : the very coinage of a false currency for thought, and an abuse of reason which works strongly in godless minds. History shows nations to be so constituted that courage, strength, endurance, success, are on the side THE WORLD'S GOVERNING POWER. 17 of truth and against falsehood. The moral laws so work that the better nation is the stronger nation ; temperance, patience, spirit, skill, make it the stronger. This betterness is in company with those splendid instruments of righteousness by which individuals accomplish the noblest works. The martyr endures the stake, the patriot braves the scaffold, counting it a duty, a privilege, an honour to live and die for truth and freedom. It is a recogniz ed p rinciple that the assertions of scientific men are capable of verification experi- mentally ; but that the world is governed by mechanical power without mind, that matter and force account for all things, is not only incapable of presentation by experiment, but without any sensible or true avouch. There is no mode by which we can raise mechanical force into vital, of TnentalyorTmoral^ energy. It is impossible to give discourse of reason, to furnish will, or life, so that things out of joint therewith shall have the soul of wit. It is not less the fashion of some professors to go beyond their science, than it is for the younger sort of them to lack |discretion. It fits our wisdom so far to belief them,_ as they are competent, in fhelF particular sciences^ do not trans- gress, and give to their saying: due act, and place. In nature we do not find mass, or matter, without force ; nor is any force known, so far as science takes knowledge of it, apart from matter. Matter, possibly, is a concrete of force ; or a formation by force of aetherial vortices within the universal medium ; but no man can say what matter really is, or where c 1 8 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. matter begins, or where it ends ; what spirit is, or how it works ; or how force, by difference in working, produces all natural variety. We may admit, so far as we now purpose to reason, matter and force to be so inseparably joined that we are unable to separate them, or to know one apart from the other. We do not admit that any man's achievements, even when performed at utmost height, exhibit matter and force as everything. He who has that viciousness of nature, the stamp of worst defect — unbelief of God, becomes corrupt in general, and so blind in particular as to the relativity of force and matter, that he takes them as the world's essence and our fortune's star. This communion and relativeness of matter and force are specially to be noticed in that almost in- conceivable narrowness which separates different forces and sorts of matter from one anothe r. Sci ence has narrowed the apj)arentgul£ between Hving and dead, sentient and insentient, animal and plant, man and beast ; but there is no evidence, on which we can reason, that automatons action of the dead obtained life, the insentient of itself became sentient, the plant by its own selection waxed into an animal, or beast voluntarily grew into man. We are not able, though we combine materiaf elements marvellously and pro- duce more marvellous results, to transform one into another ; nor is it possible, at present, by any artificial application, to change mechanical force into vital, mental, or moral energy. It is, so far as experience goes, tested by many experiments, impossible to give THE WORLD'S GOVERNING POWER. ig any reliable examples or arguments that mechanical force explains the phenomena of the universe. The lowest note of the music does not compass universal harmony; nor is God circumvented, nor the heart taken out of mystery, by that which indeed amazes our every faculty. Ifjye reason (as did S. Athanasius, "De Incarnatione," 31, 48-52) orLthe power of Christ over masses of men, "drawing them to religion, persuading them to virtue, teaphing-them immortality, leading them to the desire of heavenly things, reveal- ing the knowledge of the Fatjier,-inspiring power over death, showing every man to himself, abolishing the godlessness of idolatry," we cannot ascribe all this to mechanical force. ^ '~ ~ Go further : it is certain that no finite force nor substance is compteterrrrntself ; nor does, nor can exist of itself and apart from all other. Hence, mechanical force is neither_Ae^ primal nor sole cause of things, but a relative quality. Whatever the assertions made, it is neither probable, nor even thinkable, that in and from the elementary units of mass, without any property or motion, could me- chanical power have proceeded where no power was ; nor if power were brought in from without, is it conceivable that the life, the intelligence, the volition, now existing arose by specific differences, where differences were impossible in homogeneous mass, produced by various velocities of mechanical motion. Displacement of any portion of fluid, destitute and incapable of difference, by another portion alike destitute, could not effect any change in the nature 20 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. of the mass. The given space would present the same substance indistinguishable from that which was present before. There are seething brains which shape fantasies beyond all that reason approves, and give to those airy nothings a local habitation and a name ; but those fancies, however strong, are not great nor admirable. If the balance of our lives were not a scale of reason to poise and prevent folly, conclusions would be preposterous ; and did not higher thought and service cool the sensuality of blood, judgment would be maimed with dangerous and turbulent lunacy, we should err against all rules of nature. If materialists can only mechanically explain things, so much the worse for materialists. They are nature's poorest journeymen to make things so abominably. We do mechanically in art, in science, in morals, as nature does ; but we could not work even mechanically, apart from intelligence, and this intelligence presumes intelligence in our Maker. Sometimes the all about us seems a barren waste. We are as men dropped in the middle of a vast moor, without guide, and night coming on ; but some Moses, some delivering faculty awakes, so that we have fruit of that which appeared fruitless. These helps are as light given on our way that we may know the world's governing power to be spiritual, and that it will assume full and acknow- ledged rule on the earth. It already works from mind to mind. Our -moral sense is not less a fact, than our intelligence is real. Carlyle well said, " It is impossible to conceive that these high faculties THE WORLDS GOVERNING POWER. 21 were put into us by a Being who had none of its own." We cannoF conceive IhaFthe great truths of man's higher service were put into him, there being no such truths, nor any real service. That were a casting out of God and a bringing in of the devil indeed. To think that the Eternal Power whom nature represents is not more than nature is very poor thinking. Whatever are the material media with which He works, we are sure that the various forces, or working energy of the universe, have not as yet displayed all His fulness. The light coming to us, by undulations with various velocities and volumes, is not altogether determined by the force of impulse ; the undulations, velocities, and volumes conspire with many atoms and molecules to produce a unity of brightness. The unity does not in itself contain all the varieties displayed : that on which the light shines, whether earth or metal, flora or fauna, co-operates to form the ghttering splendour. Exercise of thought further reveals that the Eternal Unity of Power creating the unity or homogeneousness of mass, and differencing operations so that the primal mass became atomic, or discrete — was not, nor is, a mere mechanical push or pull ; but that perfection of Being which is the strength of every force, that fountain whence all life flows, that wisdom which is the source of all rule, that will out of which come those high truths — that warrant and beautify all our service. Present organic jife is but a flash, the various worlds are as bright meteors in the universal sky, even in these are more grandeurs than we dream 22 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. of in our philosophy ; and when we attain the full vision of God in that far-off land of beauty whither we hasten, our face unveiled will shine in His bright- ness ; our soul and spirit be glorious amidst those glories of which all former things during vast periods of time did prophesy. It is a matter of surprise how men live in the midst of marvels and are heedless of them. They talk of natural selection and ignore the fact that the Ruling Province is a selecting Providence. There is too much of the uncertain and conjectural in our con- dition, even in the most advanced sciences, for us to allow that our ignorance knows the whole of the true. Mastery is given but to few minds, and we are so easily mystified that the precaution of the prudent, and the forethought of the wary, do not always serve to retain us in humble, loving, faithful veneration and service of Him whom to serve for one hour is of more blessed effect to heart and mind than are years devoted to lower use. All our powers, faculties, and principles are necessary to apprehend even a part of that our beneficent Creator betows. As we persevere, the arcana of nature open ; step by step wise inten- tions, wrought out in deed, acquire more power ; and when we discern the stamp and rule of God in science, the scheme of Christ's Redemption becomes clearer to our perception. There is a love healing all sorrow, a power aiding all weakness, a wisdom re- moving all ignorance. We love those who hate us ; strive to do good even to those who devise evil ; and we discover everywhere a wisdom and goodness THE WORLD'S GOVERNING POWER. 23 guiding us, by furthest reaching discipline, into a bliss entrancing and a life never ending. " Let all the world in every corner sing, My God and King. The heavens are not too high, His praise may thither fly ; The earth is not too low, . His praises there may grow." George Herbert, Antifhon. IV. l^fie l^igfiest ^tm anlr attainment of JWan. " To be practically reverent of Human Worth to the due extent, and abhorrent of human Want of Worth in the like proportion, do you understand that art at all ? " . . . " Nature is ready to do much ; will of herself cover, vi^ith some veil of grass and lichen, the nakedness of ruin : but her victorious act, when she can accomplish it, is that of getting _j'«» to go with her handsomely, and change disaster into new wealth. " — Carlyle, Frederick the Great, Book XXI. ch. i., ii. " Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man." — EpH. iv. 13. "\^7'E are to "aim at perfection in everything, * * though in most Thiiigs~if~is unattainable," said Lord Chesterfield. Thai "perfeetion is not un- attainable is certain, for certainly our whole career is that discipline by which God trains us for it. We cannot by a leap attain it, but rung by rung we may climb up, for our whole life is as the laddeFThat Jacob saw. It was for this very purpose,^ enabling us to become perfect, that GhTrst came_intq the world, and to show how God would act in human circum- stances, just as we are. " Man is God's image ; but a poor man is Christ's stamp to boot : both images regard." George Herbert, The Church Porch. ( 24 ) THE HIGHEST AIM AND ATTAINMENT OF MAN. 25 That men may bestir themselves to follow the Divine human example is the aim of all Christian teaching, as St. Paul said, " That we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus " (Col. i. 28). Job (i. i) was said to be perfect. Zacharias and Elisabeth were declared to be righteous and blameless (Luke i. 6). Both of them and Job were genuinely honest, and with a single aim, wholly apart from twofaced- ness, heartily served God. Every one of us, however and wherever he may be placed, is to aim at that high style of Christianity which means valour and heroic nobleness. If you say, "No such great degree is attainable," begin at once to think all the good you can, say all the good you can, do all the good you can, and keep at it. You will soon find yourself, even if it be in a small circle, amongst those men of endur- ing loyalty to Heaven for whom triumph waits ; and those shouts will come which greet the noble, all- enduring manhood that commands the many weak and foolish to make them better. There is no question but that we are to strive after the realization, as finite creatures, of all the good that we are capable of; to endeavour the attainment of that which Jesus meant when He taught, " Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect " (Matt. v. 48). This teaching, given in Holy Scripture, is con- firmed by natural facts. We are so framed that every man worth anything, like Michael Angelo, does not neglect even trifles ; but recollects " that trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." The raw 26 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. recruit is drilled that, in the measure of his power, he may be a perfect soldier. The natural man, enlisted to serve under Christ's Banner, becomes a regenerate man, enters a spiritual state, lives to God, ascends the scale of spiritual, mental, moral exist- ence, adding grace to grace, effort to effort, until in the World of Glory he is a perfect image of the Creator. It has been said, " There is something in every man's heart, that, if you knew it, would make you hate him." It is better to take Lord Lytton's words — " In every man's nature there lies a something that, could you get at it, cleanse it, polish it, render it visibly clear to your eyes, would make you love him." The model of the perfect man presented to us in the person of Christ is now attainable by individuals only ; and these individuals are made wiser and stronger than all the unwise that these unwise may in their turn, be ennobled ; and thus nations, and finally the world, will find it possible to realize in beauty and power and goodness all that God desires to see in nature and amongst men. Add to all that you know and think of the beauty and graceful form of plants and animals, those rich natural provisions and arrangements by which species are not only preserved but carried on to higher beauty and grace. Then take, so far as you are capable, some natural or scientific fact and make it your own, that you may preserve yourself from that confused movement of the world's mind which leads so many to forget what Scripture and Nature and Science show to be certain: that everything, and THE HIGHEST AIM AND ATTAINMENT OF MAN. 27 every man who individually desires and aims at it, is being led on to the highest and best even perfect condition. The natural and scientific fact and incident, we would therewith connect, are the eye looking into a glass. Sir J. William Dawson, one of America's ablest scientific men, relates, in his work " Modern Ideas of Evolution," p. -ji^ " I remember when a little boy being suddenly struck on looking at myself in a mirror by the question, ' How is it that I can see ; is not sight a very wonderful thing ? ' I could not answer the question then, and though I have since learnt much as to the laws of light and the physiology of vision, I have not yet fathomed the mysteries of the action of light on nerve-cells and of the transmis- sion of visual impressions to the mind." Indeed, the eye is one of the most wonderful things in nature. It brings distant things into relation with us. By its structure and powers, and through medium of the aetherial undulations, we are, by light and knowledge, connected with the most distant luminous bodies in the universe. The eye is a self-acting and registering instantaneous photographic camera. It represents both colours and forms ; and by a nervous apparatus conveys the impressions to our sensorium, the brain. We know the beauty of flowers, the splendour of sunlight, the decorated landscape, and the faces of our fellow-creatures ; we discern wonders so admirably related to the near and far-off, to the present and future, that the vision reveals worlds greater than our own, a future vaster than all that 28 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. the present contains ; and thus seeing that future we prepare ourselves for it, that we may not fall short of any good thing, but both in the present and future realize the highest aim and attainment of man. The confused movement of the mind in all secular and worldly men narrows it, excludes the future, leads them so to act that the present seems the whole of life, and its benefits all that they need care for. Trifles light as air are to the godless stronger than the confirmations of Holy Writ ; and work in dangerous conceits, burning hot like sulphur ; or, as poison, so degrade the everlasting soul that dogs are better than they. Shakespeare relates that Henry IV. thus rebuked the Prince of Wales : — "Thou dost, in thy passages of life, Make me believe, that thou art only mark'd For the hot vengeance and the rod of Heaven. Tell me else. Could such inordinate, and low desires. Such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts. Such barren pleasures, rude society, As thou art match'd withal and grafted to. Accompany the greatness of thy blood, And hold their level with thy princely heart ? " Some of the cleverest and best are as Bentham ("Deontology," vol. i. p. 13), who wrote, "To prove that an immoral action is a miscalculation of self- interest, to show how erroneous an estimate the vicious man makes of pains and pleasures is the purpose of an inteUigent moralist." Such a state- ment is worthy of all commendation as to this life, and would be perfect if applied to the government of our conduct in reference to God and the coming THE HIGHEST AIM AND ATTAINMENT OF MAN. 29 life. What is physically and intellectually and morally good for the present, is also good for the future ; and whatever rightly benefits the body is good for the soul. The story of the universe is not all told, even when we think that all forces, substances, and events, have been physically described. There is a manifold web of forces, wishes, feelings, emotions, woven somehow beyond the ken of materialistic vision. We have a natural body and a spiritual body, have a mortal life and a life immortal, and are partakers not only of God's physical action in the world, but of His spiritual. We must not fuse these, as if the forces acting on dead matter were identical with those acting on life, on intelligence, on our con- science. The material forces fashion our body, and nature is the sphere wherein by our voluntary co-working human will, moved by the spiritual and moral power of Divine Will, is raised into the highest physical, intellectual, spiritual, and moral manhood. We are fellow-workers with God when we plough the field and sow it for harvest, when out of the crab we grow an apple. In a higher sense are we fellow- workers when by work of faith, of faith the gift of God to every man who desires and works for it, we rise from grace to grace, from gift to gift, from use to use, until, even when flesh and heart fail, God is the strength and portion of our heart. Sometimes, when we seem weakest, we are strongest ; and at the end of life, though we say, " God be merciful to us sinners," in use of the words of Jesus, we thank God 30 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. that we have been enabled to fulfil all that He gave us to do : for though we are dead, our life is hid with Christ in God, and Christ enables us to do all things (Col. iii. 3 ; Phil. iv. 1 3). The battle of good and evil tends to victory of the good, preserving us from the evil (Gal. v. 16, 17). Thus our reason and our spirit harmonize with natural laws ; are in uniformity with spiritual laws ; and are on the way to perfection by Divine Strength ; are built up in physical force ; are grounded in reason as to science, repre- sentative of earthly truth ; and have that grounding crowned by the higher, grander, nobler truth, which binds man to God, clothes him with God's power, and girds him with God's life — the highest aim and attainment of man. " Live with me every day. Thou Lord of life ! Thy one death for me Is more than all my deaths can be. Though I ten thousand pay, And die them all each hour in life's long stay." Suggested by George Herbert. See Affliction. V. ®6rist, anU out jpollotutng on tobttSer |^e is. " Earth, thou grain of sand on the shore of the universe of God . . . thee will He again visit, and then thou wilt prepare a throne for Him , as thou gavest Him a manger cradle ; in His radiant gloiy wilt thou rejoice, as thou didst once drink His blood and His tears and mourn His death ! On thee has the Lord a great work to complete." — Pressel, Leben Jesu, 558. Quoted in Life and Words of Christ, by C. Geikie, D.D. THE Present Day, the youngest day of Eternity, is child and heir of the Past. It is a new era in time. It is sent from Heaven to us, and has its heavenly omens. The omen we take to think about, is the Ascension of Christ to the right Hand of Power, that our endeavour may be fuller and richer to follow on whither He now is. Christ is the most glorious Being and Person the world has ever seen. In the vast universe of God is none so fair as He. Divinely born, the perfection of human nature and the Fulness of Godhead were made into one person. That person was rich in all contrasts, the truest and deepest humility in union with kingly majesty. Sorrow beyond all sorrow ( 31 ) 32 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. joined to exquisite tenderness of sympathy and spot- less holiness. He used His latest breath in asking blessings on those who crucified Him. His more than human power clears the moral vision of believers and changes their hearts. He makes us to feel that the bees hum about the flowers, the birds carol on the boughs from amid their leafy bowers, even the leaping and shining waters appear instinct with the life that extols the glory of God. Intellectual composure and elevation met togethe£_ in Him : teaching, helping, saving men ; so that the most ignorant might be taught, be made children of God, and become men of power. He lived. He died, He rose from the dead. He ascended to Heaven. He was Man in it all, He was God in it all : Son of Man and Son of God. He remained forty days after His resurrection, not to shut behind Him the prison of mortal life and leave men in it ; but to give infallible proof to His beloved Apostles and others that He was indeed alive again, and had opened to them for ever the Heavenly Dwelling. He gave them instruc- tions as to their declaring that the Love of God unto all men had been made manifest ; love by which the weakest of men, concentrating his weakness on Christ shall become strong, and find Him the One to lean on safely, the centre and hold of life for the perish- ing ; so wonderful was Christ in those forty days. He filled the hearts of the Apostles with patience to bear every trial, and with courage to dare and to overcome all the opposition of Satan. He so en- dowed them, beyond the worth of warriors, that living CHRIST, AND OUR FOLLOWING WHITHER HE IS. 33 as He lived, they too should rise from the grave, they too should ascend to Heaven. View the meaning of Christ's Ascension as it shows the Perfecting of His Human Nature, and as it reveals the Divinity of His Person. The Perfecting of Christ's Human Nature. He was J)orn without sin, and so, being like the first Adam, He is called the second Adam. He was that most innocent child, the pattern of all innocence, who is also the greatest example of obedience to parents. He became wisest of all men whether in teaching those who desired to be taught, or in reply- ing to His enemies. He was the greatest speaker, and of all wonder-workers the most wonderful. If men tell us our race is advancing to perfection, He is the cause and pattern of that progress. He was exposed to the malice of evil ones even from the beginning, and endured trial and persecution until, made perfect in His human nature by suffering. He gave His life unto death to redeem us for God. In His birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, He has withdrawn those two black, impenetrable curtains which hang down upon and shroud the two extremities of life : whence we came and whither we go. Now we know that we came from God, and shall go to Heaven. He has brought the precepts of Divine Revelation to bear on our higher principles and practice. Think rightly of all this, and you will understand how complete a man He was : beginning D 34 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. in purest innocency, He was made perfect in patience, in wisdom, in love, in_power ; all excellences met in Him ; and we rightly regard Him as that One who, free from every sin, lived that high moral life, that noble intellectual life, that brilliant spiritual life, which throws into our own life clear luminous distinctness and power of saintliness as men. Enoch before the Flood had walked with God, and God translated him ; Elijah had been very brave, and a chariot of fire conveyed him to Heaven ; and hundreds of men, with the torches of a good life, lived by Divine Grace, and tried to show and throw light on the future ; but it was left for the manhood of Christ to rend asunder the darkness, find the solution of every evil, and by His Ascension brighten the mystery of life with a revelation of Heaven. Christ as man ascended on high that thither we may go. The Divinity of Christ's Person. This filled every chamber of body, of mind, of soul, the fulness of Godhead dwelt in Him bodily. He was one man of reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting ; and by Divine taking of that manhood into God He was one Christ. As many things grew plainer and clearer to His human nature ; and as that nature was, by being perfected, adapted to receive more and more of the consciousness and presence of Godhead ; He felt that under the fiery canopy of bodily and spiritual suffering every weakness was drawn aside, and He knew Himself to be filled with CHRIST, AND OUR FOLLOWING WHITHER HE IS. 35 power. He was led in ways and worked in manner not foreseen of men. We cannot know all the mystery of the Divine and human natures in one Person, but that is no difficulty. We do not know how it is possible for our brain to think, or for our heart to feel, or how even an atom of matter can be the wonder that it is. We may know some of the mystery by remembering that Christ called Himself the " Vine." The Vine, as it is the more fruitful, will lie prone on the ground — so frail is humanity ; but the everlasting Father, incorporating Himself in this manhood, raised it even as a vine is raised, and Christ was made the Vine of God, whence we have the rosy wine that gladdens our heart, and makes us of life so bright. He is also the Bread of God, the Manna of God, and eating Him we live by Him. We brace every nerve, become new men, and shape adversity into most favourable results. Our souls are touched with the unseen but omnipresent power of the Holy Spirit. He has made us to know this as a general truth, and to realize it as a particular fact. Able men who endeavour to look into the nature, inner meaning, and power of things, find everywhere and in everything more than the thing itself; a sort of concentration as to the universal, and a re-action on all parts of the universe ; a sort of epitome of all worlds in every raindrop. Take these sparks of truth as shadows of the Divine Truth : God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and Christ ascended to Heaven, even to the right Hand of God, that we may know the way. 36 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. The Perfecting of Christ's Human Nature and the Revealing of His Divinity are the Foundation of our own Growth in Grace now, and of our Crowning with Glory when we Ascend to be with Christ. Our Own Growth in Grace. By believing in Christ as the One sent by the Love of God to save us, we receive power to become sons of God. The New Birth is effected by power coming from on high, and communicated to us by the Holy Ghost. This Holy Ghost, renewing us, continues the work of sanctification. With it proceeds strengthen- ing and enlarging, the growth of wisdom and love, until at last, according to his degree, the believer is made perfect in Christ. Being set free from vice, the source of many miseries, he is no longer tarnished with guilt. His ideas of excellence rise, he seeks not the prizes of great wealth to enrich him, he endeavours by God's help to unfold his spiritual faculties, and delights in the products of reason as they uplift his soul in Divine contemplation. Men, proud, are made humble ; the fierce, meek ; the slow and weak-minded are made quick and strong of understanding; they do that easily which before they could not at all perform. The mystery of the Divine Nature is wrought into the human nature. Our moral and physical nature are fused with endurance, with faculties working miraculous results. We are capable of special services which not even angels can render. Men, like St. CffRJST, AND OUR FOLLOWING WHITHER HE IS. 37 Paul, are able to do all things in Christ. Men, like St. Augustine, rule the thoughts of mankind genera- tion after generation. Others, like Anselm, unite vast powers of reasoning with simplicity of life. Some are poets, such as St. Bernard, Milton, George Herbert ; and those like Luther are champions of Heaven ; and working with Melancthon dare all things that their brethren may be brought to Christ, and be perfected in Him. These are true denote- ments of high service, and work conviction of one yet higher. Then comes our Crowning Glory : Our Ascension to BE WITH Christ. The mystery of our going up to dwell in Glory is illustrated to us by the stars that move in the heavens above as God's own lights that we may see the way. Christ ascended that His Glorified Human Nature, enthroned there, might be the centre of attraction. Scientific men endeavour to explain the adjustments of worlds in their many motions and substances and lives by supposing that there is one vast central mass around which, in their various distances doing their several works and occupying their several places, all worlds do move. These far-off worlds are lights in realms and places surpassing earthly time and things. They seem unchangeable, yet are not so sure, nor bright, as we shall be and that for ever. Their essence and mystery shine with a brightness that illumines realms and realms ; but we in our restored and en- 38 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. larged dignity, in our elevated nature, shall not look downward for continuance of our happiness, or for supply of any wants — we shall look upwards to Him who IS our All in all. Then will be our noblest times, then we shall do our noblest work, then we shall live our noblest lives. Our content shall be so absolute that not another can be like to this. It is blessedly true. The Scriptures of God declare that Christ has been exalted, that all worlds and men and spirits and things may be subject to Him. The holy men, the capable men, the perfected men, are to ascend to be where He is ; are to take high service and place with Him ; that perfected as He is perfect, glorified as He is glorious, they too may sit on the right hand of God. " There to reap, in joy for ever, Fruit that grows from seed here sown ; There to be with Him, who never Ceases to preserve His own." Kelly. VI. CEfofng 23£gonti tftj Fist'bk. Who is the modern hypocrite? The man who uses his own in- telligence to show that there is no other greater Intelligence, and thus steals the livery of Heaven to serve the Devil in. The animal creation was prophetic of man. All things and forms of life have completion in him. He is the crown of material and physical existence, and the personal representation of that new spiritual existence which becomes universal in the new heavens and the new earth. " ' I ""HERE is sufficient light for those who want to -»- see, and sufficientTdafkness for those who do not want -to see"' in nature the promises and potencies of immortality. The question is, What will a man do with it ? Will he use the light, like scientific men, as a means of investigation, and rise from truth to truth ; or will he, loving darkness, go on even to the outer darkness of total ruin ? There is no compulsion. No man is so born as to be full of light, with no darkness at all; nor does history tell us of any persons whose mind and heart were so bad and dark, that in them was neither light nor goodness at all : there is no fatality for any one. » Pascal Pensdes, "Caractferes de la Vraie Religion," vol. ii. p. 151 : Ed. Faugire. ( 39 ) 40 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. None of us " is too good to be where ill men are, and only One is best of all amongst the rarest good." In every face, where character is expressed, you will see the usual aspect of thought ; some sadness, more or less ; and an occasional brightening, as if the man had capacity to become an angel. In some faces, heated as with an inward fire in times of provocation, may be discerned the ferocity and cruelty of a demon. The better part of a man, the angel in him, is stronger than the evil part, the demon ; and every man, even the worst, can with less effort, by use of what God gives, become more happily and easily useful and honourable ; than he can make himself a ne'er-do-well and a castaway. If you hear any one talk of genius, of talent, as if some were favoured with a heavenly gift ; do not think there is more than the heredity of good which has been won by the diligence and virtue of ancestors ; nor greater ability than that which healthful, pure, godly parents, convey to their children. There is no favouritism further than this : right doing blesses the good from generation to generation ; and evil doing curses a man even to his latest posterity. Everything, good and bad, goes beyond the visible to the invisible. Sir Frederick Leighton being written to as to whether there was such a thing as genius in art without a hard apprenticeship, replied, " Nothing considerable has yet been done in this world without the bestowal of infinite pains." ^ Sir John E. Millais answered a like inquiry, " I have no belief in what ' The Standard xiv^i^z.^tx, May 19, 1891. GOING BEYOND THE VISIBLE. 41 is called genius as generally understood. Natural aptitude I do believe in ; but it is absolutely worth- less without intense study and continuous labour." ^ The moral is, " The ills we do, our own ill wills instruct us to " ; then let us not " pick bad from bad, but by bad mend." Thus shall every man go beyond the visible, and obtain honour yet unseen. Thej aws b y which the relative order and regularity of movement are maintained in thejnaterial world, were for ages a mystery to human beings. Sir Isaac Newton made a great advance when he carried the visible falling of an apple into the invisible power of gravity ; and greatly helped to show how wonderful, all-guiding, and all-sustaining are the things unseen. The accuracy of all this, and the comprehensiveness of all this, have by later investigation and reflection been carried into the thoughts of our mind, the desires of our heart, and the religion of our soul. No thought is by chance, nor desire fashioned out of nothing, nor religion without some great reality. The constitution of every world is such that the same accuracy of rule governs the material and mental domains, the world of natural desires and the world of spiritual emotions. Whatever is seen, or heard, or felt, or thought, or feared, or wished, is not a baseless fantasy, but a phenomenon representing a vaster reality. In the future it will be worse with the evil man than he fears. The good will gather far more than all that he knows or hopes. The cause of this good effect, and of the effect defective, are alike unseen. ' The Standard newspaper, May 19, 1891. 42 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. This, however, we know. Study of Nature, of History, of Scripture, shows that a Selective Provi- dence acts everywhere. There is natural selection, mental selection, spiritual selection. There has been " much throwing about of brains " concerning this ; but there is something in it more than we see as yet, and our advanced philosophy will sometime find it out. In use of this truth, we shall all be better if we enlarge our small faculties ; and, as to the greater, render them more accurate. Out of small things and events come large uses as did the removal of a few shepherds from Shechem to Dothan (Gen. xxxvii.), so important in the history of Joseph, of the Jews, of the world. All great things are writ small in the little, and all the little are magnified in the large. Rudimentary teeth in the embryo whale seem use- less, they pass away before the whale is born ; but those who see no reason in this are the men who have not carried the visible into the invisible, nor learned the wonderfulness of unity in nature. Those rudi- mentary teeth are not rudimentary, they do not advance, they are relics of the past, and show oneness in process as to all Hving things. The universe, in all the variety, is one thought of God infinitely expressed. The great in the small, and small in the great, all extending from the visible to the invisible, may be seen in that lower part of the kingdom of Heaven, the Gospel Kingdom. To enter it, you must become as a little child. It is as if you had to learn a great science. You begin GOING BEYOND THE VISIBLE. 43 in good time, have faith in your teacher, and verify that faith by personal research. This does not mean, insist upon demonstration of every statement in Astronomy, in Chemistry, in Biology, in Christianity ; but while learning, while a child in knowledge, think as a child and believe as a child ; then, when ripeness of knowledge is attained, you will see how wonderful is the passage to larger reach, and your content shall be so absolute that there is no other comfort like it. You shall know how goodly is this frame of earth, most excellent the canopy of air, and all the " brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof pressed with golden fire." You shall admire your own wonderfulness as man, noble in reason, almost infinite in faculties, with form and movement admirable, how like God who is the world's beauty. We are very sorty for ungodly men ; they miss even now a great gain and many consolations owing to their shortsightedness. This defect in their vision leads to falling short in their efforts. They seem less reasonable than the lower animals, whose instincts unfailingly connect them with their sur- roundings ; for these men neglect the universal ideas of right and wrong, of immortality, of powers above them, and the capacity to attain closer and more intimate relations with the Higher Intelligence, from whom they emanate and whose nature they share. They fail in the natural history of things, and are blind to the spiritual, loving to have it so. They do not search Holy Scripture as the Bereans did (Acts xvii. II). They turn back from the plough, 44 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. because they cannot all at once lay the field in furrows. God will make some use of them sometime, somewhere. In the shop of a skilled artisan are many rough and crooked pieces, things half shaped, parts widely scattered ; but they all belong to a work or works not completed, not yet seen. When that unseen is seen you will say, " How good it is ! " Remember, the lost asses were in part the means of winning a throne and crown for Saul. Treasures jjenerally lie far out of si^ht. Only fools, "gross as ignorance made drunk," forget this ; and those who pervert it are practitioners in the " divinity of hell," for when devils put on their blackest sins, they " suggest at first with heavenly shows." Their doom, at present, lies far out of sight. Another series of circumstances, going beyond the visible to the invisible, are those which seemingly wrong are really right. So-called material mischances, physical pains, mental delusions, and all evils that seem rooted in the devil, lead many people astray7 Those who thus find fault, because so much seems bad and useless, depart from God, and, themselves, become most mis- chievous. Discarding the idea of an intelligent God, they weaken that common sense which says to them, " Man is not only a proof of mind in nature, but the strongest evidence of a higher creative mind from which that of man emanates ; " and, as no effect is without a cause, they attribute to atoms thaTwhicTi they deny to God. Thus belrttling themselvesr^hey are like many small creatures very mischievous. GOING BEYOND THE VISIBLE. 45 They would have you think — because the barn doors are shut and you cannot see through, that there is nothing in the barn. These men are not good guides. We know that for reasonable purpose and scientific sacred aim the mountain masses are welded ; that this purpose brightens in the stars ; that they are the visible things of an invisible science ; and when this now invisible science, this hidden thought of God, is fully luminous in our minds the harmonies of the universe will awake melody in our souls. " Light that makest manifest, Beautifiest, hallowest, Light in Thy joyous strength at rest, Come to us : come." Litany. VII. '^\)t iEatural l^tstorg of out ImmortalttB : ■^Trutfifulmss of our jfatulties. " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." — John viii. 32. " For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ : till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." — Eph. iv. 12, 13. THE lives, experiences, and actions of the human race, are materials for the history of those footsteps by which nations and individuals advance to the great future. The process is internal and external, making and controlling present circum- stances, and developing them into a grand production. The right efforts of men are thus directedj in what- ever they do, to better what is done. The actual work of the process, for the most part, is hidden from view ; but unceasingly acts Toy an art which, moulding nature into new forms and uses, passes us on to greater affluence. Though much hidden, the natural interference is made known to the seeing eye by future events so casting their ( 46 ) TRUTHFULNESS OF OUR FACULTIES. 47 shadow before that we, foreseeing, know for what to hope and prepare. The process is further indicated by a predominating influence of physical law and order in the material universe, which is not less precise in man's intellectual and moral nature. The influence is both universal and particular ; the atom, the flower, the beast, the man, the angel, every one has a special law impressed on its own nature. The heavens and earth are both concerned ; and afford, by passing into new stages, and by foreshadows of that which is to come, a natural history in the present time of our future state. When the skies look grimly, they threaten blusters ; even as our conscience, dark with the ills of unbelief and behaviour, is aware that woes are stirring. Death and reward, both alike, do threaten and encourage us so to live that evils may pass away as dreams, and that the fulness of good may make our future awaking happy. Every human being who fails to surrender his entire nature to this teaching, and to the verifying of physical, intellectual, and moral truth, defeats that for which he was brought into existence. It is not required of any man to bow his mind and will in unquestioning submission to his fellow-man ; but that which Scripture teaches, which nature enforces, which the common-sense of our race universally approves, that we endeavour to realize our aspirations, and to live our best thoughts, must be accepted in the length and breadth thereof for the extension and improvement of our whole corporeal, mental, and spiritual structure. 48 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. An observant man, toward the close of a long life, if he carefully examine his experiences, will see that there has been a teaching influence, .and that some remarkable epochs in his existence coloured all the future. Many elements may have gone to the making or marring him ; but there is one quality essential to a man, and without it he is not a man — truth. No great life is lived, no noble work achieved, unless a man is true to God ; then, being true to himself, he will have that root of daring — faith, that right is right for ever, and that the triumph of wrong cannot last. He is a bold man who predicts the fate of another ; there are many hidden strivings of the Spirit, and compunctions, agonies of heart, whence improve- ment may come ; but in the history of nations the elements of a correct opinion as to their real state and fate are in abundance. Sometimes the acting influences and connecting links are so distinct that the end may be apprehended with a near approach to accuracy. Had we true histories, we should see developed the dread power of good and evil of which the monition is planted in our bosom. To say man is " a feather for each wind that blows," is a wrong and rash statement which deserves rebuke in the words of our great poet — " I ne'er heard yet. That any of these bolder vices wanted Less impudence to gainsay what they did, Than to perform it first." Winter's Tale, act iii. sc. 2. Words that remove such folly are " as medicinal as true." To purge man of that humour which presses TRUTHFULNESS OF OUR FACULTIES. 49 him from right conduct, and to remove that ignorant credulity of unbelief which will not come to the truth, is the great lesson afforded by the natural history of our future state. " No man,'' says Professor Max MuUer, "is an atheiirby nature or lairth, only by artifiee- and education." Men everywhere believe, because of roots growing deep in their nature; and the universality of faith is a proof of Divine planting. We are what we. are, and our future will be co- ordinate, would be a fact irresistibly strong were it intelligently drawn by every man himself from the precise laws which not less govern mind than matter. The sun rises, attains the meridian, and sets, with no greater accuracy than act the powers in our physical, mental, and spiritual constitution. The material con- ditions of the earth's four quarters are not more the cause of their inhabitants' physical condition, than were those influences which, acting on Jerusalem, Greece, Rome, Britain, gave them civil polity and religious faith. Though it be so, laws and influences are neither so rigid nor exacting but that we can either use or abuse them. It lies much in ourselves that we are thus and thus. The balance of our lives is not so poised with reason in one scale and folly in another, that we are enforced to set any rigid con- clusions. There are inner forces called up by our will, and so we disclaim the purposed evil, and give effect to thoughts most generous of good. This liberty shows that we are not shams, like the painting of a sorrow, nor as a face without a heart ; nor are the thought and the desire of immortality imparted E so ti/e natural history of immortality. with6ut the purpose that we should use them. We calf up our God-like reason, rouse our capability, irfake our life glow; and then heaven's face shines, and earth bears fruit, in such wise that the well- ordered promise and potency of our existence grow clearer and clearer, as a history, throwing light on the life yet to come. Our reasonable liberty has four aspects of power. That by which science changes and guides so many natural processes that they yield a greater good. That by which with care and skill we so aid our own physical constitution that we transform weakness and malady into vigorous health. That by which, as communities and individuals, we better our political and pecuniary affairs. That, best of all, which in use of Divine grace enables us to attain power, wisdom, joy, and higher life, in drawing nigh to God. Every one of these forms of liberty and power is a chapter in itself of our living natural history, in which may be greatly foreseen what will happen in the near future here, and in that further hereafter where we hope to flourish and prosper. He who denies this fourfold liberty, should state how, without it, we are to train men so that they be both self-restraining, and rightly self-assertive. Let him observe that all forms of existence, known to us, possess a remarkable adaptation to their particular state and place. This rule is observed as to men and their characters. John Knox would be out of place did he censure Queen Victoria as were she the former Mary ; nor would the patriots who opposed TRUTff FULNESS OF OUR FACULTIES. 51 Charles I. find the same necessities and occasions for resistance now ; nor could the opponents of Romish superstition and of Laud's narrowness justify present opposition to our English Church of larger freedom. Let those whose character is yet in hardness show their skill by a new construction. This adaptation of living things to their state and surrounding possesses further application. Our insight as to meanings exceeding present uses, and our foresight as to that which will happen, not only concern the handbreadth of space and time now occupied ; but are that operation of our whole nature, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, which extends far and wide in space and time. All abridgments have distinctions and circumstantial branches in which our knowledge should be rich. Our life is a Book of Immortality, our faculties are as the law and prophets therein. Holy Scripture is the light of God's Spirit whereby we read and fully understand ; advanced science is that schoolmaster by whose discipline we use the light more skilfully, and our faculties more largely with discretion ; so that the present power of life is helped by all the offices of nature. We say science, for in the same way and sympathy by which we combine our practical and aesthetic faculties to use and advance the exercise of nature's powers that we may be skilful in art ; in the same way that we. apply imagination, chastened by reason and experiment, to discover the laws and harmonies of nature to form verified science ; in that same manner do we unite practical aesthetics, imagination 52 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. and reason, in those further mental, moral, spiritual, voluntary researches and verifications, by which we discover that as our faculties are correct and lead to right uses in dealing with material elements, with plants, with animals and specially with our fellow- men, so are they trustworthy as to those greater facts in which it is most of all important to be correct. The correctness is a natural stamp, a wise donation of true evidence. Every fear that we have with regard to physical dangers, represents^ sonie possibility of actual hurt. Every hope that a sound mind indulges, is the mute prophecy of good that may be attained. Every desire of the heart for more love and purity, is a light that guides to holiness. Even so, every fear and hope and light as to the future is a not less infallible indication of a fearful future for the wicked ; of joy- fulness for the good ; of holiness for the pure-hearted. The fulfilment will be found in that immortality which awaits every soul. Another Verification as to the Truthfulness of OUR Faculties. There was One, the wisest and best of men, who for our sake remained forty^daj^s-in^the far-ofif wilder- ness; Without anything to eat, and nowhere to rest, He was tempted to do wrong, and to help Himself in an unnatural way. "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." Why should He not make bread ? He could do it in an instant. It was no harder to make a stone int;o TRUTHFULNESS OF OUR FACULTIES. 53 bread, than of the same or similar elements to make a strawberry or an apple. It was not right, because He was there as an example of patience, of trust, of obedience, to men who could not do such a work of wonder ; to poor, hungry, tempted men, unable to resist temptation or to supply their want by means of miracle ; to men, whose faculties, physical, mental, moral, had to be disciplined, improved, and made to be helpers and deliverers by natural exercise. If when we are tempted to steal, to forget and forsake God, we had not the example of our Saviour who, by not using His Divine Faculty for personal help, showed confidence that God would enable Him by patience, by endurance, by force of character, to over- come in the appointed natural way ; we should be without the divinest, best, most natural proof. that our faculties are powerful enough, accurate enough, if well used, to conduct us through life in the best manner, /-with best results, into that future of which the life that now is, and the powers now possessed, are the reliable assurance, the accurate guide, and the potential prophet. When we are crossed, hindered, and gifts seem delayed, we are made the stronger to be the more delighted. None want eyes to direct them in the way, nor power to use them, but those who neglect the gift. ' ' Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven ; the fatal sky Gives us free scope ; only doth backward pull Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. " VIII. ®5e iSatural ^^I'stotg of our Itn mortal ftp : ^figsical jfatts '2rfi£r0of. " Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee j and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee : or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee : and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this ? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind." — Job xii. 7-10. IT is not needful to speak of plants which out of seed-existence grow to life in the earth, life on the earth and thence over the earth. We will not mention birds and some other creatures which, passing from narrow egg-limits, enter wide sky- expanse. We pass over the metamorphosis and transfornjation of insects, of fishes, of reptiles, of some quadrupeds, and other creatures. The instincts which lead to migration into new scenes, of hibernation in apparent suspension of life, and of those various conditions when life seems hidden for a time that it may be more manifest at another time. All these we pass over, because well and sufficiently have they been used as indicative of many shapes and of many ( 54 ) PHYSICAL FACTS THEREOF. S5 futures belonging to life. We take up unwonted themes. Not^onlx do we have examples of the lower and the higher as seen in life's grades, but Jn^ everything. Draw a line — apparently it is a straight line, really it is part of a spherical curve. Strive all that we can to make a line perfectly level, we shall see, when viewing it through a microscope, that it is a curve, and jagged with many irregularities. The ideal, the perfect, is always beyond us, lies in the future. Our duties and privileges~denland perfection in their uses, and we endeavour to medicine ourselves with good advice, and to answer both in every part during our span of life. Alas ! though the life that we prescribe for may be prolonged, faultiness and death do seize the doctor too. All th js make s us long for more life and better. The longingis natural, andJieing^natural has, like all natural things, an unseen counterpart — the life which is to come ; for the fingers of the powers above do tune the harmonies of this lower sphere. Sometimes fiery comets, meteors, and other signs come into our world from the worlds far off. The superstitious behold them as tokens of many evils, a displaying of Satan's invisible world. This lower level of intelligence is raised by knowledge into the stage of higher science that interprets those fiery signs as a telegraphy from worlds to worlds. They are signals concerning sun and earth, moon and planets ; pro- cesses which winnow truth from falsehood. They are movements of far-journeying, states which, as the tongues of dying men, or as solemn music. 56 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. enforce attention. They are perspectives of powers, of movements, of life beyond our own, and our spirit sees them as gleams of imrhortality. Take sharpest needle point, it seems pointed beyond all fineness, a perfect work ; yet the microscope shows that it is not a point, but a plane ; and not rounded, but with hills and valleys many. This imperfection of human work is in contrast with the perfection of nature's work, and as we lift up that we do in endeavour to equal what is done in nature, we attain those higher levels of skill which distinguish the artist from the rude workman, and give him many delights. Every man, worth the name, is always seeking some betterment, and will not cease till all be won. " The time of life is short ; To spend that shortness basely, were too long." In all this shortness, and with smallest, weakest things around us, all stretching into the vast of space and the immeasurable of time, we find in them and in ourselves a something imperishable that comes from God. Something like a Line of Life which, as a necklace-thread, holds all together and gives con- tinuity. We know that He is with us and with them. He is the everlasting Now. He is the everlasting Here, our Immortality, our power of endless Being. There is more meaning in this and in everything than little and low understandings dream of. Rush- lights and sulphur matches, like little understandings, are innumerable. They resemble those who think that no inscrutable, nor venerable mystery is to be found ; who try to illumine every cranny of art and PHYSICAL FACTS THEREOF. 57 cesspool of nature ; to dissect and distil dry bones, and flesh, and blood ; but the grand Tissue of all tissues is quite overlooked. Science will never be rid of wonder, whatever low minds think, nay insists on the value of universal wonder, that Natural Parables, like the Gospel Parables, concern the Kingdom of Heaven as seen on earth. The power given us to believe this, to know this, manifests not to our eyes only, but to our hearts. It is the Life of God in us, around us, giving to all who understand the meaning an assurance of life everlasting. Our mystical facul- ties, piercing the time element and material garb, find everywhere avenues to the future. Duverney, celebrated as an anatomist, noted in the respiration of a carp the use of at least four thousand three hundred and ninety-seven organs. Sixty-nine are muscles ; eight principal arteries in the gills throw forth four thousand three hundred and twenty rami- fications ; and in this manner the blood is exposed in very small parts to the action of the air that every particle, afresh and afresh, may be made instinct with life. These are little matters, but show great art in nature and extend to things more than could be thought to begin from such trifles. Thoughtful men bring them into relation with those great faculties of Divine love, reverence, and worship which look through all illusions and discern that existence is not the sparkling phantasm of a moment, but world- enveloped, cradled in space, and moving in time a beautiful light of the everlasting of whose presence we knovv. S8 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. The trunk of a fly is of more ingenuity than that of an elephant. The strength and bold soar of the eagle are marvellous ; but the common fly, feeble as it is, without any defensive armour in the midst of dangers, takes a flight which for its strength is both bolder and longer. A bee makes its hexagonal cell with more mechanical skill than Newton possessed, and never attempts another figure ; but Newton, with wants of a higher kind, traces on earth the curves described by stars in the heavens ; extends these to infinite space, and rejoices in the awful idea of Him who created the universe. Newton was not weak- minded, that we may neglect his opinions. He was a sort of space-annihilating man, a time-annihilating man, and most firmly believed in immortelifyTiaecause more than many men all compounded into one he knew whence things come and whIffieFthings go. Farth-and Icnowledge thus-awakened, TmTconscious- ness of life and power goes beyond pHenQmena, from the finite to the infinite,^iroiii the temporal to the eternal. Partaking of the infinite and the eternal, one joy crowning another, we are not alone in the earth, nor when our thought flies to the stars are our souls without a sanctuary. The Divine Idea is every- where, and God everywhere is with us. The infinite universe is not altogether to God Himself, He is not alone, we enjoy it too ; and with enlarging faculties fulfil our wishes as they rise ; because we find, and shall ever find in Him, a power infinitely to live. We are not surprised at the wonders, we are made to wonder. PHYSICAL FACTS THEREOF. 59 Nature is of infinite expansion, of infinite depth, and our experience does more than read it. We see, we hear, we feel ; every sense has an apprehension. More than that, they and all things are prophets, dexterously untwining the vast intertwisting of events, and by dexterous recombination they find that the course of Providence leads on and on for ever and ever. Neither we, nor shall anything else be lost. Animals have their peculiar characters giving specialness to every faculty. They have will, and with design use their sensitive powers. The cat is different from a mouse, and a wolf from a sheep, and they know it. A spider, coming out of the little egg, weaves its own transparent workmanship without waiting for a model web. All things grow as our knowledge grows. When we take the day as an image of life, of our dawn, of our morning, of our midday, and of evening, that physical sense, telling us of a new day following on after night, is enlarged by the testimony of a spiritual sense that a day is coming of which God will be the everlasting Sun, and His infinity the measure thereof. That Sun, not the sun of our planetary system, gives the true effulgence in which we see and by which we live. The life of it is in every star of the sky for physical use, in every healthful mind of man for mental use, and there are a thousandfold accompaniments, rich symphonies of celestial influences, making melody in our hearts, gladdening our souls, and leading us on divinely. The earth, in all its parts, duly corresponds. The 6o THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. valleys and mountains are figures expressive of use and purpose ; while the universe as a whole is one vast pantheon-workshop for the display of service by man and all things unto God. The dictates, the instincts of our soul, are not less true and infinitely grander than all with which our other and lower fellow servants in the earth are endowed. Nature in its perpetual renewal, in the enjoyments we possess of it, and in our relinquishment of the present for the sake of a better life, is itself a vast drama of far- extending acts. Augmentation and multiphcation, the collecting and combining of elements to supply the wants of plants and animals, the harmonies of trees with water, wrought by invisible power, have a language, and say, " Cast forth thy act, think thy thought, live thy life, for it is an ever-living, an ever- working universe, nothing is lost." What is unnoticed to-day is, nevertheless, of continual growth ; and whatever time displays is a vesture of the Eternal. An instinct, moreover, is in man not found in any other animals. When he dies he looks toward Heaven, and beyond every earthly memory. He expects a mansion in the skies. Our soul, said the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, "is a god in exile." Truly there is in our mind not a memory, but an idea of Him who made us ; and, as He does nothing in vain, our persuasion of future life in a higher sphere is stamped with truth. Men in old time well thought that the palaces of the muses and the palaces of the gods were placed on high, above the majesty of mountains. They, apart from any Bible-teaching, PHYSICAL FACTS THEREOF. 6i discerned that life's pleasant career was guided by a superintending Providence. The conviction of an over-ruling Wisdom is to us a more established truth. It keeps our soul in peace, is the polar star of our physical and our moral existence. It grasps all things on the earth, stretches a hand to the sky, and in the courses of the stars, and in the lower cycles of earth's life, reads the natural history of Immortality. Teachers of sacred truth mostly play too much on one string. Their hearers listen, as to false smooth reports, counting the comforts unreal, and worse than true wrongs — because not proven. It is time to show that not only the Holy Bible, but the other great Scripture, Nature, bodes to reason and imagination other forms and realities, as yet to sense unknown, and framed by skill invisible. It is to correct those who put mensuration and numeration in place of worship, of reverence ; and to give a clearer flame than the darkling light borne by self-satisfied sceptics who walk with rattle and lantern in the day-time ; we would prove that no natural production is a bolt of nothing shot at nothing. The most familiar objects are too often not only unknown, and what is worse, misknown ; for what are the thronging floods of life and the tumbling in of events, but a stream from eternity to eternity } The past and future are greater realities than the now, which is but a moment. Were we not earth- blinded, we might obtain not less real replies from things to come, than we do from those that are gone by. What are the living walking apparitions of men, 62 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. of women, of children, but souls made visible ? The joyful and the sorrowing, those dying and the being born, are inwoven as parts of sublimity dwelling here : for life is sublime, and man is, Chrysostom said, " the true Shekinah," God's Presence manifested. " Still with Thee — when purple morning breaketh, When the bird waketh, and the shadows flee ; Fairer than morning, lovelier than the daylight. Dawns the sweet consciousness — I am with Thee ! " H. B. Stowe. IX. ®6e iSatural l^istorg of our Immottalttg : ^^DStcal Sigmfiols 'S^fierEof. " The elevation of the human race will move forward with accelerated speed, accompanied, unhappily, by increased efforts in hostile quarters to restrain that progress onward to enlightenment, liberty, and purity : but all opposition, of whatever form or degree, will be ultimately over- borne, and the final and certain triumph of the great Redeemer's avowed intentions will be revealed at the appointed time in the full fruition of the earthly results of that great decease which He accom- plished at Jerusalem. " — Divine Footsteps in Human History, p. 405. Published by William Blackwood &" Sons. SYMBOLS } What are they .? They are those thrngs— arrct'^events which, materially based on the visible, extend their meaning to the fathomless depths and infinite heights. They are all the things which God hath made. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handy- work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." They witness of their Creator. The meaning gives the tran^end.ental significance of ( 63 ) 64 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. matter, of power, of life, bodying forth to our sensible appSHensioh~lEe"]eternal God. R'iglvEljrunderstood, whatever was and is and' will be is for ever. The universe and all in it are a symbol, the " Time-vesture of God," which reveals Him to the wise, and hides Him from the foolish. Our knowledge, which is the meaning and the experience we have_ of _things and events, advances from the mechanical and physical to the ^Rental and moral signification. In the uses of knowledge, we more and more become consciously related to nature, to our fellow men, and to God. Whatever we find around us acts by a trinity of operation sending impulse to our physical senses, information to our mental faculties, and motives to our moral capacity. Not less based on reality are our spirits and minds than our physical senses, nor less accurate when used with equal care to that bestowed on our bodies. They go beyond the seeming of natural events, from strange to stranger strengthen ; for all places that the eye of Heaven visits, every grass-blade and specially the living soul, go from mystery to mystery ; till all stand clear when we are at home with the immortal living Host. No man should separate for disuse and disparage- ment those holy mental powers which nature has put together. In the exercise of human charity, heart and mind should act as two sisters : heart prompting, mind guiding. In acts of divine reverence and wor- ship, heart and mind are lifted up by the spirit, so that the Universe is one vast symbol of God ; and PHYSICAL SYMBOLS THEREOF. 65 Holy Scripture, aided by science, gives thereof the interpretation. The things around us, as Carlyle said, are not here on their own account, but are emblems and symbols of greater power and greater life, to show that what our soul holds most dear are on before, and reveal new coming Eras. There is a far-off in what is nigh, a height in what is low, a vastness in the small, and a life in all that seems dead. We find it because there is such an incipiency and a sortedness of life even in the in- animate that every metal and earth has its nature ; and when we think of the imperceptible gradations by which the inorganic becomes organic, by which metals and earth in certain forms are crystals, and thence progress into plant and animal life ; we see in all, even the lowest created bodies, a symbol of God's own force. The Son of God Himself has told us to consider the Lilies of the Field, and we do consider them. The best of knowledge, the best of zeal, the best of worship, is Scriptural. When we have most knowledge, most zeal, and worship most, it will 'be according to the law and testimony of Jesus Christ who has brought life and immortality into blissful light by the Gospel. The force and wonder are everywhere. Insects see through a microscopic eye. Birds, frequently as with a telescope. The instincts of both are limited to a few sorts of industry ; but inan's eye, man's mind, admits light for every kind of knowledge. The eye, as good servant of the mind ; the mind, as good servant of the spirit, enabling it to learn of a Supreme F 66 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Governor, and that the harmonies of the universe all speak of Him. Man further learns that no speck, nor spot, nor cranny, can be separated from the whole of creation. The fuel of those fires which smelt the iron and steel for our engines and ships of war was sent us by the sun. Their light and heat are fed by an influence circulating beyond the most distant star. Our own senses, thought, will, are clever affinities of human life and spirit ; are victories won in us and by us over matter by means of matter led by spirit. Thus man's force and life, all commanding in "our earth, belong to the vital system of a Living Immensity by whom, through His dwellingjn us, and our dwelling in Him, we have immortality. This, the real meaning of universal history, is a knowledge worths striving for. _ Speech, or language, is a wonderful symbol. Viewed mechanically, written to give permanence to history, to cosmography, to philosophy, it promotes the growth of mind. Speech, philosophically re- garded, is thought made vocal ; and thought is as a photograph in the brain-chamber of a light and movement somewhere else. Our attention to thought, and stretching of speech that thought may be duly expressed, are a fixing in the flesh of those unseen processes by which all that is material and all that is spiritual are writ small in the brain for use of the soul in its vital relations with the body and the mind. The whole is of admirable workmanship. There is concealment and yet revelation. Beautifully linked speech not being able to reveal the whole of thought, PHYSICAL SYMBOLS THEREOF, 67 nor thought capable of understanding all that is revealed. They are like the union of heaven and earth in which distances infinite, time immeasurable, and science inexhaustible, are in relation to our own mortal life helping it to become immortal; Light, thought, language, deal with worlds so far off that no mortal imagination is able to conceive the vastness of the wide-separating abyss ; yet the retina of our eye, the small fraction of an inch in diameter, represents the vast display of Omnipotence ; and our brain, the mind's organ, closed within the upper part of our head, acquaints itself with the all-combining Wisdom, the universal Life of the manifested God, in whom we all live ; and this knowledge and life assure us that we shall live. " Light," said Plato, " is a shadow of the Deity." It is that by which, even when our belief in Him is extinguished in heart and mind, we may view His works in heaven and earth, and again find our way to Him. We thus are also able to trace, as Plato further stated, that the visible world is only an outline, or image, of the real world where all those things are actual of which we now possess but the shadows. The poorest amongst us, were he weak as a withered leaf, cannot be separated from that God, nor be deprived of immortality. Every part of his body, and all the forces, are as windows through which he looks on infinity. His soul, noblest of all, is a soul by power of everlasting inspiration. It is certain, this world being a shadow, so to speak, of God's Light, that all evil, physical and moral, is 68 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. but temporary. Evil is darkness, and light will dispel that darkness. Evil is as those distortions and deviations of shadow when the true shapes of things are disguised ; in a little while the true shapes and proportions will be revealed. A blind man, when his eyes are first opened, does not by the shape of his limbs know that they are his own. By use of light and sight, disciplined by the mind, he learns to know himself; and this knowledge, so obtained, is a symbol of the way in which, when our own light is clearer and our vision purged, enlarged wisdom will discern Divine Providence everywhere conduct- ing to great issues and guiding man to full pos- session of immortality. The clothing oflrnortality will be put off, and the garments of immortality be assumed. Existing laws of matter and mind are providential, but not absolute, not unchangeable and irresistible. In every art and manufacture, in all sciehce^and philosophy, we work and reason on the accepted and practically verified truth that natural laws may be used to modify one another in remedy of evil, and obtainment of greater than the good already in reach. There is a growth always. It was from chaos to creation, clearing of the sky, rounding of worlds ; and no animal, no bird, no insect, puts forth at once all its beauty ; or is, in character, all of which it will be capable. Those laws of gravity and light and life once unknown ; and, when known, deemed to be inimitable and irresistible ; are now often imitated and restrained. Wind and storm, rain and heat, PHYSICAL SYMBOLS THEREOF. 69 electricity and life, are made greatly subservient to many uses. Our art imitates nature's art, our science IS acquired in her school, our mental force is gained by working with her, until, by a Wisdom restraining, the spheres being more and more manifested in and by us, we act and live by a power and life of which no limit can be fixed. Scornful, unbelieving men may call our reason a worthless rag. Despise not a rag. Of a rag we make paper, and on that paper print words mighty in thought and pictures full of beauty. On our mind called a rag God prints the natural history of our immortality and impresses the picture of His own Likeness. Love and knowledge and worship seem to be the great factors in this advance from rudimentary things to the knowledge of God. Wisdom and power established the harmony of shape ancj colour. These were in relation to motion and life, but it was not till love and worship came that things and persons were filled with beauty. The finest painting is only surface, the noblest sculpture is without life, nor has any man by the most skilful long-continued processes, by any fire, by any magnetism, been able to awake the dead into life. Life is God's gift, and to it is added the grace of love. Love, and we include loves of the plants, multiplies life ; and this life-giving love is a symbol of the Love of God. He clothes His power and wisdom with love. He spreads the Hght, warmth, and life of it through all worlds. They are kindled, they are brightened. Those once dark are made to revolve around His throne of light. As they roll the 70 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. hemispheres are presented to the warmth divine. The oceans flow within limits, winds move according to horizons, clouds receiving solar rays streak the air with gold and vermilion, plants take flower passing into fruit, birds build their nests and make wood and field resound with song, man delighted with so much beauty, animated by love so great, worships God who is the Giver of all. Man knows the universe as a grand symbol of power, of wisdom, of love, all subduing. In the life of it he lives, in the knowledge of it he grows, the power of it he uses, and in his best estate serves God with all his heart and mind and soul and strength. Gently is he led on. He whom truth rules, where'er his path may be, walks safe and sacred. His speech will not drawl like a tortoise. Knowledge, not lightly won, will not b.e wickedly spent. Imagination and reason, duty and delight, not at war with one another, give in harmony independence to thought ; and, bold as true, reverent as free, he lives not less as man in the business of hfe, than holy as son of God in view of heaven. He knows, he feels, every faculty is possessed of the truth, that the light of nature is God's light to show him the way to brighter, greater, more glorious realms of immortality. He is not like that struggling sculptor who, having finished, what seemed a perfect work, the model of a beautiful human figure, was ready to perish. The cold pierced him, hunger pinched him; but there, in his Parisian garret, taking off his coat, he wrapped it round the model to preserve it from the frost so destructive of PHYSICAL SYMBOLS THEREOF. 71 the plaster. He fell asleep, and when morning broke he was found dead beside his work. Not so will it be with us. Death will be the messenger with more life and fuller. The grave will be the vestibule of Heaven. Our white shroud, the garment that tells of glorious immortality. " For lo, the days are hastening on By the prophet-bards foretold, When with the ever-circling years Comes round the age of gold ; When Peace shall over all the earth Its promised splendours fling, And the whole world send back the song Which now the angels sing." Sears. X. l^Tatural l^istorg of our Immortalttg : ^fireefoltf Existence. " Death for the body with life is combined, Darkness disputes with the light for the mind, While spirit leaps upward, if good it desires. Or, chained to the earth by its sin, it expires. God is our Life, and our Light and Upraising ; Whom God doth uplift shall never cease praising." Felix Melancthon. MAN'S^ nature is of a triple' chatacter. Tn tJie body, he is the chiefest earthrly-orgaiiism^ In the soul, most excellent, but of that same sentient living existence which is given to other animals. In the spirit possessing, by grace of the CrealEpr, those higher qualities of reason, of imagination, of emotion, which constitute him the likeness and representative of God. "One, yet three — in triple strain Man is made, nor made in vain." Felix Melancthon. This threefold nature of man is in relation to the three modes of his existence. In his body, s o relat ed to the material universe as to be a personal representa- tion of what that universe is, impersonally ; an organic meeting- place of the visible and the invisible. In his ( 72 ) THREEFOLD EXISTENCE. 73 soul, not only living as do other animals, but living in a higher manner, so that the life in the body, though necessarily fending to dissolution, is lifted up, from the murky suburbs of low existence into higher vital exuberance of more mental copiousness and greater versatility. The body is a garment of the soul, the soul is a clothing for the spirit, and the spirit is a light and life kindled by the Divine breath, a power bestowed by the Almighty, ^y that light the mean- ing of things is seen and the presence of God is dis- cerned. By that power is conveyed strength, with freedom of will to perform those duties which God enjoins, to enjoy those privileges which God confers, and to attain those higher states which God promises. This threefold human existence of body, soul, and spirit is conditioned to partake of earthly life, inter- mediater life, and heavenly life. All which life is subject to Christ (Phil. ii. 10). Being subject, we have not only to keep our flesh and blood in order, that the body may be under control ; not only to regulate and elevate the soul, that it may consort with the self-respect and consciousness of dignity arising from responsibility ; but also to strengthen the spirit that it may victoriously wrestle against principalities and powers, the rulers of darkness, and spiritual wickedness in high places (Eph. vi. 11-13). " Body, in thy Temple blest. Deigns the Holy Ghost to rest. Spirit, unto God aspire, Lo ! on thee, is His desire. Mind, if Christ in thee be dweOing, Thine is peace that passeth telling." Felix Melancthon. 74 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. The natural history of immortality, as being the naturarmanifesTration in man, embraces the whole of his human state. It is as a threefold wheel, every one having wheels within wheels. The Bodily Existence. By turns waking and sleeping, with whatever is connected therewith, our body gives locality, definite- ness, and a temporary home to the incorporeal and heavenly parts of our nature. We thus obtain acquaintance with time, motion, locality ; and acquire experience in reference to all those varieties of grada- tion which belong to the materiaLjworld. We are also taught to connect the vastness, array, majesty, and forces of matter, with that intelligible scientific order which enlightens our intelligence, so that we are aware of a will and purpose in the universal government. We further learn, while in the body, that the spirit is a light making the soul a lamp illuminating the body with a sense of responsibility concerning our duty to God and to our fellow- creatures. Thus, our intellectual, moral, religious conceptions, are in definite alliance with the course, the meaning, and the service of physical nature ; so that we rid ourselves of remoteness and uncertainty as to God, the future and the unseen. Our intel- lectual and moral and spiritual structure, built up within material walls, warrants the physical theory, confirmed by Scripture, that the body and the worlds around us are to possess that permanence which a THREEFOLD EXISTENCE. 75 Divine Mind purposes, and a Divine Hand works : a permanence secured to the body by the passing of it through a fire of discipline into pure condition, for the habitation of a soul and spirit renewed in righteousness. The Intermediate State Is that of the soul and spirit apart from the body. It is not less natural than our present condition. It is of such close futurity, and so near as to space, that we enter it the very moment we die. In a sense, it is more home-like than the life that now is, for we remain longer in it. One of the facts of it seems to be that it is rather condition than locality. Not so much connected with ponderable masses and organic material as with imponderable substance, with sethereal media, and with senses which exercise in the body makes definite and strong for higher uses and greater activity. All through nature, as it now is, run forces, elements, movements, greatly influencing nature. Heat generally expands matter ; light, galvanism, electricity, make and awake many affinities of gases, fluids, solids. Our intermediate state will doubt- less advance our knowledge, and acquaint us with very much more of the way in which the Creator works material, physical, vital, and mental pro- cesses infinitely great, infinitely small, and of infinite variety. We reasonably expect in the intermediate state a 76 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. higher condition of natural laws. Gravitation, intel- lectual and moral, will bear some of us upward and onward ; others, who have not in the bodily state prepared themselves for that by co-operation with God, will tend downwards by a sort of self-made fatuity. The living principle will be moral or immoral, and worshipful or unworshipful, as wheiT"!?" lived in the body. It will not be wholly dispossessed of body, but have that more aerial clothigg upon the spirit, so St. Paul indicates, which is afforded by the soul (2 Cor. v. 1-4), fitting it for further growth towards nobler state. Right understanding of Holy Scripture greatly expands our view of the unseen world. Instead of descent, as to powers, there will be an appetency for and an ascent of force towards the expected nobler re-union of body and soul. Disbelief of these things, with which some men think to flatter their intelligence, ought to be removed by study of those remarkable acts which are ex- hibited in the wider ranges of science. A familiar and continual intermixture of the invisible and impalpable everywhere. Mysterious evil existences are with us even in our present corporeal state by which we are reminded of colleagues and companions of Satan ; and we are assured that comforting heavenly presences pervade the universe. There is a vast social economy of body, soul, and spirit, connecting our present state with the near intermediate condi- tion ; and this rational intercourse will be more THREEFOLD EXISTENCE. 77 realized, and seem more wonderful, when our earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved. " One, yet three — a threefold cord Man was made by nature's Lord ; Body, thou must Temple make. Spirit, life for Heaven, or quake ; Mind, be pure, else, God deserted. Cursed, thy doom is ne'er averted." Felix Melancthon. The Heavenly Condition Is not destruction, but reproduction. It is that higher system of being and life toward which rational and responsible creatures, in the body and out of the body, are tending. Present things and existences are to be changed by improving and enlarging. Their new creation will not render matter less complex, nor do away with the warmth, sociableness, and joys, in which we have been disciplined. Some of the pro- cesses by which we ourselves now combine the elements for more advantageous use, by which we extract essences, and by which we give more per- manent form to the changeable, are a kind of intro- duction to Divine work in the world's renewal, in the body's restoration, in the soul's and spirit's union with the Supreme. If we say our personal constituents — body, soul, spirit ; with every material, vital, mental, and spiritual constituent of the worlds ; will be consorted anew, as they certainly will, we only advance somewhat beyond what is actually now occurring, moment by moment, without a pause. This consoling and energetic 78 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. principle, working new and real counterpoises, acted through the past, moulds the present, and without any destroying disconnection acts in the future. It is the noblest feature of our personality, secures our self-knowledge by continuous identity, we know our- selves to be the same. It is the ground of our intuition that God is not a power only, but a Person ; that His Existence is the highest, the union of Will with Wisdom and Power and Goodness. We, our- selves, in threefold communion with Him, range above our present~selve&.~ Not in fdfgetfulness of ourselves ; not by loss of conscious individuality ; not by abolishment of the privacy and recesses of our own particular identity ; but by the taking away of weakness, by banishment of the corruptible, by enlargement of every present area, by a greater independence and full development of whatever good we now enjoy. Whatsoever Jesus Christ redeemed as to the universe, as to our body, our soul, and our spirit ; whatsoever He rose with from the grave ; whatsoever He carried up to Heaven ; whatsoever is seated on His Throne, — all that will constitute our Heavenly Condition. " Jesu, still lead on, Till our rest be won ; Heavenly Leader, still direct us. Still support, console, protect us, Till we safely stand In our Fatherland. Amen." H. L. L. {irons.). XI. Natural J^tstorg of our Immortalitg : H^atifng ^rtncipUs. " The information of the senses is adequate with the aid of mathe- matical reasoning to explain phenomena of all kinds." — Professor Challis, On the Fundamental Ideas of Matter and Force, Phil. Mag. 4th Series, vol. xxxi. p. 467. " That we would do, We should do when we would ; for this world changes And hath abatements and delays as many As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents." Hamlet, act iv. sc. 7. First Principle : The Cause of all is the Eternal. I'^HE worlds and their stages of progress are not marked by boundless inconsistencies, purpose- less irregularities, freaks without plan or principles. Marks of supreme science are discerned everywhere, and amidst all diversity is a close keeping to rule and law. The histories of nature and of men are a Biography of the Eternal. They are a revelation of Power, working as Almightiness ; of Wisdom, acting everywhere as the Omniscient ; of Holiness, display- ing everywhere Divine Perfection ; of Goodness, as revealing everywhere Divine Love. ( 79 ) 8o THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Second Principle : The Eternal is a Person. Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Goodness, are the highest conceivable constituents of Character ; and Personality is the noblest imaginable existence of the Divine Being. It is the concentration and revelation of mysteries, as science is the classification of mysteries. These two principles are universal : they prevail everywhere. All matter is encircled and pierced by them, all forces and effects are the work of mind, even as every movement proclaims a mover. The facts may be thus worked out briefly : — Matter, as a physical constant, whether we think of some original mass without properties, or of atoms with properties, the universe being constructed as it is, resolves itself for all physical existence into action and reaction, effecting changes by action of the Eternal Power differencing the working forces of the universe. This Eternal Power working towards far-off ends of infinite complexity in limitless time and space, is guided by adequate Wisdom. This Wisdom com- prehends all in the embrace of Unity ; and presents every given body of knowledge to our mind in as great a variety of different lights as possible. Uni- versal working in unity we can only understand as the manifestation of purpose, and purpose is the attribute of an ever-living Person who wills, who falters not in His will, who creates nothing in vain, who is the essence and source of all, the Giver of Immor- tality. LEADING PRINCIPLES. 8i Third Principle : The Process is Complex, Is physical, mental, moral, and of successive stages. Taking matter as the basis and will as the animating principle, the movement is from the structureless to structure, from the JiLorganic to the organic, from the sentient to the mental, from the mental to the spiritual. Our consciousness is an example of this advance towards opulence and power. If our con- sciousness fails us here, it cannot be trusted in any science, all reasoning is vain, we are without light. Non sine lumine, we are not without light. We inspect the past, and find not so much a vast sepulchre filled with the remains of many generations, but records everywhere. Many inscriptions are effaced, but manifold are the relics of wisdom and power. The very dust moving on the surface of things, and the forces causing that movement, are tokens of con- tinuance as to life and strength, they start up and say, " We are here." Not only is every successive state of matter a re- appearance of the past in new form ; every state and stage of mind are representative of those preceding and prospective of those to come. Amidst all alter- nations is an advent of the old in new forms and novel offices. Proof that Moral Power and Purpose are at the helm, the good proceeds to more good, and the bad to worse. By harmonious and simultaneous activity of voluntary and involuntary functions, some Supreme Master controls all for accomplishment of a purpose. Without waste anywhere, even amidst 82 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. boundless profusion, without loss of any power, even amidst display of limitless might, everything is repro- duced and proceeds to give account of itself in the future. Thus we are enabled to know of the past, judge of the future, and as intelligent creatures make some real progress in knowledge of the Infinite Per- fection. Fourth Principle : The Process is Universal. Thre^ facts connect the past and our present state with the future : Extension in^space^ V^rrety of kind. Possession of duration. As to space, there is no reason, scientific or otherwise, why we should not regard the universe as practically infinite. As to kind or sort, it is so various that no two individuals of any species are precisely alike. As to duration, we are not able to cut off any living or unliving thing either from relation to the past, or from some effectual existence in the future. Whatsoever was anywhere, is now in effect everywhere, though nowhere seen. Whatsoever is, weaves in space a universal canvas for its clothing, and paints its own character for good or evil on an infinite page. Fifth Principle : Human Advance. This vastness of the visible universe, and the greater vastness of the invisible, as they come within our range of knowledge and ideality, are a gauge of our intellectual and moral existence ; but our conceptive LEADING PRINCIPLES. 83 faculty, our powers of arithmetic and language, can as yet only take in a small part of the transcendental whole. The little we know is not the nieasure of what we shall be, the infinite unknown is the height of our possible attainment The— present" ^tetual mental belongings of our nature, discerning intricate vast and distant relations, not only enter the distant and future ; but, as a guarantee of that distant and future being ours, we are able to bring near the remotest relations ; and are able to condense, as into a moment, vast timely processes of almost innumerable links of truth and fact ; so that our physical, our intellectual, our moral personality, with Godlike power and immortality, takes a miniature of the universe both as to space and time. Certain mental and moral conditions in the mind itself, with a perfectly co-ordinate physical arrange- ment, are indispensable would we attain gra^ of all this. He who spreads out himself, from range to range of science, in unfolding sublime mysteries ; and then with insatiable thirst drinks in those excellent thrilling and enthralling sublimities which enclose and pervade all material grandeurs ; will gladly take the supremacy that belongs to him. He feels that the thought-forms of space and time are not mere glimpses of 'immortality, but are that abiding light and power which ensure possession by the Grace of God. " Mind of Christ, if mine Thou fiUest, Then my fears of wrath Thou stillest." Felix Melancthon. 84 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Exercise yourself a little in these high conditions. The material world is not everything, the sky is not one whole star, nor do living creatures fill full all stars, nor fill even the earth. What is it that encircles all ? There are expanses beyond whatever the eye sees, or the mind imagines. St~everjr-a-scent of thought we behold supremer heights, with every growth of power we feel further into the infinite, and are yet within the populous dominions of the Almighty. When we go most beyond ourselves, when^at-jour utmost stretch, we are least lost and possess ourselves most effectively. These supreme moments are high life to the poet, times of ex- quisite skill to the artist, eras of discovery to the investigator, and indicate that transcendentalness of beauty and power is within our attainment. The purpose of it, the proportions of it, are commensurate with the thereto belonging Infinity. The affections of spirit, our nature's power of communion with the Infinite God, are the fruit of that good and highest exercise of reason by which we know of God, and that He is our God. These spiritual affections, these exercises of reason, are means to an end sublime and glorious. Two experiences are known, only to mention two, of the sublime and transcendental so connecting human life and knowledge with the supernatural and eternal that they give sufficient example of our being able even now to pass from theTnDrtal-toJhejmmortal and yet retain our mortality till thfi.J:jme come for Javingit aside. Eliphaz, the Temanite (Job iv. 12-17), LEADING PRINCIPLES. 85 found a spirit standing by, filling him with fear and trembling, so that his bones quaked, who taught him that man's mortal part was to die utterly, but that God was above all. Holy and Good. The other experience is that of St. Paul (2 Cor. xii. 2-4). While in the body, he knew not whether he was really within or without, he was caught up. Caught up, whether in spirit only or in body also, he heard unspeakable words, not lawful for a man to utter. This rapture, by which St. Paul had a vision of the Lord, was an uplifting of a mortal state into the immortal, of a creature into the presence of the Creator, a foretaste of the power, of the glory, of the immortality, our inheritance. Language cannot tell what is beyond the seas and universes of worlds which spread out in innumerable profusion and illimitable space ; nor is our conceptive faculty any measure of that infinitude which permits the visible sky to be repeated and multiplied millions of times, and yet allows it to remain within the embracing Infinite. The special advantage of speech is that it shapes into definiteness and moulds thought into expressed form. We might think we know what really we know not, did w_e not linguistically shape oi^r knowledge. Speech is the mind's instrnmient to make thought vocal, and is the medium of com- munication between mind and mind, at the same time givfng fixity to our own thoughts, while adding intellectual and moral wealth to ourselves and others. Seclusion and individual privacy, while preserved by the conscious power of extending our thought and feel- 86 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. ing to other minds, is that property of passing beyond our inner selves, while retaining our inner selves, into other inner selves by which men and angels hold communion one with another. This sort of passage into other beings and existences is an expansion destined to move forward in the way of goodness and felicity. It is a reality, not so much known by a strange faculty of thought-reading possessed by few ; not specially distinguished by the doubtful influence which personal magnetism extends from individual to individual ; it is more real and useful by means of that sympathy with which the strong succours the weak, the wise sustains the ignorant, the merciful comforts and brings back the erring. It is the Christ- Mind : " Mind of Christ, if mine Thou guidest, Then my all from wrath Thou hidest." Felix Melancthon. The highest style of the Christ-Mind is that sort of penetrativeness by which noble natures and God, noblest of all, inspire us with a grandeur, a power, a lastingness, which overleap time and space ; and give, as an inalienable portion, all and more than our thought can grasp of God and Nature, of Time and Eternity, of Space and Infinitude ; so that the Power of the Eternal and the Life of the Eternal are ours. "This having learned, thou hast attained the sum Of wisdom ; . . . All secrets of the deep, all nature's works. Or works of God in Heaven, air, earth, or sea. And all the riches of this world . . . . . . Only add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable." Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. xii. XII. Natural f^istorg of our Immortalttg: 'STfij ^rospectibe lEnlargement of our ^ofom. " Shall it, for shame, be spoken in these days, Or fill up chronicles in time to come, That men of your nobility and power Did 'gage them both in an unjust behalf? " King Henry IV., Part I., act i. sc. 3. " My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire. And my frame perish even in conquering pain, But there is that within me which shall tire Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire." Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iv. 137. " Now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am known." — i CoR. xiii. 12. THE knowledge of a future life, so far as it is authoritatively conveyed- in Holy Scripture, is God-directed and God-inspired. We have, besides, Nature's forms and forces working in our life, our sensations, our thoughts, our knowledge, so that the Earth is the cradle of our existence. We have, further, our consciousness continually enlarging with notions of what is ; and, by advanced action on these notions, we make the seen an introduction to the < 87 ) 88 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. unseen ; even as the movements of the electric needle tell of the hidden mysterious power. The manner of it is in this way. We examine a fragment of the fossil of some ancient plant, or of an animal, we then know the kind of nature each had, the mode of life, and completed figure. We pass from the plant and animal to man ; we know that he has a higher nature than is possessed by an ordi- nary animal, being one whose qualities and circum- stances suggest that they are a preparation for, and an introduction to, a higher life. It is the universal principle of nature that no faculty nor function is called into being, unless an appropriate sphere exists for its employment. We know that the sooty smith working a horse-shoe on his anvil, had the fire long ago kindled by the sun, which prepared him coal- force and his own force ; we know that the smith's nerve-force and mind-force have very cunning little affinities tending to great spiritual victories of mind and matter, which connect him with a vital system of immensity which carries him to an immortal future. It is time for us all to know that there is nothing stranded, nothing cast away. Whether we trust to dawn of day, or choose utter darkness, we shall certainly arrive somewhither. Our anxieties and perplexities, activities and capacities, push aside the veil which suggests and yet conceals the future. We see what will be the state of the sky in time to come, the changes in the orbit and place of the earthy and what will be man's condition. This advance of knowledge and possession PROSPECTIVE ENLARGEMENT OF OUR POWERS. 89 of a somewhat near future, notifies of a future more distant and yet in accord with what is now ; because for that near and that further future our body, soul, and spirit are being disciplined^ He who regards not this for a good sign, shows small reflection of his wit. •Now view the past for an insight of the future. Strong~and subtle Tniiids~lFansack past and present, that they may pick the lock of mysteries and bring to light natural secrets. We humbly follow in their tracks that in natural truths we may find God's truth, in its simplicity, to lead us into the vast complexity of the same. The germ, or principle of life, begins the first known action in a highly complex substance formed of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, with very minute quantities of other matter. It comes as a force so that life^ looks like a form of some forcejHiat itself l ives . We carinot"ga^anyTuftlief in this direc- tion ; but having the life which begins, say, in an egg, by fertilizing, through a living creature, the dead or non-living bioplasm in another living creature ; we find in that egg a complex living thing making itself up by forming a number of special tissues out of the matter in the egg until we see it fashioned as a bird. Any other spore, or seed, in growing takes shape, and passes as if spontaneously through many changes until it is a perfect creature ; but we can no more get the spore, the germ, the egg, from a dead nature than we can make a world out of nothing. Having the Qgg^ we can again advance. Instead of death- we now have life. This life was a break in the former con- tinuity, a new power, or power in a new shape. 90 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Thence, by another break of continuity, by a new power, or power in a new shape, was an ^vancgjoto animal sensation and consciousness. T he my stery is not explained by science, science only for mul ates it. After that" another break in continuity, by a new , power, or power in a new shape, brought in the higher faculties of man. These three breaks were all caused by some process in an unseen universe taking and making material shape in the seen world. Lay aside the fact of a miracle, think simply of the three advances. Now look at what the prophet Daniel saw (vii. 13, 14). A new man standing before the Ancient of Days, a king with a kingdom of Saints out of all nations and of every language. Do not talk about this being beyond the borders of science. Life, plants, animals, men, in their beginning were and are now beyond the borders of science ; but we know them, so let us take knowledge of the fact revealed, and wait for the formulation of it, by science, until we have the new life that is immortal, and behold those new men, so good ; who not less surpass earthly life, and earthly men, as they are now, than these surpass the no life, and the plant, and the beast. Give the fact and thought other shapes. Whenever reason outdoes the usual operations, we go„beyond ourselves. Were it not so, new discoveries could not bfe made. Every new fact and every novel scientific verified generalization, are an advance into realities unknown Jjefore. To most thoughtful persons, who study the future, our relations to it are based on inner and outer things. Material bonds unite-tbe-outward PROSPECTIVE ENLARGEMENT OF OUR POWERS. 91 physical world to invisible influences, and inner spiritual bonds knit our growing powers into adequate relations with that state toward which we tend. Certainly there is a Providential Plan running through all ages, a material and a spiritual process making for a brilliant future. " 'Tis so strange, that, though the truth of it stands off as gross as black from white, some eyes will scarcely see it." Had every thinker the spirit of persuasion, that his speaking might move ; and every hearer the ears of profiting; that profiting, mixed with faith, would lead the soul to mount on high even while the body sinks downward to the grave. Science is possible only on the Jhy^ptbesis. that all change is in its nature transformation. Apart from this hypothesis, it cannot determine, from the present state of things,. _±h.e-pa&t— en -the one hand, nor the future on the other ; " for government, though high, and low, and lower, put into parts, doth keep in one consent ; congruing in a full and natural close, like music." Our body is both natural and spiritual. This spiritual in the natural Js preparing the natural to become itself spiritual. " There is first the natural body, and after that the spiritual body." Meanwhile, the natural body turns material things into a power of sensation, of consciousness, of thought, making the natural spiritual for that body which will be. The fact is distinctive enough now, as to that which belongs to matter, and it points to a wonderful future (i Cor. xv. 46) which David anticipated in his Thunder Psalm (xxix.) " The voice of the Lord is upon the waters : 92 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. the God of gloty thundereth ; the Lord is upon many waters." He means — The Lord is in all and every^ where. The present creation, and man as he is now, are rudimentary. A good time is coming, a noble era for heaven and earth. Forward is our path. We press on : success is sure. That which is physical only is as chaff to the wheat and as wheat is to the life that partakes of the Divine. We advance, moment by moment, and are like the sun. Every man should say — "... Herein will I imitate the 'sun ; Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself. Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at.'' King Henry IV., Part I., act i. sc. 2. Our mind infuses the body with new powers^ vivid- ness and spring ; while the mind, by contact with the body, is disciplined to more accuracy, self-assertion^ and power to control substance. The mutual action will grow until our bodies change from the corruptible into the incorruptible — vital without waste ; and our minds acting by direct consciousness, rather than thought, every mental delight, every spiritual joy, every perception of nature and of God, will be enlarged to the utmost.. The moods of our spirit, which sometimes now lift us to the sublime, will then be in constant play ; while through the new body ever supplying unceasing bliss, we shall be lastingly in enjoyment of those greater things for which we are being prepared. It is by the vivid play of our faculties that we identify strange phenomena with PROSPECTIVE ENLARGEMENT OF OUR POWERS. 93 familiar facts and familiar facts with strange phe- nomena. There's neither honesty, nor manhood, nor high fellowship, in the man who will not endeavour so to redeem time that all time may be his. Our growth in use of the body that now is, throw- ing open all doors in the palace of the universe, warrants our inference that in the future we shall have more faculty to understand, more power to do, more taste to enjoy, and more spirit to admire. A total difference of things in the future is incredible. Why be disciplined in the use of our body and cir- cumstances, if body and circumstances are to be wholly changed .' Death will be swallowed up in life,~sin and pain will be taken away, we shall bear the image of the Heavenly ; but that Heavenly is. Himself, in our own image glorified, and we know what that is, we have seen it The meaning is : that the fleshly substance which, while making the mind distinctive in operation, somewhat narrows and hinders, will be made a spiritual substance ; a sub- stance plenary of power as the mind will be. This larger faculty of knowing and doing will be co- ordinate, so we are taught, with nobler materials amidst grander circumstances. We shall discern the inner springs and wheel-work of nature, be able to conduct the transactions of worlds, and be engaged as fellow-workers with the Almighty in leading on all things to grandest results, and to greatest happi- ness. If any man's soul is not capable of this mental reasoning and picturability, his general faculties will be in inverse ratio to successful progress of any true 94 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY, value. Phenomena will not lose their grand meaning because he is dwarfed. For this nobler work and destiny we are being cultured. Few men can easily read an intellectual book, and at the same time carry on a train of difficult thought. By careful exercise we enable ourselves to this. Speakers arrange, almost unconsciously, the words they are saying ; and at the same time pre- arrange their argument. This double process which, more or less, as sight and foresight, vision and previ- sion, extend to most of our present affairs, is in itself indicative, and a means of future growth. A strange fact gives point to this. A number of different sub- stances, concurring in definite proportions of weight or volume, interact ; disappear, and give rise to a new body possessing properties that are neither the sum, nor the mean of the sum, of those that concurred and interacted. The whole series of facts and thoughts warrant our persuasion that the mental and emotional faculties are capable of almost immeasurable expansion ; and even that which has deteriorated, if not yet destroyed may be restored. Memory, seeming blank as to many events, may be reconstructed by means of relative ideas. Blank leaves of the past life, being thus reprinted, the lost is found and the dead made to live. Frequently, in a few moments, the whole of a past life is presented to the inner gaze of a dying man. These reconstructions and enlargements are prophetic of a future growth to complete our present progress. Our body, our soul, our spirit, holding out FROSFECTIVE ENLARGEMENT OF OUR POWERS. 95 hands to the future, are to be filled. Successive mental states even now^ produce the future with additions added by the present. The states to come will reproduce the past also with additions. The body changes now, yet- we are the same persons, our identity is not disputed, that we were years ago ; and as out of the nettle danger we pluck the flower safety that we may live the present life ; so out of that greatest danger, sin, we pluck righteousness, turn the uncertain into certain, the unsorted into well sorted, and all opposition into victory ; through the merits and help of Him who, nineteen hundred years ago, for our advantage, was nailed to the bitter cross. It is time to give up every asylum ignorantiae. Our future will prove itself the determinate of multiplicity as to agencies, and the outcome of a concurrence of numerous conditions. Kepler said that an angelus rector conducts every planet along its path ; more than an angelus rector, God, by Nature and by His Word, leads us to Himself " A kind of honour sets us off, more than a mortal seeming." We recog- nize a grandeur in the beatings of the heart, we possess times of rapture, and " Oh ! there is never sorrow of heart That shall lack a timely end. If but to God we turn and ask Of Him to be our Friend 1 " William Wordsworth, The Force of Prayer. XIII. tlCatural l^fstorg of our Immortalttg : ^b? :ffmf^tx (HBnlargjnunt of our ^otoers. "It is not enoiagh to Titter the mysteries of the Spirit, the great mysteries of Christianity, in formulas, true before God, but not under- stood of the people. The apostle and the prophet are precisely those who have the gift of interpreting these obscure and profound formulas for each man and each ^ge. iTo translate into the common tongue . . . to speak the Word of God afresh in each age, in accordance with the novelty of the age and the eternal antiquity of the truth, this is what St. Paul means by interpreting the unknown tongue."- — Gratry, Henri Perreyve: Paris, 1880, p. 162. Quaied in Preface of " JLux Mundi." CERTAINLY the above is not what St. Paul meant as to speaking with unknown tongues. He could not wish us to think that the interpretation of a miracle shows that there was no miracle to explain. The pride of human reason invents divers subtleties to rid itself of that which sets reason at nought ; and foolishly thinks that the magnitude of the offence will, by success, be its own apology. In opposition to such presumption, it is better that the peace of the innocent be with us. It is well for a man if he use even the error as an introduction of warning not to regard God's Word as of private ( 96 ) FURTHER ENLARGEMENT OF OUR POWERS. 97 interpretation, not to insert his own opinion as the truth conveyed by the Holy Ghost. He who speaks in an unknown tongue without power to interpret, is carried beyond his intelligent apprehension into the supernatural. He, not able to speak, but able to interpret, is not carried beyond himself into a higher state, but the higher state is brought within : he discerns and interprets. This outer and inner revelation of the unseen life and powers, reminds us of the two gxeat- preparations for immortality. One, general, a convergence of all natural lines and historical courses so that everything is seen flowing on to the future as rivers run into the sea. The other, special, personal, distinctive, in the genius for religion and in a sense of the world to come. They stand apart, each goes its own way, but by a strange parallelism of natural law and human need, both carry all the resources of the past and of the present into the future. Look out for a people destitute of any sense as to the miraculous, without any aspiration for immortality. If you find any one. be assured it is removed but a few degrees from the brutes. The greatest and best of our race are those most impressed with the sense of wonder and with the desire for higher life. Like Gregory the Great, they say, " God dwelleth in all things and without all things, above all things and beneath all things." The endeavour to be rid of the miraculous is one of the foolishest and most impracticable endeavours of unbelieving men. A miracle is an event in strict relation to the order of n&ture, to bring about a H 98 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. cha nge in the order, that God's will, or purpose, may be manifested. The heights of science, of philo- sophy, and all religion, are inseparable from miracle. Nobody knows, despite presumptuous talk, how Creation _began_ and- went-^on, and miracles are acts of the same order as those, used in the causation of nature. Nature, though we talk of nebulous clouds, their rounding and consolidation into suns and planets, of inorganic substance becoming organic and assuming life, is of infinite depth, infinite expansion, infinite height. On every side, above and below, it passeth all understanding. As for the time of it, the im- measurable past and the ever-continuing future are the measure ; as to the wealth of it, the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all belong to it. The natural proof is our sense of that continuous shaping of things towards a Divine Event which has always been a support of faith. Our spiritual liberty, into use of which we consciously grow, asserts the spiritual value and meaning of this natural law. Is the past wholly past, and the future only future ? Why, memory, feeble as it is, brings back the past ; the present is greatly, if not altogether, the fruit of it ; and as to the future, it comes on with such speed that we enter new epochs in time and new realms in space every moment. The curtain of darkness does not so cover the past, or so conceal the future, but that both are seen of God as a universal here and an everlasting now. We too, being not a mere shadow of God, but passing on to be full of the light of God, FURTHER ENLARGEMENT OF OUR POWERS. 99 do not any one of us realize our own death, and shall soon know the past, possess the future, and so grasp the infinite, that everlastingness will be our possessed inheritance. The student of mankind finds of greatest significance that instinct of immortality which grows with our growth, and runs as a line of gold through the web and course of human history. This fact seems proclainied by that continual en- largement of our powers which is fitting us for the promised possession of all things ; not only by title (i Cor. iii. 21), but in actual enjoyment (Rev. xxi. 7). This enlargement is confirmed by accurate knowledge of Nature. "Nature is the Time- Vesture of God which reveals Him to the wise, and hides Him from the fool." It is also assured by the fact that at every turning point of history stands a man who claims to bring a word from God of happiness in store afar, a sphere of distant glory coming into view. Innumerable analogies in plant and animal life, and in the various world-processes by which the past is repeated and coming events are made our own, give "evidence "onHat universal natural transition which runs^asa^ supernatural narrative through all things. The sun of to-day comes from before yester- day and goes beyond the morrow. Animals, and whatsoever is of floral life, are all beautifully in relation to the precedent and present circumstances of their life ; and ensure their future by being fitted for, and following the leadings on of nature. Un- accountable, even monstrous, were it if those higher faculties of man, which make him think of and loo THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. prepare for another life, come to nothing ; while the little insect, preparing for metamorphosis, lies down to sleep and awakes to gaiety in a higher existence. The insect, in that higher existence, grows not, makes no advance, he is in the last day of it as he was in the first. Not so is it with us. Man is the highest attainment, the crown of all organic life, and more specially in the character of growth. Man the sum of instincts, of noblest impressions, of greatest hopes, of vastest intelligence, regards them in their moni- tions and indications as physical and spiritual demon- stration of a future newness in the new heavens and the new earth. Man's passage to another stage of existence is certainly a natural process and prophecy confirmed by Divine Revelation. It explains why_we are never satisfied with the present, a greater satisfaction awaits us. It shows why our knowledge and power greatly advance, while the knowledge and^power of lower animals make no advance. Every true man, every good man, is conscious of a guidance that ever leads him forward. In a poetic form, we speak of the guidance as a sphere melody, flowing and sounding with a thousand accompaniments and symphonies, enriching our heart and divinely enlightening our mind. This is not more wonderful, nor harder to believe, than that by the power and providence of God we now exist. The entering a new world was accom- plished when we began to live. That fact is not less a marvel than our passing by another stage into life FURTHER ENLARGEMENT OF OUR POWERS. loi of a further grade. They are both natural, and show that when our hopes or fears, our science and Scripture, look on and on, they act according to the established and natural prearranged scheme of the universe. To cast a slight on such verities is to give Nature the lie, and impugn both conscience and reason. We should, in refusing credence to im- mortality, have to say, " The noblest, most intellectual and powerful existing species, marked with the most distinct indications of a transformation by which they will pass into further existence, has actually no awaiting transformation." Our reply to such unreasonable assertion is — According to a man's intellectual and moral power, ideas, in proportion to their perfection, will be definite, clean cut, and clear. It is the correct thinker, the accurate investigator, who finds out the laws of nature ; the philosopher learns the laws of thought ; the artist discerns ideal beauty. They find perfections beyond perfections, and an extension stretching out infinitely. To such men the reasonable conviction of immortality is the true clean-cut proof of God's glorious gift. The darkness that will not com- prehend the light must flee away. He who able to conceive the best chooses the worst is the most deadly spiritual ruin. Whewell (" Plurality of Worlds," p. 379) states — " The mind of man is a partaker of the thoughts of the Divine mind. The intellect of man is a spark of the light by which the world was created." As to an instantaneous change from good or evil, 102 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. irrespective of penitence and faith, of the discipline of life and economy of forces, that is not to be credited. The internal and external character with which we stamp ourselves, or which the grace of God, working in us, confers and confirms, will accompany us. What we sow that shall we reap. What Nature plants, what God blesses, will prosper. This internal and external character makes accurate and enlarges our theological thinking by further sight and clearer insight of all the ways in which God fulfils Himself It shows that Christianity is greater than all interpretations, that the priest does not create religion, but religion the priest. It answers every objection, is adequate to all wants, and responds to the perplexities of every age. It exhibits the worlds as a means to an end, and that end the reconstruction of the whole universe for God, the gathering of all things into an order of perfect freedom. On this account our internal character, adjusted to the external, finds the natural world so fascinating ; and imagination fills the heart with nature's com- plexity and beauty. External nature enters our spiritual nature, and making itself at home satisfies all the hopes it pictures. Both worlds, in their mysteries of matter and mind, reveal God in all things and all things in God. The Incarnation of Xhrist is the personal exhibition of it. Christ is in the natural world as man. He made Himself as we are, that we may be made as He is. Christ, in the Supernatural, is God ; and carries into it His form of man as our formal representative. This, seen aright, is the key-. FURTHER ENLARGEMENT OF OUR POWERS. 103 stone of creation, the climax of religion, the sign and seal of immortality. Seeing aright, we find that the world is bodily and visibly a Gospel, man is a theophany, and our enlarging powers revel in the fact that the universe is God's suit of apparel ; and that God, thus in nature, is most blessedly and blessing in man. In every material thing God lies hid. Of every intelligent creature God is the Light. In that Light we see the coming bliss. If our present nature, mode of existence, acts of conscience, thoughts, hopes, fears, and prudential preparations as to coming ages, were laid before a competent philosopher, he would discern in the material and mental organization innumerable proofs that our life is in an initial stage ; that germs of the future are not less real parts of our constitution than the faculties of a man are potential in the child. A naturalist would say more : that Nature is quite of infinite depth, and of infinite expansion ; that Nature's courses go beyond our own earth, beyond our planetary system ; and that its words, sentences, descriptive pages, spread out through all space, all time; and that heavenly hieroglyphs, and many intelligible and not yet intelligible languages, symbols of the Godlike in man, declare that man's life is an everlasting Evangel. A further reason. Our bodily and animal functions are neither commensurate with the mental faculty nor with our volitional power. The disparity is seen by the body's incapability of performing all the mind's requirement. We will ; but, very often, how to per- 104 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. form we find not. This want of balance, in connection with a predominating sentiment and conviction that somehow, sometilnef somewhere, the balance will be adjusted, is a moral and physical prophecy and onlook towards its complete destiny. What is our earth ? what is our whole planetary system ? but the narrow and near province of a wide empire. We go beyond it in thought, in aspiration, in knowledge, and shall not cease to go beyond it. These faculties are our guides to a higher level of existence. It would be strange indeed should we err in thus following nature, seeing that all other creatures by following are made perfect. They follow Nature ; we also, and follow God ! for what are these faculties in us but God-given symbols ! The hope, excited and sustained by our reasonable and moral faculties of a future renovation and completion of our existence, is-in_Jtself a pledge of success. So great is the influence of hope, that it characterizes the best efforts of our mind, inspires the heart with purest motives, and the evident elevation effected by it in this life is a proof of truth and power, " that from the lowest depth is a path to the loftiest height." We are not under the misguidance of a lie when we not only rejoice in hope, but actually obtain various and tangible good, which good is again a witness that we are on the right way. That in con- tinuance along this way we shall obtain perfection is assured by the growing sense of present inadequate- ness to accomplish all of which we are capable, a consciousness of restriction, of knowledge thwarted. FURTHER ENLARGEMENT OF OUR POWERS. 105 of capacities unused, of spiritual and mental aspirations failing, of baffled paroxysms, which nevertheless do rise beyond earth and time. Though thus repressed, we are nevertheless our own masters. We will hope, we will strive, and we will struggle towards the future more earnestly and consciously than plants tend to the light, than animals to appease their appetite and wants. Our sovereign faculties are not knaves in deceiving us, not fools in being themselves deceived, that is incredible. Every rise in the grades of existence is accompanied with power to attain higher things and more : confirming the reality of that advance and the truth of that power. For a man to assert that in us alone advance is not advance ; that the mental, moral, spiritual desire for better things, for greater life and more abundant, is utterly false and wasted ; shocks all that we know, and makes that which is most alive in us and true, more pertinaciously, more determinedly, more mightily, lay hold on eternal life. This Light of Life, shining into a tempest-tossed soul, makes our earth to be already a fertile, blooming, Heaven-encircled World. If we have reasoned aright the saying is set at nought, " A finite creature cannot exceed its finitude, nor use it to obtain knowledge either of the beginning or the end." Even the materialist admits that infinitesimal vibrations Tiave^ffect infinitely, and that the life of an insect is a product of the whole past and influences all the future. As for men, science carries us into the laboratory of creation, and we u io6 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. are sure that the system of things, whether viewed mechanically or organically, is subject to constant interference by power internal and external, because of the relativity of all material forms. Every finite whole is always a part of some greater whole ; and time is ever receding on the background to eternity, and advancing not less co-extensively. With the enlargement of our faculties, we understand at least some of the secrets as to the initial of worlds, their successive combinations, developments, and dawning possibilities. The past and the future are comple- mentary, persistent in exuberant versatility, moulding, beautifying, and peopling worlds. We see whence all things are and whither all things tend ; they testify of eternal Power and Godhead. The realities of design, the onward completion of purpose, the naturalness of selection, and the spiritualness of adaptation, are observed. Witli God, we and nature are sufficient u"nto "ourselves, without Him both are insufficient. The universalness of correspondence of part with the whole, and of the whole with part, gives to the rainbow and the flower, the light and the sun, the loveliness of the earth and sea, our quickened and enlarged energies of body and soul, those touches by which things common rise and greet the furthest part of boundless spheres. Wonderful is the fact of our immortality. It gives to every moment the miniature of an infinite sphere as a writing within, and enlarges our life to a boundless comprehension. We stand in direct and personal relation to the God who made, who redeemed, who sustains us. We are FURTHER ENLARGEMENT OF OUR POWERS. 107 His children. He is our Father. Loving, reasonable service is our offering to Him, everlasting life His Divine Gift to us. " My Father's House on high, Home of my soul, how near, At times, to Faith's foreseeing eye Thy golden gates appear ! Ah, then my spirit faints To reach the land I love, The bright inheritance of Saints, Jerusalem above." Comfer. XIV. Fistons anil 5B«ams as eSlimpsES of Immortalitg.— I. " Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth, and the brother of death extracteth a third part of our lives." — Sir Thomas Browne. " 'Tis true, 'tis certain ; man, though dead, retains Part of himself; the immortal mind remains ; The form subsists without the body's aid." Iliad : Dream of Achilles. SOME men largely possess the faculty of painting imaginary events not only as mental scenes, but in the garb of living reality. They make the never- ending stories of ancient history to present themselves in mournful pomp, or in pleasant guise ; and they light up a theatre in their brain, adorhed with splendour, moving with strange events, and alive with representation of many persons. The mind of a poor man delights in the riches of a kingdom ; the deaf man hears music finer than Handel's ; the eyes of the blind see double ; and the legs of the lame leap as a hart, hop, skip, and jump through the sky. This faculty is turned to great advantage by our writers of fiction, our poets, our painters, and not a few musicians have written what they call " spirit music," given, as they thought, by angels or demons. ( loS ) VISIONS AND DREAMS AS GLIMPSES. 109 Thja excitement of the imagination is not of much use to ordinary individuals, and is even an injury if it lead to mere mooning. That person whose best and adjusted thoughts are of little value, is not likely, whether by day-fancies or night-dreams, to be a revealer of secrets. There are, nevertheless, valuable peculiarities of brain-thought and physical aptness in every individual ; could he find them, and would he use them — " E'en silent night proclaims my soul immortal, E'en silent night proclaims eternal day, For human weal, heaven husbands all events, Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain." Edward Young, LL.D., Night Thoughts. In various senses every man is the only man of his sort in the world. Inthe^ midst of other men, there is much in which we are alono^gnd live apart, and move in our own sort of existence, as the separate stars twinkle in the skies. This being the case, we experi- ence, and our experience if cultivated would become a great reality, a sort of direction towards that great and good God from whom cometh every blessing. This divine direction, acting in alljiieiLwho have not thrust God from their thoughts, shows itself soon in a seeing of wonders within common things. Protagoras said, " Man is the measure of the universe," not that any man knows the universe ; but he sees that the least and apparently most limited things stretch out infinitely on every side. There are influences which, so far as we discern, are not subject to any precise rules of restraint. Sudden lights, and horrors of darkness, come to us in our full health, and as we no THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. walk in the broad trodden ways of duty filled with the laughing sunshine of the universe. Richard Baxter (" Reasons of the Christian Religion ") says, " Suppose there be angels, and suppose one of them should be united to a body, as our souls are, we cannot imagine but that he would actuate it, and operate in it according to its nature ; as I write amiss when my pen is bad." Separating all this from superstitions and miserable mysticism, bear in mind that the higher intellect, the true genius, the distin- guishing distinction, is the power ofTseeing wonders in common things. Throughout the Gentile world, there has been a systematic, natural, and artificial mode of interpreting these thoughts and dreams of men ; and Zeno held that the study of our dreams is essential to self-know- ledge. Sometimes coincidences in forethoughts and dreams with succeeding events have been marvellous ; and the value was chiefly in being symbolically prophetic. Whether we think of interpretations by the oracles, or by individual divination, there have been certain occasions when That in the universe which acts as our soul acts in the. body, moves our reason to discern the unseen. Aristotle, amongst the ancients, thought that outward things affected the soul, and, afterwards, reappeared in dreams. It is easy to say, " There is nothing real in this ; it is a profane step on the precincts of God's spiritual kingdom, and a systematic business of folly and imposture." Such slip-shod statements, though we accept them as a sort of rule of thumb for reject- VISIONS AND DREAMS AS GLIMPSES. in ing what we see is valueless, are not of any value as to interpreting, or refusing, or accepting, that which is evidently a marvel. Bishop Butler (" Analogy of Religion ") says dreams confirm the fact that we are possessed of a latent^ and „what would be, but for dreams, an unimagined unknown power of perceiving things- in as -strong and lively a manner without our external organs as with them. Dreams~6rdiharily, like the common thoughts of fe^eble^men, are valueless. The prophet Isaiah (xxix. 8) has -shown this — " As when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth ; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty : or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh ; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite." They are simply "the mental activity of a sleeping person which leave traces in the waking conscious- ness." A bottle of hot water at the feet has made a dreamer believe that he is walking arm in arm with Satan. In certain states of the body the brain becomes a kind of polytechnic of airy nothings ; but we have logic and common sense on our side if, with Addison and Bishop Butler, we hold that they strengthen our arguments for the immortality of our soul. We adopt the opinion of Dryden that generally — " Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes : When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes ; Compounds a medley of disjointed things, A court of cobblers and a mob of kings. Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad, — Both are the reasonable soul run mad ; And many monstrous forms in sleep we see, That neither were, nor are, nor e'er can be.'' 112 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. After all, however, there is a mystery ; you cannot dream as you like, nor when you like ; -nor can you by any special sort of food, or drug, awake particular visions. Sir Thomas Browne and some others have found that the sleeping self transcended the waking self Mathematicians, like Condorcet, asleep have solved problems which set at nought their powers awake. Condillac, engaged in his " Cours d'Etude," frequently developed and finished a subject in his dreams that he had broken off on retiring to rest. Painters, seeing visions, have painted goddesses ; poets, have indited inimitable poems ; and musicians, have thought they brought melodies from paradise. Coleridge's " Kubla Khan " was composed during sleep. Tartini's " Sonata du Diable " is an imitation of what he dreamed the devil played. The question is. Can we make any good reliable use of dreams ? Certainly, not one in a thousand is capable of intelligible applicationV and as a rule superstitious people believe in dreams, but the intel- ligent do not ; and it is not the wisest who dream most, but the least wise. The coincidences, between a dream and the event, are even fewer and less remarkable than the calculation of chances warrants us in expecting. Individuals, if acquainted with futurity, would be made useless and miserable ; curiosity and enterprise would be at end. Though this be true, ever^ythin^ in^ature has a use, and we will tryiip find that use. ~" ~~- We are sometimes more in our dreams than in our waking moments. Sir Thomas Browne (" Religio VISIONS AND DREAMS AS GLIMPSES. 113 Medici "), not a facetious man, nor given to humour, would during a dream compose a whole comedy, and laugh himself awake at his own jests. He said that were his memory as faithful as his fancy was fruitful he would never study except in his dreams. Most persons are conscious in their dreams of thinking, saying, doing, the marvellous. We often possess an instinctive prescience, like that instinct in animals by which they avoid storms, dangers, and prepare antici- patorily for the changes and new organs necessary for their successive stages of existence. Dr. Gregory records that thoughts and particular words occurring to him in dreams were so good that he used them in his college lectures. Men, slow of speech, will be eloquent and sprightly in dreams ; and converse readily even in languages they are little acquainted with. The hardest mental work is invention, yet sometimes in our sleep it is done with ease and activity. A beggar may be truly a king in his dreams, and a king find himself a beggar. We may use senses not possessed when awake. Smellie mentions Dr. Blacklock who, having lost his sight when a few months old, had a distinct impression in dreams of possessing a sense which he had not when awake. It was as if he knew things and persons by means of invisible lines passing from them to him. This indicates a mode of obtaining knowledge, by a sort of revelation beyond that of our usual senses. It tells of an involuntary action by which we realize objects apart from the usual physical contact. From the whole we learn, as stated in Dr. W. Smith's I 114 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. " Dictionary of the Bible," that the Dream is a meidium by whieh Qod communicates with'vis. provi- dentially directly or indirectly as He pleases. Hence the use we make of dreams is manifold. We enlarge o^ thoughts, receive suggestions as to the growth of our faculties, obtain a consciousness of new modes of communication as were every faculty a germ of something larger and better, a something by which we have anticipations, gleams of a future state, through being in our dreams closely allied with the realities of a spiritual world. In the fellowship of dreams — "... The unslumbering soul Wears immortality upon its crest. And by its very power to soar with them. Proves that it cannot die.'' Mrs. Sigourney, Pocahontas, and other Poems : Dreams. It is our duty, and a means of further usefulness and larger happiness, to carry thought and imagina- tion by successive reaches to the depths and to the heights of our mental capacity. If we do this to-day more than yesterday, and transcend to-day by to-morrow, we shall obtain larger moral and mental power. We shall rise to the condition indicated by St. Paul (i Thess. v. lo) that, whether awake or asleep, we live our whole life for Christ and with Christ. Our thoughts thus turn to gold, the future is not in faint and visionary colours, our very fancies will be more real than unspiritual men's hardest reasoning, and our faculties so develop in the whole and every part that things waiting to be revealed shall come, even at night, as do the stars. O, it is VISIONS AND DREAMS AS GLIMPSES. iiS good, both day and night, to have those thoughts and dreams which, laying hold on eternal life, see our future dwelling as more true and real than all that is with us now. When appearances are disclosed as of a mighty city, and every house of it in a paradise. A city rising high, and going far in wondrous depth. Not of diamond, nor gold, but outshining them, and more precious far. Not self-withdrawn, nor sinking away from touch and view, but domes and spires and terraces and pavilions with illumination beyond all gems. Here and there the towers with battlements begirt, not amid circumstance of war, nor marked with spot of natural decay ; but bright, and ever brightening more, the reflection of a universe at peace. All darkening veils of vapour drawn aside, then is seen, deeper than all deeps, higher than all summits, a lustrousness calm and serene ; but O, so blissful ! that everywhere everlasting joy springs up ; for the face of all the fair sky is like the countenance of God : not as on the Cross, but as the Ever-living, the Ever-ruling, the Ever-blessing, the Almighty God and Saviour, in whom we live and move and have our being. O ! so to think, so to dream, is that life indeed than which nothing can be greater, except the waking and the finding that all is glorious ! all is true ! XV. Ffetons anU ^Breams as CBrltmpsES of Smmortalitg.— II. " As the sun, Ere it has risen, sometimes paints its image In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits Of great events stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow." Schiller, Death of Wallenstein. ' ' Dreams are in general reflex images Of things that men in waking hours have known ; But sometimes dreams of holier character Rise in the tranced soul inspired by Jove, Prophetic of the future." Cicero on Divination : Dream of Targuin, Interpreted. DREAMS are somfetimes caused by external irritants such as noxious smells, heat, cold, noise, and by the influence of a strange bed ; more frequently the state of the bodily system, difficulty of breathing, of circulation, of digestion, worry of the brain, anxiety, and great mental excitement are the cause of phantasies. They are more than a partial arousing of animal life, as to certain organs and senses while others are asleep, for very often the imagination and sometimes the reason, are in vivid life and exercise. After we have pondered some difficult ( ii6 ) VISIONS AND DREAMS AS GLIMPSES. 117 subject, the automatic and even unconscious reflex action of the intellectual organs does sometimes, during sleep, evolve clear ideas and valuable develop- ments. Ligation of the outward senses sets free the reason, and the fancies of our dreams more than match our wakeful thoughts. It is unwise, generally, to take any notice of dreams, except as they indicate that the body and mind are in need of the physician. In that respect they are prophecies of nature as to avoiding what is evil, and as to the necessity of remedial processes. There is in all organic matter a sort of prescience, specially active in the instinct which shuns poison, chooses food, and acts in formation of the organs necessary to successive phases of existence. The fact that all nature more or less anticipates a future, and that a further state is always indicated, may be taken as a universal law. Battista Fregoso ("De Dictis et Factis Memora- bilibus ") records that a^^geptic, named Gennadius, a physician of Carthage, dreamed of a beautiful city. The following night he again dreamed, and the youth, who had been his guide in the city of the former dream, appeared again. This conversation took place : " Do you remember me, Gennadius .-• " " Yes." " Where," said the young man, " were you lying .' " " In my bed sleeping." The young man replied, " If your mind's eye surveyed a city, while your body slept, may not your pure and active spirit still live, and observe, and remember, even though your body be shapeless and decayed in the sepulchre ? " Genna- n8 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. dius, convinced, abandonedJbJs unbelief, and was ever after^firm in the Christian faith. Such an appeal is irresistible. It is impossible to prove that there is no future state ; and there is so much in sleep like death, particu- larly in certain kinds of sleep, and so muSEEIdreams, particularly in certain dreams, likea^ir^sdence of life apart from the body ; that our hopes of immortality, our instinctive cleaving to life, and involuntary pro- jection of ourselves into the future, bring a splendour of conviction, as to life, that dissipates all our fear, even as darkness gives place to dawn of day. The prescience may be called instinctive. It operates largely in instinctive life. It is a faculty so powerful as to rule irrational creatures, and appears in men when they are reduced by sleep to an irrational condition. Is it a great wonder that we, having organs necessary for successive phases of existence, regard prudent foresight, as to another world, with the same confidence that we see lower animals prepare for their migrations, and for their transit to a further stage of being ? Certainly not. Even in the way of instinctive prescience, it seems certain Jhat some dreams have proved to be prophetic. The soul feels and thTnlcs and acts apart from the body, even while united to it„ Why should it not be able to think in a more enlarged and exalted manner when apart from the body, or when joined to a spiritual body ? To see without the eye, to hear without the ear, to feel without touching the objects of sensation, and to use every kind of perception VJSJONS AND DREAMS AS GLIMPSES. 119 independent of the organs of sense, would have been deemed impossible had we not dreamed ; and it ought to be asserted as proof that future sentient life, apart from the body, is a reasonable belief There is, as Lord Brougham says ("A Discourse of Natural Theology "), " nothing better adapted to satisfy us that the nature of the mind is consistent with its existence apart from the body." Is every man who has startling dreams to count himself a saint and a prophet ? Because God has been pleased to reveal Himself to special men, set apart for extraordinary purposes, are we to imagine that He will reveal to us the trifling occurrences of our life a few days before they happen ? Certainly not : indeed to make us acquainted with futurity would, for the most part, render us useless and miserable. Though not claiming to be special men, set apart for marvellous purposes, we are undoubt- ingly warranted in laying our hand on the fact — ' ' Our life is twofold . . . And dreams in their development have breath, They do divide our being ; they become A portion of ourselves as of our time, And look like heralds of eternity ; They look like spirits of the past, — they speak Like sibyls of the future ; they have power.'' Lord Byron, The Dream, i. We go further. It is so common to speak, even as Faraday great in science did, that the truth of man's future life cannot be ascertained "by any exertion of his mental powers, however exalted they may be ; that it is made known to him by other teaching than r 120 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTAUTY. his own, and is received through simple belief of the testimony given ; " that we are bound to say, " Accept- ing Holy Writ, as the great authority, and as throwing most light on the future, we do by that light see the world to be full of reasons for faith in immortality : " 'A stamp To rest the weary, and to soothe the sad. Doth lessbn happier men, and shames at least the bad.' ' Childe Harold, canto ii., Ixviii. The testimony of Scripture is confirmed by science, by philosophy, by our intuitions, by our daily ex- perience rightly understood, and even by our dreams." Xenophon says (" Cyropaedia "), " In sleep the soul of man appears most divine. It then foresees something of the future. Then it seems most at liberty." One dream, of a right character, duly certified, wouM be. sufficient proof We havetliousaTids. To say the dreamers wereTiotlT dupes "and fools is wilful folly. It is certain that we dream. There is no explanation of that, sufficient to cover the whole subject. While the avenues of the body are closed the soul is still endued with sense and perception, and the impressions are often stronger and the images more lively when we are asleep than when awake. " They must necessarily be two distinct and different substances . . . While one shall be dead to the world, the other shall be ranging in thought through the universe." So says Bishop Newton in his " Disserta- tions." Dreams are not always resuscitation of thoughts which previously occupied the mind ; nor, if they r^JSIONS AND DREAMS AS GLIMPSES. 121 were, would that account for some thoughts being thus raised from the dead, and for others never being called up. To talk of all being mere imagination, of hopes, of fears, of physical and mental derangement, is one of those entrenchments behind which our per- plexity shelters itself. Besides, " no one ever imagined, or can imagine, anything that has not reality somewhere, and this whether waking or sleeping." That fact, our inability to create, gives to our thoughts and our dreams an indisputable power of proof as to immortality. "The proofs which dreams exhibit of the agency of the perceptive poweFs",~not only without the ^id of the organs of perception, but in direct opposition to the impressions which these organs convey to the brain, are sufficient to establish the abstract independence of mind." ^ The mind is struck with wonder at the power of mind in and over matter. It alters and enlarges our common ideas of it, and develops new conceptions of its properties. The infinitely minute changes which thoughts pass through, the marvellous acts of memory, are beyond our comprehension, are more inexplicable than the arrangements and movements of vast masses in infinite space, we have spiritual cycle and epicycle, and such looks on the past, such outlooks on the future, that we stand amazed at the presence of an awful power in us which makes every moment of our life the meeting-place of two eternities ; and we are not more sure that we are related to the past, than sure that our lengthened after life is • Frederick C. Bakewell, "Natural Evidence of a Future Life." 122 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. not a dream. "Nothing can be conceived better calculated than Qiese facts to demonstrate the extreme agility of the mental powers, their total diversity from any material substances or actions ; nothing better adapted to satisfy us that the nature of the mind is consistent with its existence apart from the body,"i " r , There are trivial dreams to match our trivial daily thoughts such as Zophar spoke of about the wicked — "He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found : yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night" (Job xx. 8). In Ecclesiastes (v. 7) we read, " In the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities." A French proverb states the same : " Songes sont mensonges." It does not follow that to dream trivially is to live trivially ; but if dream action is morally diseased, and that continually, waking action will not be morally sound. In such cases the dream is an index of the character. It warns us to cure, to eradicate the evil, that we may be pure and blameless, symmetrical in com- binations of thought and act, which fit us for the coming future ; so shall progress be made in the school of virtue even while we dream. David (Ps. xvi. 7) thought of this : " My reins also instruct me in the night seasons." From the desires of his heart in night's seasons, he learned much of himself and so comfortably that he blessed God for it. In the Acts of the Apostles (ii. 17) we are told that in time yet to come the dreaming of dreams will be a ' Lord Brougham, "A Discourse of Nafural Theology.'' VISIONS AND DREAMS AS GLIMPSES. 123 maiJc_Qf^^ivine favour. Thus dreams, when sent from God, tend to moral improvement. It is an interesting fact that the soul of a dreaming man thinks, and yet the next moment the same waking man shall not recollect his thoughts. Mostly that is no loss. The mind is then as a looking-glass, which receives the image of our countenance, but when we are awake, retaineth it not. It is well to be content without dreams, as Luther said somewhat in this manner, We have Holy Scripture which teaches us so abundantly and evidently that we therein acquiesce. We will hide God's words in our hearts, and store up His precepts in our remembering minds. These will sanctify our souls, save our lives, and make immortality a very blessed fact. Bishop Bull,^ speaking of dreams, says, " Now it is no enthu- siasm, but the best account that can be given of them, to ascribe these things to the ministry of those invisible instruments of God's providence, that guide and govern our affairs and concerns, viz. the angels of God." If we are Christians, indeed it is well with us whether we dream, or are not dreamers. • Sermon on OflBce of the Holy Angels towards the Faithful. XVI. Vlfit ^araij l^istorg of 3S«amg.— I. "All Divine communications of this kind carry' their own authentica- tion, and are seK-discriminating from all other." — Anon. " Dreams caused by evil angels induce to evil actions, which those originated by good angels never do." — Anon. " Lord, lest the Tempter me surprise, Watch over Thine own sacrifice ; All loose, all idle thoughts cast out, And make my very dreams devout." Bishop Ken, Midnight Hymn. AMONGST the necessities of man's nature is that of felh3wshipr"'He requires "a" social life, kindly and complete as to kindred ; besides this sympathy and satisfaction, he gravitates by a spiritual-influence leading him to commune with the power and wisdom and mystery of the universe. He will not make nor accept a God of measure- ments and calculations. He would rather worship the trees and the rivers. He will not own himself to be the haphazard child of circumstances. He prefers that his paternal and filial feelings lead him, as a son of God, to worship his Father — God. ( 124 ) TITE SACRED HISTORY OF DREAMS. 125 Life can only proceed from the living, and thought from the thinking : mind from mind. The marks of design in the material construction of our bodies, lead to the thought of mind in that whence they originated, and we are intellectually led to attribute personality to that in which we rest as the first Cause of all. This shows— either- that "intuition leads man to worship, or that in early days, he was with God face to face. Whichever view is taken, the effort of men in all known ages, whether we think of the legend as to stolen Promethean Fire ; or of Jacob's experience as to a ladder of angelic ascent and descent ; man's method of rising to God and God's visiting of man form a striking part in all history sacred and profane ; hence we have the Sacred History of Dreams. Laying aside all former secular caricatures of divination, as senseless and God-abandoned abomina- tions ; and without reference to clairvoyance, to spirit- rapping, or to any system of modern profanity ; and at once saying, "We do not regard disease as a prophet of wisdom ; nor sin, death, and the devil as lords of creation ; " but in broad sound health, in God's truth blessing man in the natural ways and in the laughing sunshine of the universe, we give ourselves to the study^_of_. Scripture-Dreams as a reasonable argument and revelation concerning our immortality. There were earlier visions by day and night, but the first recorded dream is (Gen. xx. 3) when God warned Abimelech that Sarah was Abraham's wife. 126 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. The king was not only kept from sin, the patriarch was preserved from scandal, the sanctity of marriage was vindicated, and God's Providence was manifested in the affairs of those who were willing to be guided. Careth God for little things ? Verily, who shall say what is little ? Is not the Life of God represented in man ? and — we go further than the words of Pro- tagoras, " Man is the measure of the universe " — are not the whole affairs of that universe photographed in every raindrop ? As we obtain special pictures or visual representa- tions, by means of intelligent action as to nature ; so is ■the prophet's dream representative. When this dream passes into the mind by' word or language, it is not only a picture, but a revelation. If the prophets tell wonderful dramas of trumpets and armies of angels, how are we to know the truth ? We may take our " own dreams, in their distinct and spreading images, by which we know that our inward powers are at work. If our truest and best parts awake from indolence and selfishness to a sense of duties, privileges, dangers, in connection with splendid pro- spects, we shall find our mind enlarge. If the waste mental places are so occupied that the unknown seems best known, and Heaven is nearer than earth, we have been drawn nearer to God, to the truth, and not to a lie. The dream of Jacob (Gen. xxviii. 12-15) shows that the wandererpgo whither he may, has God with him, God's care over him, God's love and wisdom and power preserving him. This dream was referred to THE SACRED HISTORY OF DREAMS. 127 by Jesus when He told Nathanael about the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man (John i. 51). It was one of those figurative repre- sentations by which the ancients were led to under- stand somewhat as to the personal life of God in man ; so that many, like Abraham, saw the day of Christ (John viiL 56) ; the sufferings of many were for the sake of Christ (Heb. xi. 26) ; and all had views through faith of immortality (Heb. xi. 13, 14). A further dream of Jacob (Gen. xxxi. 11-13) is a revelation that God will give the prosperity of large increase, and that Laban's covetous and selfish con- duct shall not deprive Jacob of a due reward. Jacob seemed cut off from his fellows, and now a heavenly intimation is given that the great God is of such kinship and so near in relationship that Jacob may rely upon Divine care. To the same effect and as a warning unjust Laban (Gen. xxxi. 24) received admonishment that he was not in any way, good or bad, to interfere with Jacob, who was specially cared for of God. These marvels appeal to the mysteries in ourselves. Few of us are conscious enough of them, we repress rather than bring them to' the light. If we were wise these, we~cairweak parts of our nature, would become germs of our greatest powers. In the things that we are now blind we should see. Consider as to this. Every one notices in physical, vital, intellectual naiture, the contact and contrast of good and bad, of true and false. The rules by which we act in regard to this are dictated to a sound mind by thought and 128 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. experience. The true prophet knows in a similar way, and, additionally by touch of God, is conscious of a Divine authoritative communication ; and is alive to that highest illumination concerning which a godless man is dark and dead. The true prophets know, as we should know if so dealt with, that the light and life of the natural senses, and of the natural reason, are raised on high. They are in a realm of life and power, of holiness and truth, in which nothing false can dwell and where no doubt exists. The dreams of Joseph (Gen. xxxvii. S-io), of the sheaves doing obeisance to his sheaf, and of the sun, moon, and stars honouring him, are not to be accounted as arising from the fumes of vanity and pride. Prophetic of his future destiny, they aided the accomplishment, and confirmed Joseph's faith in God's presence and protection. There is in all men, unless they are utterly reprobate, a desire to know of God as nigh to them in care, in love, and beneficent power. Doubtless, these dreams enabled Joseph to persevere in the pursuit of honour, against all adversity, and in the maintenance of purity despite temptation. The dreams of Pharaoh's chief Butler and chief Baker, the former to restoration of honour and pro- longing of life, the latter to infamy and death ; were not an accidental coincidence of little value, but a part in the Divine Plan by which, working naturally and humanly, the Lord prepared for Joseph's deliver- ance from prison. Then Pharaoh's dream of the seven well-favoured kine, and of the seven ill-favoured kine that did eat them up, followed by the dream THE SACRED HISTORY OF DREAMS. 129 of seven ears of corn rank and good, devoured by the seven east wind withered ears, were prophetic ; of which the interpretation was revealed to Joseph. The wisdom of this young man, acquired in adversity by faith in God, who seemed to hide Himself, was the means of providing a sojourning place for his father and brethren until the time appointed ; of showing also by figure of another, a greater than Joseph, who, separated from His brethren, should save His brethren ; and a means, beside, of giving the Egyptians an opportunity of using their civiliza- tion and scientific skill for the honour of God. These dreams of Joseph, and of those who were made the means of his advancement, were all parts of one and the same plan. The Butler's, Baker's, and Pharaoh's dreams, could not be interpreted by the quasi-scientific methods in use amongst the Egyptians. God was His own interpreter. None but He, by the mouth of Joseph, could make plain their meaning. If we, for our part, rightly look upon these dreams as preparing, in the most natural way with the least interference with human will, those earthly arrange- ments by which the supreme love and wisdom of the Eternal were to be displ^eS by Redemption through Christ Jesus ; we shall endeavour to find their counterparts in Heaven ; we shall lift up our minds to the angelic messengers speeding on God's errands ; we shall think of unslumbering spirits spontaneously working in the invisible universe for those preliminary processes which eventuate in that series of visible and natural functions wherein man becomes volun- K 130 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. tarily a fellow-worker with God. Xhearrangements for the dreams, the dreams themselves, the angelic and human co-operation, all bear the seal of immor- tality. The supernatural and the "natur al blend. Mind, working independently of matter, makes use of matter for the fulfilment of mental purposes. Divine Mind reveals to the human mind things to come, enabling us to see and enter an existence, and to know of things, not yet in being, so that even in the body we live somewhat apart from the body. We have in the whole a natural history of immortality, of the so to speak natural mode, or use of means, by which events to come are brought about. The veil is drawn up from the two ends of time, the past and the future, and we are prepared for the life that will be. There is something analogous in our own scenic mental images of the invisible. Duly cared for and disciplined they paint themselves in the corridors of our thought and beautify the whole personality of our existence. The sense of mental beauty and of spiritual power and purity is not the whole of the gain. The contents of our nature taking up a new reverence, hearing a new message, and having a new vision, are tinctured with diviner apprehension, sympathy, and sense of God's near presence. The elevation is accompanied by a breadth comprehensive of all good men. The harmonious chords of the universe embrace and fill the whole earth with melody. They are world-movers, blessed and blessing powers among men. THE SACRED HISTORY OF DREAMS. , 131 Krummacher gives a legend to this effect. Adam, resting under a tree, looked to heaven and wished that he might soar to the stars. At once, it was as if an angel touched him, and he ilew to the vault of the sky. Radiant worlds, like the sun, rushed by and yet worlds and worlds were beyond. Was he indeed guided by the angel ? No, his body remained under the tree ; but within that body were the facul- ties of a seraph which rose in contemplation of the heavenly splendours, and in rising higher and higher presented a more and more noble worship with deeper humility. Building up our conception that all things touch the miraculous ; and that rightly regarded our own life and all present existence are the materials which form the Natural history of Immortality, and is con- iirmed by Scripture ; we rely on these facts. We have an irresistible propensity to refer ourselves and all other things to a Power beyond us, sublime, mysterious ! not to be measured, nor comprehended ; but so apprehended that this, the boundless and the unfathomed, lies before us. Outward matters are our stepping-stones ; consciousness, spontaneousness, are the light in which we move ; spiritual perceptions, growing out of natural sensations, come natural as breath. From a mountain, a waterfall, twilight gloom, a dream, we canyThe eye within, and then we look beyond : we find within and we find without something unbounded. Our mind is a figure or emblem of some other spirituality. Our body and all matters not our body, are a changeable garment. 132 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. or varying expression, of some unchangeable Form. Our mind is not limited, in its work, to this or that kind of sense or object. We meddle with and improve our sight, and sense of smell ; take super- intendence and enlarge or limit all the rivulets of sensation ; and make them rivers that run into a measureless ocean. We thus go beyond present life and present nature ; and our soul, being refreshed with new images and new discoveries of things, we enlarge our reason, extend our knowledge, spread our territories of apprehension, as by a magnetism which drawing us higher augments us ; and which, carrying us forward, reveals destinations. We feel and know that the likeness of God is in us ; and that in us so lives His Life that we shall live for ever. XVII. ^6e ^meti l^istorg of Brsams.— II. Joseph Amyraldus, grouping the tests as to any dreams being of Divine authority, notes, as one -pioof, that they convey intimations of things which pnlyjGod^ould know and reveal. — ^J. W. R. ' ' The nervous system, when in a highly excited state, becomes sus- ceptible of impressions not ordinarily received, and is put in communi- cation, in some way to us mysterious, with scenes, places, and events, far distant, so as to become strangely cognizant of the coming future." — Prof. Joseph Haven, Mental Philosophy. THERE is no better guard against superstition as to dreams than the^^statenaents.^ of- Scripture as to their general uselessness, and as to the folly of trusting in tTiern7 Those who claimed to be prophets because dreamers of dreams were not only to be dis- regarded but to be punished (Deut. xiii. 1-5). Zophar said the wicked " shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found ; yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night" (Job xx. 8). Asaph declares of the ungodly, " As a dream when one awaketh ; so, O Lord, when Thou awaketh. Thou shalt despise their image " (Ps. Ixxiii. 20). Solomon found that " in the multitude of dreams and many words there are ( 133 ) 134 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. also divers vanities " (Eccles. v. 7). Isaiah (xxix. 7), Jeremiah (xxiii. 27, 28, 32), and the whole testimony of Holy Writ show that ordinary dreams and visions are worse than valueless. The Midianite's dream (Judg. viL 13) was to dis- courage the~Ti?ndianites and to encourage Gideon. Solomon's dream (i Kings iii. 11-15) was an assur- ance that wisdom, wealth, and long life, were in the hand of God. It is hard to think of a better way in which a king, circumstanced as he was, could have been more strikingly and efficiently warned without interference with personal freedom. We find that Damel-(i. 17) "had understanding in all visions and dreams. Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the Image ; and interpreted by Daniel (ii. 36-45) of the four empires, destroyed by a stone cut out of a mountain ; indicated that the Providence of God would establish a lasting kingdom to display the righteousness and power of God. " The dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure." The further dream of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. iv. 10-27) was a rebuke and warning to that great monarch. Had he broken off his sins by righteous- ness, and his iniquities by showing mercy, doubtless his reason would have been prolonged and enlarged. He is another example of the almost insoluble problem : for the gift of freedom to contain not only the power to mould man's conduct, but also to form and ameliorate his character by use of proper means. The reverse problem is not less difficult, that the response of man's will to the leadings of THE SACRED HISTORY OF DREAMS. 135 the Divine Spirit shall be free and loving, not by constraint. After this, Daniel, the Dream Interpreter, himself had a dream (vii. 1-14). It seems to have been the repetition in another form of Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Dan. ii. 31-45). The king saw the kingdoms, with a royal eye, in splendour. The prophet beheld them in their tyrannical, fierce, rapacious character, like great beasts, and as enemies of God. He saw the end of all their evil domination ; and the rule of one like the Son of Man, a universal sway established by Divine power, with full agreement of Heaven and Earth, men being in righteous obedience, and God resting upon them in His love. The other dreams are those of the New Testament That oTTbsliph (Matt7T."^-23) concerning the imr maculate conception, by the Virgin Mary, of our Saviour. It is a dream which to every devout mind interprets truly the prophecy of Isaiah (vii. 14) and asserts incontrovertibly the fact that Jesus was, as declared by John (i. 14, 34), made flesh by being begotten of God ; was, indeed, the Son of God. After that the Wise Men, beingwarned,_in a dream (Matt, il 12), returned, having seen Christ, to their own country by another way without visiting Herod. Then we have the angel of God directing Joseph, by a dream, to take the child Jesus into Egypt (Matt. ii. 13). After the death of Herod Joseph is directed to return with the child to Israel (Matt. ii. 22). Last of all, Pilate's wife is warned (Matt, xxvii. 19) that the great Prisoner, detained as a malefactor, was a just 136 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. man to whom no harm should be done. We easily understand the value of these dreams to Joseph. They were God's assurance of the spotlessness of Mary and^of the Divine care for the Divine Son. The Wise Men were assured by their dream that they had indeed seen Him whom Balaam named the "Star" (Numb. xxiv. 17); and that they, as Gentiles, had walked in the light of God (Isa. Ix. 3). Pilate was left to act as he saw fit ; to him a dream would appear a thing not to be regarded, or as coercion — depriving him of responsibility. His wife received the dream : she might well use her influence for her husband's good. It shows that even the worst of men are not left without admonition. God created us holy and free, we abused the freedom to become unholy. Then came marvellous interferences. Noah preached righteousness, and built the Ark, a testimony of his sincerity, and of his own certainty that unrighteousness would be punished. Abraham was taken out from his people, and Divinely protected as a righteous witness, example, and teacher. Dreams many and marvellous were given. Moses wrought an unmatched deliver- ance ; and gave a Law, the like of which, in simplicity and comprehensiveness, is not to be found. Ceremonies and observances were established. Prophets prophesied, and miracles were continually wrought. All these seemed in vain. Last of all. He sent His Son, that the greatest love God can show and the best gift man can receive shall be shown and given that by all THE SACRED HISTORY OF DREAMS. 137 means men may be saved. Shall all be in vain ? God forbid. There are men to whom nothing is of any good. In Glasgow, years ago, was a " Hell Club," an infidel association. Archibald Boyle was the leading member. They all strove to outdo one another in blasphemy and debauchery. One night, after returning from the club, Archibald dreamed that, riding home on his black horse, some one seized the reins and said, " You must go with me." The other cried, "Who are you .' " and struggled for the reins. " You will see by-and-by," was the answer. The horse fled with a speed nearly depriving the rider of breath, but the mysterious one continued grasping the reins. No effort of Boyle availed to rescue them. The horse reared and plunged madly all in vain. " Where are you taking me ? where, where am I going .' " " To Hell ! " answered the unrelenting voice. The poor wretch was carried, on and on, even to Hell ! He saw the wicked there every one pursuing madly the course of life that had been lived on earth with the like wearisomeness, the same painfulness, with no rest, no satisfaction, "There is no Rest in Hell." Love is turned to hatred, desire to disgust. A thousand thousand voices cry ; many, many hearts know; "There is no Rest in Hell." "Let me go hence," shrieked the maddened man. The Evil One replied, " Go : in a year and a day we meet to part no more." Archibald Boyle awoke. It was a dream. Was he saved ? For a few days he could not even leave 138 THE NATURAL fflSTOJiY OF IMMORTALITY. his bed, and resolved never again to attend the club. Alas ! his companions came, they jeered, they called him, " Fool." One by pretended sympathy won his confidence, and then by ridicule led him back. Some time after, at a meeting, the President of the club said, " Gentlemen, this is leap year, therefore, it is a year and a day since our last annual meeting. Boyle would have rushed from the room, but had not courage. They plied him with wine, but his former brightness was now gloom, his pleasant laugh now fiendish. He mounted the black horse to ride home. In the morning his horse was found by the wayside, and a few yards distant lay the dead body of Archibald Boyle. We relate the facts as we read them. They show that dreams and miracles are in vain, a man will resist them. We have declared the marvels and mysterjes^pf the power of God, of the wrath of God, and -of ^Hell-Doom, but a more congenial, a more effecting work _is^that of the Love of God. Love is stronger than Death, can overcome the Grave, can conquer Satan, can rescue from Hell. Nothing can resist Love, it wins your heart, purifies your life, saves your soul. The Love of God in Christ enables a man to do all things. It seems too costly for the Son of God, the Prince of Life and Glory, to give His limbs to the cross, and His heart to the spear. It is an infinite love to give, an infinite price the cost. It is no dream, but a transaction stretching out to ever- lasting day. It is a miracle surpassing every other miracle, a wonder-work exceeding all wonders. " God THE SACRED HISTORY OF DREAMS. 139 was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." " Whosoever believeth shall not perish, but have everlasting life." " Mine is an unchanging love, Higher than the heights above, Deeper than the depths beneath, Free and faithful, strong as death." William Cowfer. XVIII. ®fi£ gbtjool of Sbatan. " The depth of unscientific and unspiritual degradation into which a man may be thrown is shown by the question of an Evolutionist : — ' Can one trust to the conviction of a monkey's mind ? ' The answer is — ' If the idea of God may be a phantom of an ape-like brain, can we trust to reason or conscience in any other matter ? . . . Does not this deprive science of the ennobling idea that nature is the develop- ment of Divine Mind? " — Sir J. William Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution, p. 13. " How shall he give kindling, in whose inward man there is no live coal, but is all burnt out ? " — Sartor Resartus^ ch. iii. COUNT DE LAVALETTE, while in prison, dreamt that he was standing in Rue St. Honors amidst silence and darkness. A slow un- certain sound arose, and all at once a troop of cavalry came towards him — the men and horses all flayed. The riders held torches, the red light of which fell on faces without skins, their bloody muscles all bare. Their hollow eyes rolled fearfully in the sockets, their mouths opened from ear to ear, helmets of drooping flesh horribly covered their hideous heads. The horses were an awful spectacle, dragging their own skins along bloody kennels. Terrified women looked ( 140 ) THE SCHOOL OF SATAN. 141 out of the windows, groans filled the air, and Lavalette, without strength, unable to fly, was petrified with amazement. Thousands of soldiers marched on hour after hour, followed by an immense number of artillery waggons full of bleeding corpses, whose limbs still quivered. A disgusting smell of blood and bitumen filled the air. Then the clock struck, and the dreamer awoke. The march of death vanished. That dream was never forgotten : a misery of hours, but the real time was three minutes. The lesson set forth is the dreadful march through time of the tempted, the sinful, the miserable, the dead, whom Satan allured, pierced with many sorrows and murdered. The dream was but a dream, not so the facts represented — they are real. The delusion and destruction began when Adam was deceived. It will continue until the last man is lost or saved. The graves of the best men, of the noblest martyrs, were all dug by Satan. What multitudes of tears, what myriad drops of blood, have been shed ! Satan not only made men mad on fields of battle, but caused countless heroes to die even on the consecrated ground of virtue and on the soil of truth. Men whose spirit rose to self-denial, far more noble and beautiful than any capacity we possess, he made to pass away unknown to history and unhonoured. Amidst all this evil, and in despite of it, the universe reveals the wisdom and grandeur of God. Not only so, Christ, the image of the invisible God, appeared and makes us to learn, as never had been learned, that God is Love. Christ was and is the fulness of 142 THE NATVRAL fflSTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Godhead bodily, and will come again in glory. Satan is in opposition to this Christ, is the source of evil, the deceiver, the betrayer of the first man at the beginning of time ; and of all men who go astray to the end of time. Satan will reappear, not as a serpent, but as a satanic man, the antichrist, that great demoniac, the fulness of the devil bodily, whose end will be the Lake of Fire (Rev. xx. lo). Satan, finding that Christ was the Divine man, the model man, the representative of man to God, and the impersonation of God in men for the salvation of men, tempted Christ, but was utterly worsted. Then endeavouring to make the College of Apostles a Satanic School, he beguiled Judas through covetous- ness ; and would have ruined Peter by pride and self- conceit, but that Jesus, by prayer, rescued Peter and again foiled Satan. Man was tempted in Paradise, no wonder that the Apostles were tried. The sublime greatness of Christ was by an inevitable fact, man's weakness, shaded and diminished by presentation in human form. Though some of the Apostles mentally recognized the Godhead, the vision was greatly obscured, both to them and Satan, by the seeming depression and prostration in man's body, limbs, features, and actions. Majesty was shrouded as in a death-garb, man's sin imposing profoundest humility. Neither Apostles nor Satan saw fully, and Satan hoped to prevail. In this false hope, the Powers of Hell set themselves against Heaven, Satan opposed the Saviour, the World was put in contrast to Paradise, and the school THE SCHOOL OF SATAN. 143 of Satan always maligned the Church of the Living God. " Too well, too well, is told the tale of ill." The battle was and is very fierce and real. Christ, Himself, suffered and died through weakness. The Church passes through great tribulation. Christ, dying for man on the Cross ; and we, as believers, buried in the Water of Baptism on account of sin ; seem defeated, and the Powers of Hell prevail for a season. The victory comes, and will come more fully. " Heaven has a hand in all ; time serves, wherein we may redeem our banished honours, and restore ourselves by the enabling grace of God." In that Death on the Cross Christ seemed defeated, and the Apostles well-nigh lost faith and hope ; but in the grave Christ, in close grip with Death, showed that sin being the strength of Death He, the Sinless One, could not and would not be detained. Hence the resurrection of Christ guaranteed His Godhead the perfect rescue of Peter, and our own complete redemption. " Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat : but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not : and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren " (Luke xxii. 31, 32). The School of Satan is made up of those scholars who, learning his devices, carry out his maxims, and are subject to him. " With skimble-skamble stuff" they would put us from our faith in God. They entangle right and wrong to make the wrong seem better, virtue be insipid, rectitude of character and conduct appear devoid of the picturesque and 144 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. magnificent, and " leave behind a stain upon the beauty of all parts beside." Some of them profess what they call " Higher Biblical Criticism," and pay no more respect to the Bible than we do to " Robinson Crusoe " and " Gulliver's Travels." They assert that there is no Supernatural, that all clever men are inspired much in the same way as were the Prophets and Apostles ; that indeed there are no true prophets, but excited and self-illuminated minds throw their own light on the future, and mistake that light for prophecy. Destroying, in their own minds, the truth that Holy Scripture is, in especial, the Word of God ; they assert that Christ is not the Son of God ; that we need not and have not any Divine Lamp shining in dark places ; that there is no Divine Saviour to rescue us from Satan, for no Satan exists. They have to take the guilt of conscience for their labour ; and the Devil, who tells them they do well, also says as they sink downward, " their deeds are chronicled in hell." St. Paul said that for his part, though he had known Christ after the flesh, henceforth he would know Him no more (2 Cor. v. 16); but these scholars in the School of Satan declare that only in the flesh can He be known. Like Satan, they profess to have higher knowledge of various kinds, and to penetrate secrets unknown to other men. Alas ! their false knowledge leads to defect of manners, want of government, pride, haughtiness, disdain, " beguiling them of com- mendation." The God of this world, that very Satan whose existence they deny, has blinded their minds by their own unbelief They cannot see the glorious THE SCHOOL OF SATAN. 145 light of the Gospel, nor behold in Christ the very image of God. Professing themselves to be wise, they have become fools (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4). Thus Satan breeds revengement and a scourge for them. Moses knew that men professing superior, even occult knowledge would try to persuade people that it is better to be sinners than saints. He said, " If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them ; thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams : for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deut. xiii. 1-3). The same warning was repeated by St. John in the First Epistle (iv. l) — " Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God : because many false prophets are gone out into the world." St. Paul, animated by holy zeal, declares, "If any man preach any other Gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed " (Gal. i. 9). The recorded desire of Satan to possess Peter, and the prayer of Christ that Peter's faith fail not, are proof of Satanic existence. Evil spirits, greatly kept from good men, make bad men their special prey, deceive them by many delusions, by subtle sophistry, and cause them to dream of safety while sudden destruction is coming upon them : they waste time, L 146 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. and time wastes them. There was a host ready to deceive Ahab, and one was appointed to be the deceiver (i Kings xxxi. 19-23); Ahab, unbelieving, perished. "Let not any think," says Luther, "the devil is now dead, or asleep : as He that keepeth Israel, so he that hateth Israel, neither slumbereth nor sleepeth." It is a proper question for reverent and thoughtful men to ask, " How God, who is Light, alloweth Satan, who is darkness, to continue?" We reply, "4t^is part of ^he Divine Plan to. make better men an'd^ angels by allowing them freedom, ±han ^they could possibly be made in thraldom whether good or bad ; and there can be no true freedom without risk of abuse. How sweet is music ! but, as Shakespeare said — " How sour sweet music is. When time is broke, and no proportion kept ! So is it in the music of men's lives. " Light can be turned to darkness thus : when two lights from one source, though both good, oppose one another, both are extinguished. If they strengthen one another, the light is greater. Light, whether you mean physical light or mental light, acts by, what is scientifically called, "the superposition of small motions." It was, doubtless, by many small wrong movements Satan was led into great transgressions ; and we men are thus, little by little, deluded until our light becomes darkness. Many a misguided man has to say with King Richard — " I was not made a horse ; And yet I bear a burden like an ass." THE SCHOOL OF SATAN. 147 St. Paul says, "We are not ignorant of Satan's devices" (2 Cor. ii. 11). His thoughts work in men, whether they sleep or are awake, with manifold mischief, Tertullian states they are subtle injections. St. Augustine bemoaned the mischief that he suffered, from the injection of sinful dreams. Dream-sins are very dangerous, they insidiously mar the character ; and, inducing to evil when asleep, do the more easily beguile men when awake. Jeremiah (xxiii. 25, 26) warns deceivers and men of evil dreams that God is against them. When a man finds that ill-managed scientific investigations lead to indecision about religion ; and that cleverness in handling natural things makes him, like Jannes and Jambres, to .resist sacred marvels ; he should cultivate a more God-like deduction ; seek personal communion with Christ, and for more comfortable light and holiness in his own soul. No longer pray faintly, as one to be denied ; but pray with heart, soul, and all besides ; praying till temptation is out-prayed ; then shall come the mercy that true prayers are sure to have. " O happy vantage of a kneeling knee ! " Dreams are sometimes a touchstone of morals. A disea§ed7~jlPcondttiDned:Tnintih^^ causes sinful dreams, and these aid the downward course by heretical speculations in religion, by inaccuracy in science, by ill-interpreting of philosophy. There is no good work done in or by man without the help of God ; and there is mrbad work done apart from assistance^by the devil. Will a nfah be Judas? the devil enters him. Is Peter to be tempted ? into that 148 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. the devil thrusts himself. Are Ananias and Sapphira to lie unto the Holy Ghost ? it is by Satanic delusion. William Smellie ("Philosophy of Natural History") says, " To deny the possibility of supernatural delu- sions, either when asleep or awake, would be both presumptuous and absurd. On the contrary, I can conceive a superior being so fully acquainted with the human frame ... as to be able to excite in the mind what ideas he may think proper." It becomes Christians to pray for all deluded and self-deluding men, as, Christ prayed for Peter, that they perish not. O God! " If some poor wandering child of Thine Have sparned to-day the voice divine, Now, Lord, the gracious work begin ; Let him no more lie down in sin." Kebk. These deluders and deluded not only lose the desire and power to do good, they lose correctness and directness of thought. They call the Genesis account of Creatioij^^ sort ^f poetical prelude to a collection of ancient wrifingrof religious andlnoral import." We answer, "Yes;" but when we show that the living picturesque narrative is of vaster meaning than words, and of greater depth than the material figures, they insist upon the narrowest and rigidest meaniiig ; though every thinker knowTthat language never did nor can put into words the full significance of acts and things, and though the greatest geologists and astronomers accept the Divine account as the best that could be given. A man narrowed by some stringent restricting THE SCHOOL OF SATAN. 149 pursuit, and unacquainted with those spiritual reaches of thought which belong to religion, will bring mechanical powers and calculations pretending by their means to investigate higher Christian truths ; then he will speak and act, quite ignorant of them, as though he fully knew them. He refuses to accept the Fall of Man, the Building of the Ark, the Deluge, and whatever is wonderful, even while allowing that matter, about which he speaks so confidently ; and force, which he so limits ; and the origin of man, which he says is no marvel ; are not yet settled, even by those who most confidently speak as exponents of materialism and evolution. " Man," he says, "has not fallen but risen ; " yet, with the words in his mouth, he knows that no man, nor any people, has ever risen from a low barbarous condition apart from the influence of those in a higher state. Every cultured unbeliever calls the mechanical part of nature, and his own sensual part, to witness that there is no spiritual part ; that science is destroying spirituality, faith, and every form of religion, though never, except probably in the Apostles' days, amongst the few, was there more earnest and self-denying faith than exists now amongst the many. This spiritual nature being to all the devout in heart a perpetual Evangel, a great symbol of God, a psalm of triumph. It is right to regard all good men, so far as they are good, God made visible ; and evil men as the devil brought into view ; even as the universe, rightly understood, is a majestical unveiling of the Almighty. Heaven, everywhere revealing itself on earth, is a ISO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. testimony of God's will that there is a higher Hfe for man. We believe this, and faith is the one thing aeedful to make weak men strong and brave as martyrs. It enables them to say, " God is in us, and Christ is our all-sufficient Saviour. Despite all Satan can do, all that his school of evil men perform, we shall live for ever. Heaven and earth may pass away, but God's proniise, Christ's word and Christ's work, shall not pass away. Christ has opened Heaven for us, and by dwelling among us recon- secrated the earth, given a new meaning, exhibited new graces, and shed a new light on the light of life. XIX. ©Hsttng out Bcbt'Is. " The world is all a wonder. Wonder is. And only is, the upward attitude The mind assumes to what transcends its gaze ; But earnest eyes o'er common things transcend y And there is nothing that we think we know Which, if we knew it better, would not wear The aspect of a miracle." John Cleland, Scala Natum. Junction of the Supernatural and Natural. THE point at which supernatural -p&wer comes in contact with natural things is not precisely known. Whether it is always high up in the beginning an3^at the birth of the hatufat s:uccession of things ; or whether there is a special and continual coming out, moment by moment, by which general providence becomes particular even to the falling of a sparrow ; we cannot determine by physical science. General and Particular Government of the World. The occurrence^ of miracles, the statements of Scripture~the reality of prophecy' warrant our belief ( «Si ) 1 52 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. that God appoints and maintains _the course of the worlds. ^WlthTregard to men, when their will inter- feres with and changes the mechanical course of things, that interference is always kept within bounds and readjusted by natural forces ; this shows that there is an all-embracing arrangement of the universe. Besides the general. Christians believe that a special providence includes all things, and like a good angel of God guides human life. The Supernatural made Visible. All visible^ things are representations of the in- visible ; and wherever Eternal Power directly operates, without use of intermediates, we consider that a miracle is wrought ; and the miracle is a visible supernatural, a proof of the invisible supernatural, an intelligible medium between the two worlds, connect- ing that part of nature which we do know with that which we do not know. This supernatural linking gives high meaning to a natural supernatural linking. There are certain external conditions so in accord with mental internal impressions that nature seems part of the soul, and the soul part of nature. The vitality in nature's essence circulating in our blood ; our blood and nature respond to one another from utmost depths. Then nature seems to die, mortal malady seizes us, but at the limit of natural and human force some supernatural, some superhuman power, takes away the impotence ; and one can say in the words of Job, CASTING OUT DEVILS. 133 " I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee ; " and another speaks like St. Paul — " I am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live : yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me " (Gal. ii. 20). Maleficent Power. We accept, as part of science, that nature every- where touches the supernatural, whatever we see represents the unseen. Some of the seen things are physically and morally bad, are not in obedient relation to that Eternal Power whom we regard as wholly pure and beneficent, but i-epresentative of the impure and maleficent. Wherever this evil, whatever it may be, acts directly an evil mastery is declared, an unnatural supernatural works a destructive miracle, such as those which are to be wrought in the last days ; such as those that were wrought when demons in the bodies of men resisted our Lord, when Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses. Reality of Evil Power. Is evil •of this character conceivable ? Certainly, or what do physical, mental, moral evils, mean ? What did our Lord's works signify when He cast out demons ? There are evils in the world^^reater than man is able to cause. In various degrees of clearness 154 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. the existence of demons, of devils, of evil spirits, is declared again and again in Hcrly ScfipfiTrer" Every quality and action which can include personality is attributed to them in language which cannot be reasonably explained away. Go whither and where you will, all nations have believed and do believe in ghosts, good and bad. The most intelligent, most civiliz"ed7~powerful and rich of the nations, regard Christ's great works, done against evil spirits, as real works. Only those doubt as to spirits, who are them- selves in evil thrall. Personal Opposition to Christ. Our Lord was tempted,^pecially,_iQ£ty-days and fortyjiights ;^iassed, because of evil influence, many dark hours ; and was so placed in demoniac power as to be for awhile forsaken of God. The recorded miracles against devils are those as to the demoniacs in the Gadarene country, the delnoniac m the Syna- gogue of Capernaum, the healing of a lunatic child, and those many various ones which are only generally mentioned, as castings out of devils. They indicate that more persons are in evil bondage than is com- monly thought. The lunatic child is proof that even young persons, for reasons unkiiown to us, may be led astray. The demoniac in the Synagogue shows that Satan is not shut out from Church, nor Chapel, nor Synagogue. The miracle at Gadara requires special investigation. CASTING OUT DEVILS. 155 The Triple Narrative. St. Matthew speaks of two demoniacs (viii. 28-34) ; St. Mark (v. 1-20), St. Luke (viii. 26-39), mention one only. One, for some unknown reason, falls into the background ; the other, as more known because more remarkable, comes into full view. Facts Proving the Possession. Jesus says implicitly and explicitlyjthat the man was possessed. There cOtrld"^ no collusion between the swine and the possessed person. There was no uncertainty in the minds of the swine-owners about the reality of their loss. Experience shows that the lower animals are susceptible of madness, and there is no known impossibility in the transfer of spiritual influence from one person or thing to another. Physical science cannot disprove any reported case of possession ; and this case is not only the most wonderful, but the best proved of all. Further Facts. Physiology finds parallels in nature for the most supernaturai-icrnd'nsf'^erentsr Besides, -themiracles of Scripture are not separable from the doctrines; they "are aTt~essentiaLpa*fr of our Christian Faith. You cannot put away miracre"unless you put away the Deliverance imm~Egypt,"tlie giving of the Ten Commandments, all Prophecy, Inspiration, the Divine 156 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Birth of our Lord, His Works, Resurrection, Ascen- sion, the Coming of the Holy Ghost, and whatever proves our Faith to have Divine Sanction. Miracle is the symbol of God in Nature. His law in our instinct, His morality in our reason, are miracles. Destruction of the Swine. As to the rushing of those swine to destruction, it was a punishment of the Jewish owners for keeping an unclean animal which the Law commanded them not to keep (Lev. xi. 7, 8). If you admit the miracle, as miracle, it was wrought by a Will and Wisdom whom you cannot accuse of wrong. If a miracle was not wrought, it is folly to exclaim against destruction of the pigs, seeing there was no destruction. As per- mitted by our Lord, it was a taking away that He might bestow things better worth the having : the better things were refused. The slaughter, as done by the evil spirits, illustrates an old saying — "The devil takes his pigs to a bad market." Viewed as evidence it proves the miracle. Destruction of the Swine is Proof that the Man was Possessed. The man was not merely mad : madness could not go from him and enter them. Whatever broke down the physical barriers between his own senses and the demons' influence, even to the profaning of all that was sacred in him, was also physically CASTING OUT DEVILS. 157 destructive in the swine. It shows that all physical, mental, moral evil, are different degrees of one erring influence: TEaF^vil which our human consciousness has knowledge" of y all"material nature, living and unliving, bears marks of. It is tyrannizing, cruel, inexorable. It spares not young, nor old ; man, nor woman. It makes light, dark ; and even the good God to seem as if He had part with Belial. To raise the good from the contamination and power of evil and the Evil One Christ came, and Christ worked miracles against evil and the Evil One. By taking our flesh and spirit He gives power to the body, and power to the spirit. By living with us, by taking hold of nature. He gives that power to our life, if we will use it ; and that presence Divine to natural material substances ; by which we and they shall be purged, renewed, and all evil be cast into a lake of fire. The Swine-Feeders themselves prove the Miracle. The swine-feeders could not say that Christ had maliciously destroyed their property. At the utmost. He only allowed the evil spirits to take their own wicked course and go whither they would. He, in goodness, liberated the man ; they, the demons, in wickedness, destroyed the swine. Christ's act was wholly of mercy ; theirs, utterly bad. Had there been any collusion, were it possible to bring home a charge against Him of wrong-doing, they would not beg Him to go, but apprehend and take Him to the judge. 158 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. The General Refusers of Miracles. The nien who refuse Christ are of two great classes : those eyil ones whose violence shows that they are body and soul uader Satanic influence ; and those worldly ones whose unbelief counterworks the truth, whether in themselves or in others. The fierce ones, whose devilish malice is more violent than the elemental wars of nature, are not so dangerous as those who effectually do the devil's work by saying, "There is no devil." Our Lord shows His mercy in rescuing those whom Satan has maddened ; H^ regards them as men to be pitied. The others, whited sepulchres, wholly corrupt within, are none the better for miracles, do not believe and tremble. When Christ Himself comes to them, when a work is done that cannot be denied, they do not say, " Lord, what wilt Thou have us to do .-' " They prefer that He depart. More swinish than the swine, worse than the demoniac, they say, "Go from us, go from us." The Lord leaves them as that Herod to whom He said not a word. " Tempted oft to go astray, Jesu Christ, be Thou my way ; Mock'd with shadowy dreams of youth, Jesu Christ, be Thou my truth ;' Wearied out with manhood's strife, Jesu Christ, be Thou my life ; Such to Thy saints wast Thou of yore. Unchangeable Thou art, and shalt be evermore.'' Monsell. XX. Wte IJ^fstorg of S>atan : Inttoiructton. " Scripture teaches the absolute subordination of evil ... in the fact that the evil roots itself in a creature, and in one created originally pure, but the good in the Creator. . . . The opposition of this evil to the will of God is most real. . . . The world is not a chess-board on which God is in fact playing both sides of the game, however some of the pieces may be black, and some white. . . . The whole end of His government of the world is the subduing of this evil ; not abolishing of it by main force, which were no true victory ; but overcoming it by righteousness and truth." — Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, 7%e Miracles of our Lord, p. 155. CHARLES KINGSLEY, in "Hypatia," wrote that he did not care " to be balancing nineteen pounds weight of questionable arguments against twenty pounds weight of more questionable argu- ments " — so say all. We want no " faith of hearsays," but that reasonable faith, satisfactory to our intelli- gence, on which we can act surely. Having this, we shall not be greatly disturbed, though Satan's lawyer, holding a brief against us, reasons as were he another sort of being, closely connected with the superior powers. A fool may sit in the scientific man's seat, and, ( 159 ) i6o THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. despite the seat, not know that the whole universe, from the sun overhead to the pebble at our feet, is utterly mysterious, magical^ miraculous ; and in its own way, prophesying, foretelling, and out-telling things to come. A drop of water, to the vulgar eye, is but a drop of water; yet is it held together by a force which suddenly liberated will produce a flash of lightning. The snow-flake suggests high associa- tions in its wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow crystals. The rock, marked with deep scratches, is a whole history to him who knows that a glacier slid on this rock a million years ago. Be not blind to the poetry, thexQmance, the^ prophecy, the" history, withuvSycITyou are surrounded. Lanes and hedge- rows are fulF of interest to him who in early days collected insects and plants. All dark places shine with light and history if you have searched for fossils, those embedded treasures. Every owner of a micro- scope, or of an aquarium, rightly used, knows that he has in lliem a view of miracles in the past, and a prophesying of glorious things nigh at hand. Good and evil, virtue and vice, duty and trans- gression, righteousness and sin, are not mere words. They are the results of causes, visible and invisible ; some within, some beyond the limits of our observa- tion. The material world, and all in it, represent the unseen world, and the things of it. Fights here, fights there, fights everywhere ; beauty and ugliness, order and confusion, power and weakness ; make a show of greater strifes which are out of view. Nature represents all these, and would not be nature unless it THE HISTOR Y OF SATAN : INTROD UCTION. \ 6 1 did. Nature is a result, influenced by affinities and repulsions — unexpected, unknown, unfathomable. Beside every good is some evil, in every life is some sorrow, and a lesson is to be learned everywhere : " Sad things in tliis life of breath Are truest, sweetest, deepest. Tears bring forth The richness of our natures, as the rain Sweetens the smelling briar." Buchanan. Good and evil are fourfold : physical, vital, mental, moral. Physical evil sometimes Causes suffering whicH~~cannot be explained or vindicated, as pro- ductive of greater happiness. Many vital evils cause lifelong wretchedness which present no recognizable advantages to the sufferer. Mental infirmities, ignorances, perversities, may in part be classed with moral obliquities ; which, latter, are in every sense degrading. All these, whether we think of nature at large, or of man in particular, come from something more inward than is the outward show. Bolingbroke said to King Richard, " The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed the shadow of your face." Richard replied — " Say that again. The shadow of my sorrow ? Ha ! let's see : — 'Tis very true, my grief lies all within ; And these external manners of laments Are merely shadows to the unseen grief, That swells with silence in the tortur'd soul ; There lies the substance." King Richard II., act iv. Shakespeare stated a great truth : not merely that the greater sorrows of a man are within, but that all the pains, all the evils of man and of nature, are M 1-62 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. from a central source ; of which nature is the shadow. No one has fully brought before us the horrors in nature, and the cruelty of her operations. How is it that the evil is so great ? We say of God, as Nehemiah did (ix. 6), " Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone : Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the sea, and all that is therein, and Thou preservest them all." John Milton, endeavouring to explain the origin of evil, went beyond warrant of Scripture, as to the History of the Personal Principle of Evil ; but that which seems nighest romance, in that wonderful work, " Paradise Lost," is, of all the poem, nearest truth. God created spiritual existences truly good, and great as good ; but free to think and act. Some of these, specially one, abused that freedom — ' ' With ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God, Raised impious war in Heav'n, and battle proud, With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power Hurl'd headlong flaming from the ethereal sky." Paradise Lost, The Argument, bk. i. This evil, extending from heaven to the earth, and then, by delusion of man, corrupting human nature, has thrown the course of nature out of gear, and made life greatly to partake of sorrow. So far, at least, the explanation may be accepted. We further say, Evils are greater than those which can be explained as coming, fconx mere nieciia.n,ism, and the unguided- ness of nature. It is also easy to"see, from the misuse we make of our own freedom, how even THE HISTORY OF SATAN: INTRODUCTION. 163 some of the angelic hearts, little by little, through over-attending on themselves, would at last give but shows of service to their God ; and so their service, too indirect for long continuance, became transgres- sion, and they fell. Doubtless, all-foreseeing Wisdom would know of the loss ; and infinite resource would turn the whole to greater good — sometime, some- where ; even as with us, " some falls are means the happier to arise." " There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceas'd : The which observ'd, a man may prophesy. With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life : which in their seeds. And weak beginnings, lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time." King Henry IV., Part II., act iii. sc. I. This History of Evil, as a real thing in nature, represents some more malignant evil behind the veil of nature j^^o^aH^the-^orrows of -tie world, and of man, are shadows of what is inward : inward as to man, and inward as to nature. Holy Scripture goes beyond this, and declares that the inwardness centres in a personal spirit of evil. Every personal quality and action are so applied to him, that we are not less sure of the fact than of God's personality. The word " Satan " is the Hebrew personal name for the Evil One. This, and the other word " Devil,' mean Adversary. He is called the Ruler of this world, thrice ; the Evil One, about six times ; and the Tempter, twice. It cannot be more clearly stated that the tooth i64 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. which bites us and the poison that infects are the Great Serpent's tooth and poison ; and all good has to be separated from some clinging evil. The tangled maze will sometime, nevertheless, be untangled ; and our own part in the work will be best wrought by faithfully toiling on that ground which has been given us to till. Indeed, every rational being is so placed that trial and temptationcreate and display moral qualities capable of mastering the evil ; though sometimes there is a conjuring of shapes that almost frighten us from ourselves, and sometimes forms of allurement well-nigh intoxicate every sense ; and there are those amongst us so dominated by wicked- ness that they will not take any print of goodness. It was not Romanism, it was the Devil in Romanists, that prepared the Great Armada against our rehgion and liberty; that devised the Gunpowder Plot against our king and Parliament ; that was guilty of the St. Bartholomew Massacre ; that made' them burn Ann Askew ; poor blind Joan Waste at Derby; and Mistress Joyce Lewis, a lady born; but for the Grace of God we might do the same. Every one of us has a haunting, cowardly, cruel devil, about our ■heart. Every irreligious man in the world holds his present position with much wickedness and some melancholy. Thomas Hood wrote — " O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear, A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, And said, as plain as whisper in the ear. The place is haunted." The Haunted House. Draw nigh unto God, through JesUs Christ, and THE HISTORY OF SATAN: INTRODUCTION. 165 He will draw nigh unto you. A touch of God works wonderfully, and His Word possesses creative power. He who schools himself to say habitually to the Lord, " Thy Will be Done," " hath not lost his day at set of sun." The dying of ourselves to all self-conceit in ourselves, is the begihh ihg of our j:onsciousness as to the-ne\rtTfe fqrjiisJLn„GQd.- -When He intends to fill our soul. He first empties it of self-; when He will enrich a soul, He first makes it poor in its own esteem ; when He exalts a soul. He first humbles it ; when He gives salvation. He first makes it loathe all sin. Then that soul, reading God's Providence as a lesson-book, proves a right understanding by carrying the careful prayerful study into strenuous work. The world, even as it is, sometimes, and not seldom, is very fair. How wondrous fair when, no longer a passing, it is an eternal world ! God prodigally blesses climes which have been almost unknown to us from the beginning. If those splendours go beyond our most brilliant dreams, what wonderfulness of beauty will that be which, as the finished and perfect work of goodness, of wisdom, of might, abides before His Face for ever ! What a glorious victory will that be which brings the world and ourselves into the Higher, the Sublimer Service of God ! A victory which all will share who, as soldiers of Jesus, have fought and resisted Satan, have overcome evil with good ! As fellow-conquerors, they will be fellow-heirs with Christ in the Greater Life. They will sit down in His Throne, even as Christ sits in the Father's Throne (Rev. iii. 21). XXI. ©te ILarger Hope— lExistentt ant Nature of ^atan. ' ' We are not single ; Age with Age Is linked ; and Truth's high heritage Is the slow fruit of bended knees Through the long growth of centuries. Nor is it yet complete, Nor yet all counterfeit." Bishop's Walk: Orwell. " Do everything in good time : then you will not be taken by surprise. " Do everything in the best way you can ; then you will be most able to resist evil. "Learn all you can about everything that is worth the learning: then you will not be ignorant of the Evil One's devices." — Sayings. The Existence of Satan. '"P^HE Course of Nature and the Life of Man are a ■*- mixed process. All things are being tested, exercised, and pass as they are used into further existence. Things as things, life as life, mind as mind, freedom as freedom, are striving to attain, after their kind, the highest conceivable good. This good seems to be obtained, whether physical or vital, in- ( 166 ) EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF SATAN. 167 I tellectual or moral, by practical abnegation of the delusive, and by resistance to the debasing. More particularly, as to men, there are sorrows by which they truly live ; and there are intoxicating delights whose work is death. The burning and shining fires of intense true convictions within the soul's inmost recesses, consuming the evil and purifying the good as gold, are the life of every spirit. All of us, and always in this life, have to resist evil, to do and dare for good. By the conflict we shall be made great winners, if we are true to God and ourselves. Here- after, even the apparently least regarded, will be made up with the Lord's jewels — most precious. We gain glimpses of high control in nature by which good is being made not less truly a possession of the willing and responsible creature, than it is an attribute of the Creator. We can go further than that : the fall of the snowflake, the air preserving every crystal in perfect form ; the strains of music going on by certain laws which man did not make but discover ; and pure thoughts, not less accurately adjusted than the stars are poised ; are an out-telling that all things will stand perfect and complete, separate from evil and the Evil One. In addition to what we acquire from nature, science, philosophy, the testimony of Holy, Scripture is very cleajr in asserting tlie^supremacy of good (Prov. xvi. 4 ; Ps. xivrT^r^^^Sos" iii.^^om. ix. 22, 23). The evil in the world, in the flesh, in the soul, and whatever wrong is caused by Satan, will all be abolished (i John iii. 8 ; Rev. xii. 9; xx. 13). i68 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. The same lesson may be learned everywhere. Take a rose garden. Roses are of every shade, from lightest and most brilliant yellow to richest and darkest purple. An almost innumerable variety of beauties developed from a few wild sorts. An imitation by man of the great works of God. Not only roses, the world is all before us, to choose everywhere a lesson of nature's many prophecies and processes by which the weak is made strong, the sinner righteous, and the glory of God to cover the earth with a life very grand. Nature, not knowing ; man, knowing and willing ; God, guiding nature, also giving will, wisdom, power, to man. The existence of Satan is clearly proved by many mysterious events. By the Serpent-tempting our first parents (Gen. iii.) ; by being proclaimed as the Devil by Qur Lord (John viii. 44) ; and by appearing (Rev. xii. 9) as the deceiver of the world. The Book of Job further shows that he had access to Heaven ; but with power and skill limited, as to Job, to outward natural things. The Divine laws against consulting evil priests indicate that Satan is ruler over many evil angels, spirits, demons, and that to consult them is an act of rebellion against God (Exod. xxii. 18; Deut. xviii. 10) ; and leads to possession by them (i Sam. xvi. 14; i Kings xxii. 22; Isa. viii. 19, 20). After the Babylonish captivity there are similar state- ments, and that all evil will be overcome by the power of a greater good and greater life (i Sam. xxiv. I, 16; I Chron. xxi. i, 27; Zech. iii. i, 2; 1 Pet V. 8-1 1). In the New Testament a direful EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF SATAN. 169 conflict is most unreservedly declared between Christ and those with- Him, on one side ; against Satan and those with him, on the other. Our Lord Himself is tempted ; wicked men are told that they are of their father, the devil ; many persons are possessed, Peter is entered, and Judas made captive and destroyed, by the Evil One. The existence of Satan is a fact of nature, of science, of philosophy. Of nature and science, for that form of evil, bad thought, springs from something within that we are sure is not wholly of us. Even when we would do good evil is present, how to do good some- times we find not, and we cry out to be delivered. Help comes, and we conquer Satan. Moral sentiment is the basis of true power and understanding as to laws, as to truth, and as to larger insights. Moral sentiment is the foundation of all culture, spurs on to new perceptions, corrects and enlarges old creeds ; and ripens into that intellectual and emotional belief which is commensurate with the grander orbits of things and those universal principles which, when best known, are the surest indications of a subduing, all-embracing beneficent rule (Rev. xxi. 7). The Nature of Satan. Satanic personality is not less clearly stated. Satan came with the sons of God in Heaven, and maligned Job. David in the words against the wicked, "Let Satan stand at his right hand" (Ps. cix. 6), de- clared the Evil One to be the companion and enemy I70 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. of all ungodly men. The prophet Zechariah (iii. 2), telling of God rebuking Satan for opposing the High Priest, shows that the Almighty succours those who are tempted. Christ's words, " Get thee, hence, Satan " (Matt. iv. 10), indicate that man when weakest can overcome Satan when strongest. All the miracles of our Lord were mighty works against the Evil Dominion. Judas is proof and example of Satan dwelling in a wicked man (I.uke xxii. 3). Ananias and Sapphira are examples of the Evil One leading human beings to sin against the Holy Ghost (Acts v. 3). We learn of a power which transforms evil to seem good even as an angel of light (2 Cor. xi. 14). There are depths of Satan, synagogues of Satan, and deceivings which delude the whole world (Rev. ii. 24 ; iii. 9 ; xii. 9). Satan is to be bound, loosed, and after that shut up for ever (Rev. xx. 2, 7, 10). The Lord's Prayer, as translated by the many and wise and good men who revised the New Testament, means, " Deliver us from the Evil One." It is far safer, wiser, better, to be with Christ against Satan ; than with those who are against Christ. As a personal Devil, he was sacrificed unto (Deut. xxxii. 17). He was cast out from men's bodies and souls (Luke viii. 27-35). He caused diseases (Luke xiii. 16), brought to pass many evils (Matt. xiii. 38, 39), was a seducing and lying spirit (i Thess. iii. S)- The Devil and devils believe and tremble (Jas. ii. 19). The Devil has the power of death (Heb. ii. 14). Indeed, there seems to be no evil, whether as to man and the world, that he is not wicked enougji^to aim EXISTENCE AND NAIURE OF SATAN. 171 at doing ; and no device, however false and malicious, that he wilTnot devise. " "^ Satan is a spirit. He worketh in the children of disobedience, and is the prince of the power of the air (Eph. ii. 2). He is a prince of devils and demons (Matt. xii. 24-28 ; xxv. 41 ; Rev. xii. 7-9). We believe that when created in a rational and spiritual nature, he was not only pure, but an arch- angel, a prince of Heaven, in such'dighity that even after he fell, Michael, the archangel, brought no railing accusation against him (Jude 9 ; Eph. vi. 12). The sheerest materialists who assert that we obtain our notions of -the^ -beautiful, the sublime, and of the evil, from physical impressions of pleasant things and bad, must in time-confc ss tha t indulgence is not a mere mode of jnatter, the iridescence as of a soap- bubble ; and that the spiritual is not solelyjthe intel- lectual, but more specially the moral ; and that the spiritual world is not made up of our own intel- lectual abstractions, physical sensations, and religious emotions, but is that which all phenomena, good and bad, represent. As these phenomena are rightly used in due exercise of all our faculties, the cultivation of reason, exercise of judgment as to right and wrong, the doing of good, and the endeavour to attain highest virtue, we prepare the way for a long life, a happy and blessed old age, and the greater life to come. Remarkable statements in Ezekiel (xxviii. 1-19) concerning the Prince of Tyrus (i-io), and the King V 172 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. pf Tyrus (12-19), throw light on our difficult subject. The Prince of Tyrus, was Ittiobalus. Tyre stood then on an island. What is declared had accom- phshment in him, as a human being, and he was destroyed for setting up his heart in supremacy as were it the heart of God. This Prince was also, in several respects, one of the various types of Antichrist. The King of Tyrus, another person (verses 12-19), is so spoken of that he can only be taken as represen- tative of Satan. The language is not applicable to any human being. " Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty" (verse 12). Thou measurest and dost complete the sum of wisdom and beauty ; a picture, a pattern, an embodiment. " Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God " (verse 13). Not only Adam's Eden, where thou didst tempt him ; but that Eden where are the true river and tree of life, the dwelling of glorious high ones. " Every precious stone was thy covering " (verse 13). Not as Adam, unclothed; but clothed upon with a mansion, thine own — beautiful, precious, splendid, as made of jewels and gold. In the day thou wast created, instruments of music sounded royally to welcome thee, thou king ! " Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth " (verse 14) ; — one of the consecrated ruling cherubs whom I placed in dignity as representative yet veil of my own splendour ; to be also the protector and coverer EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF SATAN. 173 of those less than thyself, and to lead the worship of the universe. " Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God ; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire " (verse 14). The mountain of God is that exaltation where the throne, the visible splendour of God shines in beauty. There thou walkedst amidst the insignia of Godhead, beholding the personal glories, spectacles of light, actual as if to be touched, and possessed. So wonderful wast thou. " Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee " (verse 1 5). This iniquity, this falling, was, we think, before the creation of the earth ; possibly before any physical world, such as we now see, was made ; and the full disastrous effect being foreseen, our redemption by Christ was appointed (Eph. i. 4). " By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned" (verse 16), not only means the merchandise of the king of Tyre, and the wealth and the violence of antichrist ; but that Satan's excellency, high office, privileges and powers, lifted him up with pride as if all was , his own ; as had his own arm brought .these things ; therefore, being cast down from his splendour, he no more, took high place on the mountain of God ; nor was an honoured and a pro- tectingj, cherub ; nor stood in the splendour of Divine personal glory. . - , We are further told that, being'proud, he was abased; iji THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. made a spectacle of shame ; his wisdom confounded ; and all that was highly excellent, and blessed in him, made to be foolishness. His traffic with angels and with men for homage shall end in utter loss ; even that casting down into the lake of fire which is declared by St. John (Rev. xx. lo). Thus he who was one of the Kings of Heaven, one of the Priests of God, the fairest and wisest of all creatures in these parts of the universe, was brought to shame, to con- tempt, to punishment We deal with no mere matter of speculation. It is that mystery of ungodliness, that personality of evil, which causes whatever of darkness there is in the world, whatever of pain, whatever of ruin. Our God did not create a world merely mechanical, and men as brute beasts. A grander, a more glorious work- manship is the universe : order beyond order, rank above rank,' of spiritual existences in the heights and depths, lengths and breadths of space. They are being tried, and some are being strengthened and purified as gold by fire. The will, the conscience, the body and spirit of men, are also being perfected : passing from the temporal to the eternal, from pain to pleasure, from death unto life. We and our sin are now as drops of falling rain darkening the sky of God ; but Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, has come to be our Saviour from Satan ; and soon His Divine light will fill the universe ; and we, as that circle of beauty spanning the horizon in the day of gentle showers, shall be changed into a splendid encom- EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF SATAN. 175 passing of the throne of the universe, with all the glory made visible, by Divine Illumination on the Mount of God in Heavenly Places making all life very grand. " These are they who watch'd and waited, Offering up to Christ their will, Soul and body consecrated, Day and night to serve Him still ; Now in God's most holy place Blest they stand before His Face." ichenk. XXII. anstor from aSefifnti tfie Fed— ®fte l^oiotx of ^atan. " I could plunge into the bottom of Hell, if I were sure of finding the Devil there, and getting him strangled." — Thomas Carlyle, Life of John Sterling, ch. ii. ' ' True Faith and Reason are the soul's two eyes ; Faith evermore looks upward and descries Objects remote ; but Reason can discover Things only near — sees nothing that's above her.'' Francis Quarles. EVEN' the every-day world is full of romance. Our very words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the mysteries within. The strange drama of the " Corsican Brothers " was suggested to the elder Alexander Dumas by what Louis Blanc said of th& mysterious sympathy^ existing between him, Louis, and his younger brother, Auguste. So~closely allied were they by this that, however widely separated, one always knew when anything special had happened to the other. Louis, in England, was aware of the sudden illness of Auguste in France ; and Auguste, in Spain, was conscious if danger beset ( 176 ) THE POWER OF SATAN. 177 Louis in Italy. Impressions of this sort, repeated continually, not only made pictures in the brain, but were vividly flashed through space, as by telegraphy, and becoming inmost revelations were always con- firmed. This strange truth is not more remarkable than the fact in science, well noticed thus — ' ' In many a figured leaf enrolls The total world since life began. '' Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, xliii. We know not how these things can be ; nor how Satan directly, externally and internally, influences our body and soul ; making dark the life within ; but that in no way warrants unbelief; for even as to things most natural, the life and growth of corn, and its standing so beautiful and golden in the field, no one knows the how. The influence of Satan differs rather in degree than kind from that exercised by a man ; though thoughts and desires can be injected by the evil spirit apart from the medium of speech and of any visible action (John xiii. 2). Those most affected are the- men who^east of all, acknowledge that there is a devil. Deluded by a sophistical devil to forget God, and to say, " There is neither hell nor devil," their whole life testifies, " Satan, we are thy true children." It were well to realize that correct spiritual pre- sentiment is not only a shadow, or a light, cast from the past into the avenues of the future ; but a refraction also of events ere they arise. Experiments furnish presentiment, insight and foresight, by which men of science predict diseases, mentally see the invisible — N 178 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. say the ultimate atoms, and prophesy of things to come in heaven and earth. These experiences greatly partake of those high faculties by which spirit breaks the bond that holds us from the touch and sight of things in the greater world. That strange power, or absence of power, made known in the hypnotic state ; when persons are con- trolled by others, made to sleep, to act, to suffer pain, or be unconscious of pain ; brings into the natural circle that which formerly was accounted supernatural ; and is proof that evil influence, even as Divine influence, may be acting upon us in such a manner that we cannot separate that which is of ourselves from that which is beyond ourselves. Satan, as we are taught by the parable of the Sower, takes away the Word of God from our heart and life (Matt. xiii. 19-23) ; introduces wickedness to grow as tares (Matt. xiii. 24-30) ; and hinders the Church in her work of bringing men out of darkness into light, and from deviltry unto God (i Cor. v. S ; i Tim. i. 20). Gatherings of unbelievers are called synagogues of Satan ; and those second births of death, the errors of false doctrine, are " the depths of Satan " (Rev. ii. 9, 24 ; iii. 9). Satan sets his throne as prince of this world (John xii. 31) ; and his power, a plain and awful fact, can only be overcome by Christ and by those who trust in Christ. Our life being darkened by sin in the brain, Christ enters, and out of that darkness brings the greater light and life ; even our sorrow is touched with joy (Rom. xvi. 20; i Cor. ii. 9-1 1; 2 Thess. ii. 13 ; i Tim. v. 25). The progress of Satanic THE POWER OF SATAN. 179 BOwer inj ^an's heart and in t he world is for a time imperceptible, like the coming and lengthening of night. Then he possesses men, with deadly hostility, opposes Christ, darkens history with fables and scandalous hypocrisies which obscure the all-including immensities of an eternal future. Satan's men are, as Thomas Carlyle called them, "worthships and worships unworshipful." Their philanthropy is as the phosphorescence of meteoric lights. Their vaunted liberty of thought and act is of that revolutionary sort which brings in the deeper, harder bondage of physical and spiritual oppression : full of " sordid misbeliefs, mispursuits, misresults," to be trodden under foot shortly (Rom. xvi. 20 ; Gen. iii. 12). Their knowledge is pretentious; not real, of shrewd device to make sharp wit mend foul feature, but delusive. As to the past, it is not the clear insight of a good spirit ; but the haunting ghosts of things defunct ; and, as to the future, spectral illusions bring many fears, darken their dark graves, destroy all good hope. They bear with them, ever and ever, that body -of death, the corrupt burden of a life destroyed. The work of Christ, in correction of all evil, gives men, by the Spirit of God, a practical mastery of themselves and of the world. They hold the reins of life's chariot, direct the outlooking sensibilities, rule the appetencies, with bright intelligence strong in the love of truth. These are the men who overcome all things, and find everywhere " a higher height, a deeper deep." They follow with an upward com- i8o THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. prehending grasp, the wonders and powers that have come to them. Satanic influence can only become effective by assent of man's will (Eph. iv. 27). The force of evil habit, created by previous sin, and by successive acts, rivetting it in the soul, is a force not so much acting openly, as by craft entangling, and by dissimulation deceiving. It lulls remorse to sleep, and by atheism drugs to moral insensibility. There are wiles (Eph. vi. 11), devices (2 Cor. ii. 11), snares (i Tim. iii. 7; vi. 9 ; 2 Tim. ii. 26), so that we need to be sober and vigilant (i Pet. v. 8) ; put on the whole armour of God (Eph. vi. 10-17) ) ^"d keep ourselves as those born of God who are not to be touched by the wicked one, but find in every loss a more than gain to match (i John V. 18). We shall then discover the grand secret, how that the greatest and most precious works are elicited from nature's crudest productions, and from Satan's most diabolical beguiling. "Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop Than when we soar." W. Wordsworth, Satan gives men a sort of cleverness, much tongue- fence, they are great in talking eras ; show the countenance of their own master, and at need his own humours ; giving many reasons to justify their service of the devil ; but means, as Goethe said, are always at hand to prevent the " trees sweeping down the stars." Their discourse flows not to any really good earthly or heavenly thing ; but to boundless bogs, and howling deserts of infidelity. They impose THE POWER OF SATAN. i8i upon others, and at length impose upon themselves ; and without ceasing to dupe their fellows, become dupes to their own vain imaginations. Satan makes men as fleshless bones without the colourings and humanities of a God-made nature. He and his will be overcome by every man in whom there is any proper sense of the grand Eternal Powers. " Poor outer, transitory grindings and discords," will and must give place to that grand struggle, inwards, onwards, upwards, in search of a diviner Home. Which, as Robert Browning said, " Solves for thee all questions in the world and out of it." Satan acts through a host of evil spirits, who share his eviL work, and wITF partake of his doom (Matt. XXV. 41). These evil'spifits are not the same as those fallen and imprisoned angels who are held in chains of darkness until the judgment (2 Pet. ii. 4 ; Jude 6). They go about in liberty, do all evil, and possess the souls of greatly wicked men, making them more wicked (Matt. xii. 24-26). The possessing spirits are headed, so said the Jews, by Beelzebub (Matt. xii. 24-26). Our Lord has shown that Beelzebub is Satan, and that the demons are his angels (Luke x. 18 ; Acts X. 38). Not the very greatest men, not those able to fight and conquer are unbelievers as to Satan. Weak men, for the most part, those whose interest it seems that no Satan should exist, lest they have share in his doom, speak loudly that neither devil nor demon can be found. Men than whom no mortals can be braver whose hearts withal are full of pity and love. l82 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. whose minds are conscious of overcoming mysterious adverse strengths, whose lives are of great mental, emotional, and spiritual adventure, these are strongest in the belief that space is occupied by spiritual denizens both good and evil. Take but a single example, Luther; one of the most influencing, adventurous, fearless workers the world has ever seen. He was persuaded of the reality of Devils in the city of Worms when he defied them. When he started up with defiance in the castle of Wartburg, and flung his inkstand at the fiend-spectre, he stood face to face against the Prince of Hell. A man who dares fearlessly to encounter the concentrated might of the world's wickedness, who knows that devils are busy about him, who sees and defies innumerable devils, who fights with all his heart and mind against them, knows not less from experience than from the Word of God, that there are indeed dark hideous infernal powers. We are on Luther's side in this faith. With reverence, in bold language, we confess that without one shadow of a doubt we are sure that our blessed Redeemer did, again and again for Himself and for us, vanquish the most awful and dire and diabolical of all creatures, that the universe con- tains, the Prince of Darkness, the author of spiritual wickedness in high places, and of sorrow carrying down to the lowest deeps. This Satan and his angels are cast down from heaven (Luke x. i8), a degradation preparatory for their destruction. They are principalities and powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, spiritual masters THE POWER OF SATAN. 183 of wickedness, and wrestlers against the souls of men (Rom. viii. 38 ; Col. ii. 15). They fight on the side of the Dragon, the old Serpent, the Devil and Satan, against Michael and his angels (Rev. xii. 7-9). They overcome men by atheism, by materialism, and by making them think that there was no past nobleness, from which our fathers fell ; nor is there any revelation of a future bliss — eternal and divine. Against this deviltry, the slow steady-pulling con- tinuance of faith, the strenuous efforts with velocity of stroke by just and memorable men, bring out a fire even from the ashes ; gold from the ruins ; and practical uses, good and true, from all evil and evils ; build up the Church for the People and erect an altar in every heart ; so that the light grows by inspiration of the Almighty until the coming of perfect day, when all transplanted human worth will bloom to profit everywhere. We are not discouraged at finding Satan to be prince and possessor of this World, even god of it (John xii. 31 ; xiv. 30; xvi. ii ; 2 Cor. iv. 4, summed in Eph. vi. 12). He claimed it, in tempting our Lord, as his possession by delegated authority (Luke iv. 6). The powers he exercises are exhibited in the case of Job (i. 12, 15-19 ; ii. 5, 6), in the woman with a spirit of infirmity (Luke xiii. 16), and St. Paul's thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. xii. 7). They are powers exercised sometimes through the hands of wicked men, children of the devil who do the works of their father (John viii. 44 ; Acts xiii. 10 ; i John iii. 8-10 ; John vi. 70). In this sense, all sins are the work of the Devil, i84 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. and, being devilish, every little grief is the servant of greater sorrows ; followed on by everlasting loss — " a loss for ever new" (2 Cor. xi. 14, 15 ; Rev. ii. 10; 1 Thess. ii. 18 ; Rom. i. 32). The method of action is further shown by the title 6 8ta/3oXoc, the devil, a bond-breaker, a setter at variance, and specially by slander (i Tim. iii. 11 ; 2 Tim. iii. 3 ; Titus ii. 3). He severs the bands of union between God and man, the bands of truth and purity between man and man, he slanders as to God (Gen. iii. 4, 5), and slanders men to God (Job i. 9-1 1 ; ii. 4, 5 ; I Pet. v. 8). He is our adversary and accuser day and night (i Pet. v. 8 ; Zech. iii. i, 2; Rev. xii. 10). Satan acts on the heart by temptatipn and by possession (J as. i. 2-4; i Chron. xxi. i); he leads his victims t DEVILS ENTERING THE SWINE. 217 him are due all the evils of the universe. There is one central evil will ; and one Will, Holy and Good, whence comes all good. There is nothing natural, whether good or bad, byt h^ the supernatural at its back. Nature is a veil which has been and will be again and again lifted, to reveal incidents from that mighty drama of the spirit-world with which we are all connected. No one can intelligently read the Old Testament without perceiving that all earthly sin and sorrow are attributed to the malice and wickedness of a being who, though vastly greater than all men — were they made into one, will be exposed apd destroyed as the most perverse, reckless, and maliciovis of all creatures. As for the New Testament, the language and acts of our Lord cannot be honestly^interpreted otherwise than that He condemned and acted against a personal being, God's enemy, whose__tyraryT^ical and devilish oppression of men could not be overcome by any other than Divine Power. Which Divine Power, Christ brrng^and imparts. It is not to be supposed for a moment that our Lord pandered to a Jewish prejudice and spoke of Satan and of evil spirits as realities, though He knew that they were only delusions. He came as King of Truth, to put an end to delu.sions, to rescue us from lies, deceit, wickedness, and all evil. He was no flatterer, and words cannot be uttered more forcible and clear than those which denounced the devil and all his works (Mark i. 25 ; Matt. x. 8 ; xvii. 21 ; Lukexi. 17--26; xxii. 31 ; John xiii. 2). The greatest 2iS THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. of all hindrances to our living the higher life, and our direct opponents in attainment of immortality are Satan and the evil spirits who are leagued with him against us. As to those who argue against Satanic existence, what do they gain Iby so intertwining all evil with man that jthe wicked one is man and nothing more ? Does not that so confound our own moral and spiritual existence with the devilish, that we are not only demoniacs, but worse ? Rad as man is he is not utterly a devil. The awful horrors of war ; the depravity of thousands in our towns ; men, women, children, crawling as vermin in filth ; the heartless debauchery of the rake ; the black depravity of those who from love of evil oppose the Gospel, and would if they could dethrone God ; the sneaking effrontery of lying delusive demagogues who flatter the multitudes to make gain of them ; — these wretched creatures have not originality enough, not the genius nor power of devils — they are tools of basest sort. Surely, that is bad enough ! If our human nature and human spirit are the very source, seat, power, essence of evil, and there is no other evil ; we are not only very far gone, but furthest gone, whence is no recovery. If Adam was the first devil, and we are his angels ; if without temptation from outside we resolved from within to crucify the Son of God ; if of ourselves, voluntarily, we went from God and ever since have fought against Him ; if really there is no difference, no partition, between us men and Satan and his host ; — then we are not only on a wrong track, we are in the worst DEVILS ENTERING THE SWINE. 219 possible condition. We are journeying, as a dark host, into some everlasting abyss. Those who think to make sin less by making man his own Satan kill patient and doctor too. Let every man say to himself, " I am not a devil, I am redeemed." Devils have utterly corrupted themselves, there is no truth in them, no seed that can grow into a good plant. Their redemption is impossible. They are all evil, utter corruption, whom we must leave to the wisdom and love and power that will certainly do even to the extent of what is impossible, if that be good. The remarkable scene described by St. Matthew (viii. 28-34), by St. Mark (v. 1-20), by St. Luke (viii. 26-39), sets at rest for ever, by infallible proof, this attempted confounding of man's nature with Satan's nature. It was not the man's madness, nor epilepsy, nor lunacy, nor rage, nor disease, nor anything merely human, that went into the swine. The swine were not in partnership either with the healed, or the Healer. The Sadducees amongst the Jews, and their successors with us who persist in denying the exist- ence of spirits, have in the destruction of the swine demonstration of the personality, power, and presence of evil spirits. The man might deceive, the swine could not. His healing and their destruction were two factors : the former by a power Divine, the latter by a power Satanic. The exact spot where the miracle was wrought' called by St. Matthew (viii. 28), " the country of the Gergesenes ; " by St. Mark (v. i), "the country of the Gadarenes ; " and by St. Luke also (viii. 26), 220 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Gadarenes ; the names being used in common ; was most probably near Gergesa, about a mile from the sea, where was a steep even slope, down which the mad impetus and rush of the animals carried them into the water. We now take up the Gospel narrative. Jesus, having come out of the ship, there met Him a man with an unclean spirit from the tombs. At first there were two of these demoniacs (Matt. viii. 28), but one was so exceeding fierce that the interest and main events so gather to him that the other is forgotten. The greatly possessed man cried with a loud voice, " What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of the most high God? I adjure Thee, by God, that Thou torment me not." This shows an awakening consciousness in the man which, while aware that then he had no part in the Holy One, impelled him toward that Holy One for some good, even though that good were but forbearance. Jesus said, not to the man, but to the evil spirit out of hell, " Come out of the man, thou .unclean spirit ; " and then asked, " What is thy name ? " The answer was, " My iname is Legion, for we are many." Then a strange request was made, that they might not be sent out of the country, but sent into the swine. _5eing allowed, the time for their judgment not being yet come, the devils entered the swine, and carried thern down a steep place into the sea where they perished. Certainly, the evil spirits would not have met Christ, had not Divine power constra,ined them. The man, enabled so far to overcome the destroyers. DEVILS ENTERING THE SWINE. ' 221 ran to and supplicated the Liberator ; but then reasserting himself, and speaking through the man, the leading evil one, the ruler of the host Legion, said, "What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of the most high God ? I adjure Thee, by God, that Thou torment me not." The destroyer con- fesses that he has- no part with, or in, the Divine Deliverer ; and so far has the evil one worked that the human nature of the man is now silent, is con- fused, is subjugated, and identified with the demon. They must be separated, and the confused possessed man brought to sober recollection ; the demon, there- fore, is spoken to, and answers. Thus standing apart from the man, he is commanded to depart, and the command was obeyed. The legion of devils, closely conipacted and more" terri ble than . tJie Roman army, that .dreadful instrument with which the world was conquered, submitted to Jesus. They obeyed as do night and day, land and sea, earthquake and fire, summer and winter. All things are given into our Saviour's hand. He will certainly prevail. Despite our advance in physical science, we under- stand very little of the natural history of hell, and of evil spiritual influence on the affairs of human life. If John Morley has said, " It is certainly not less possible to disbelieve religiously than to believe religiously," he spoke either in neglect or ignorance of our Lord's solemn^assurance that the wrath of God abides on the unbeliever (John iii. 36). Christ's word is of more value than any man's unbelieving statement. We had better be, at our departure, as 222 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. dying Schiller, who said, " Many things are growing plain and clear to me." We are justly told by him of immediate Providence, that "higher spirits can discern the minute fibres of an event stretching through the whole expanse of the system of the world, and hanging, it may be, on the remotest limits of the future and the past, where man discerns nothing save the action itself, hovering unconnected in space." The opposition of men, who ignore the working of the spmtTIarori~the pHyiical and—moral life of man, a work so^plainljLstated in Scripture (Gen. iii. 13-17 ; Matt. iv. i-ii ; Luke xxii. 31, 32 ; Rom. viii. 11-13 ; Gal. v. 16-24), Js rather due to a petty cleverness in denying facts that are far more verifie3 in history, and by the experience of Prophets, of Apostles, of men like Luther and Bunyan, and thousands of other Christians, than are Professors' novelties of biology which are not all accepted as true by our best thinkers. It is well known that mental malady has some- times a substratum of bodily disease, and bodily disease a source in mental disorder. To deny that there is a dark and awful province in human nature, subject to manifestations which those best qualified to judge regard as of Satan, or of possession by evil spirits, is to set at naught actual events in our own times. Making guesses is not explaining. Denying facts, because they happen to be outside our own experience, or because they confirm the common even universal belief that there are evil spirits, whose DEVILS ENTERING THE SWINE. 223 existence we are afraid of, is not a discerning but an obscuring of truth. Did we see as we are seen startling wonders would come continually into view. Strife, not only in the case of Abimelech (Judg. ix. 23), but often enough now, would be known as spirit's work. The possession of Saul, the king (1 Sam. xvi. 14) would have counter- parts in our own time. Spiritualists, or whatever they call themselves, are not__all-iools= — though we may account most of them wicked. To deliver us from'all these our Saviour came from the Heavenly Land, and He does deliver. We will not refuse that deliverance. We will not say there was no Devil for Him to overcome, no evil spirit for Him to cast out. We will bless the Lord with all our soul, and for all His benefits thank Him. We will give ourselves to the great work we have to do, and lay hold on eternal life. 'Does any toil-worn but devoted soul alone, under the great silent canopy of night, offer the troubled moments of existence in lowly service on the altar of eternity? Let him know that the splendour which gleams in the spirit of the greatest and happiest mortal, will be made immortal in the soul of the contrite. The good thoughts we have, the prayers we offer, our sacred ideas of Heaven, if not expressed yet lived by, will glow, grow, and live on for ever in glorious results. XXVII. IBMs ©nterfng tjit ^tbthe.— II. Nature. — "I am whatsoever is, whatsoever has been, whatsoever shall be : and the veil which is over my countenance no mortal hand has ever raised." — Inscription upori the Temple of Isis. " God is Omnipoterit, caring for every one of us as if caring for that one only ; and caring fdi" all as if all were one." — A Thought from St. Augustine. OPPOSITION may arise to the doctrine of the existence of Satah and of evil angels, because of abuses made of the doctride ; but looseness^ of moralSj^and. an unwillingness to acknowledge the enormity andldeiprinity of the sin common to men, are the active causes of unbelief as to the Wicked One who has them in subjection. Truth is always better than error, and to separate ourselves from evil and to trace evil as the work of the Evil One, will help us in our conflict. However carefully we may endeavour to rid ourselves of belief as to Satan, wicked ones will remain, and the hateful manifestations of wickedness. It is certainly a help to know that the source of evil is not wholly in the human region of life, but more greatly in another { 224 ) DEVILS ENTERING THE SWINE. 225 province of existence ; and the doctrine is not to be roughly dealt with, nor hastily to be put before immature minds, but rather in connection with the grandeur and wonderfulness of redemption. Certainly_Scriptiaxe_ia.Eervaded with the truth that what isJaoly^jid^jKhat-is-jinholy^ amongst men come from more than a human source ; and that the good and the evil are a connected whole in the universe. The good is the divine, the harmony ; the bad is discord, is devilish, an interruption, that will be done away with. We are helped in our affections and duties, by seeing good individualized in God and the angels of light ; and bad is as darkness that may be felt in the persons of Satan and his angels. This unity of evil power, psychical and physical, mental and moral, manifesting itself in predominant sensuality amongst men ; weakening the nervous system, destroying natural delight in stability by putting doubt in the place of faith, so that internal life being made feeble the whole man becomes deranged ; shows that misery is not God's work, nor wholly man's own fault, but greatly from fetters imposed by a foe, and by powers which would enthrall and subjugate our better selves. On this fact, the reality of our better selves, is based the doctrine of regeneration, of conversion, and the great work of redemption. No man need despair, even in demoniacs is some hope of cure, some spark of desire for deliverance, and though but a spark it glows. It was this presentiment of help which the attracting power of Christ acted upon, so that the Q 226 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. man ran to the Saviour despite all the power of the demon. Many a life deformed by inquietude and disease has been distinguished by intellectual faculties, by sacred tastes and feelings, noble emblems of a better state, where these gifts will brighten the whole being. Old objections, used by unbelievers against the miracle, and shown to be valueless, are in our own days furbished up and used, again and again, as new weapons. Take three as examples. The Destruction of the Swine was a violation of the rights of property, and therefore immoral. The occurrence is incredible. Belief in Demonology is a grovelling demoralizing superstition. The swine were not destroyed by the Divine Power which healed the man, but by the demons that had possessed the man. If the swine were not de- moniacally destroyed, there was no destroying at all. The swine would not be parties in a plot for their own destruction. The possessed man did not drive them down a steep place into the sea ; any more than a modern professor, forgetting his learning and proper calling, unless made wild and silly by unbelief, would drive the pigs himself. Christ does not destroy. He wills that all go forth to bask in the Spring's peaceful beam ; that all enter Heaven ; and that all cast unbelief, the implement of self-destruction, from their hands. He came to make the whole world one family of the Father above. Why will unbelievers inhale the torments of Hell out of the joys of Heaven .■' Happy he whose faith is DEVILS ENTERING THE SWINE. 227 strong, and turns temptation into the spur of holy action. As to the healing of the man and destruction of the swine being incredible, \ yill any one sho w that any miracle is impossible? The evil spirits craved thatThejTTriTght not be sent out of the region of mischief, to which their masters had appointed them, nor dismissed to the regions where certain other spirits are imprisoned and in chains (2 Pet. ii. 4). There was nothing wonderful in this. Possibly, they also thought that taking away the swine would so incense the men of those parts that Jesus could not do any good amongst them. Possibly, even the demons did not know what effect their act of pos- session would bring about. Why, men will by suicide run down the steep of self-destruction ; men, the cleverest of God's earthly creatures, clothe with beauty of circumstance and glorious pomp the most deadly wars. Rush, as demons of hell, to bloodiest slaughter. Blast one another to pieces with ex- plosives ; pierce, hack, bruise in most deadly fashion ; dash to the charge, to the breach, to certain death, madder with rage than any lunatic ; impelled by some demon Czar, or Emperor, or King, or blood- thirsty Republic. Would you believe this, if you did not know it ? If sane men, not possessed by devils, do things much worse than swine that are possessed by devils ; why squeal, in chorus with the pigs, as were not men like you far worse than they ? Besides, how could the Sadducees of those days, or their representatives in our own times, be quite sure 228 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. that demoniacs were not merely mad, deranged by disorder of mental and physical organs and functions ? Who can tell but that the man himself needed out- ward and visible evidence that his hellish foes had really departed ? Take^ the miracle as true. It is supported by more than sufficient evidence, it is in analogy with the wtiole teaching of Scripture, it is the strongest proof of reality as to Satanic possessions, as to the personality of evil spirits. As ~fo~T3elief in demonology being a grovelling superstition, that depends as to whether the belief is used to intensify our hostility against evil, or is abused on behalf of the spirits themselves. Super- stition, indeed, who can show a superstition more wilful, more degrading, more destructive, than that credulity of unbelief which denies demonology? Our Saviour and the Apostles, the Prophets and the Martyrs, the best and ablest of men in all time, were, if the credulity of unbelief is to be accepted as a true faith, either so ignorant and weak as not to be able, first, to state the truth aright and keep it so ; or so deceitfully wicked and foolish as to be parties to a series of falsehoods the like of which is not to be found in the world besides. Why deny that evil spirits can enter a man, and when expelled carry beasts to destruction, seeing that men themselves are sometimes entered as by the spirit of the swine? Is not that man, whatever he may think of himself, the most superstitious of his race who so relies on his own knowledge, his own opinion, as to set at naught all that other men hold DEVILS ENTERING THE SWINE. 229 dear ; who teaches that the best Book in the world is the worst ; the truest Book is really the falsest ; and that our Saviour, instead of setting us free from Satan and Temptation and Hell, invented these things, and subjected our whole life to bondage ? The niiracle_at Gergesa was a test jwhich. showed that men cared more for gain than godliness, and it is a test now. Why do they allow Satan to breathe a life into their own imaginings of unbelief which cast them down to death ? We will think better thoughts; that our imagina- tion and reason may harmonize, and direct our way to Heaven. All great men find that nature, whether good o r had) repres ents an invisible greater good and bad;- There are here, on earth, that capacity and opportunity for higher life and attainment of immortality which their faculties affirm as the very promise of^ternity. They consider the space between the outermost planet and the sun as less than the 3i,4i9,46o,coo,ooo,oooth part of the whole interval between it and the next solar body. Now, we think we know that matter, the inferior, was made for life, the superior ; and that the apparent void is not utter vacuity, or an ocean of death, in which the stars are only as shining points of dust, but traversed by forces and occupied by powers transcending all that we know or think. Herschel thought that the remotest galaxies, discovered by our telescopes, lie at so vast a distance that their light this day reaching us set out on the transit some two million years ago. Squadrons of these starry hosts are ranged in worlds 230 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. more wonderful than our own. To think that there are no beings nor better nor worse than ourselves dwelling in those worlds, no powers, nor good, nor evil, occupying those heights and depths and breadths of space dimension, is contrary to all our knowledge of symmetry and fitness. We are sure that the vast expanse is not an illimitable wilderness of nothing. There are known surges of flux and reflux, not only the roll of worlds careering, not only reciprocal attractions, but as our own brain is the dwelling for our spirit, so is that expanse an abode for wonderful spiritual creatures, unknown to us, but all known to God. The natural history of our present life, the assurances of God's Word, the renewal of things moment by moment, the passing of all things into the future, the actions of angels good and bad, the miracles of (ihrist. His resurrection and ascension, are all in relation to the whole of things, make the universe one, make our life one, and attribute all to God. When our body sinks to ruin, it is not ruin, but a dissolving for another reconstruction, and we shall again set out apparelled in light on new paths. Epimenides, the Cretan, spent forty years in a cave. The daylight ever afterwards seemed unnatural. It will not be so with us. If we seek holiness, we shall ever look up and soar. We see the universe under a veil ; but the earth that is here shall be left behind by our power of thought carrying us there, beyond Sirius ; and flocks of solar bodies, under care of their Heavenly Shepherd, will expand themselves with DEVILS ENTERING THE SWINE. 231 more gorgeous reality than our eyes now can see ; and then these will give place, in our onward flight, to worlds in new forms and places ; galaxy behind and above galaxy, ascending in brilliant altitudes and majesties. Our souls rejoicing, and all our faculties growing in solidity of attainment and vastness of expansion, we shall realize the potency and promise of life immortal. It is something to have within our mind a true tabernacle of the living God ; which, like the magical Eastern Tent, covers a great army of thoughts and all their attendant facts. Sometimes our shadowed mind seems in an illimitable dungeon. All creation is imprisoned, and here and there, where a sun should be, one sees instead through misty vapour dead solar bodies. They are not white with light, nor warm with life ; but clothed with winding sheets of perished worlds, float in sea immeasurable, sea unfathomable. Every crest of every wave, in ash-grey colour, bearing the countenance of one who had lived a life ; and, having wasted it, now in second death lives that life again. It is an awful thought that these shadows in our mind represent the dark ruined forms of men, those dwellers in vast spaces apart from God. It is well to think these thoughts for a moment, if they serve to make life more real to us, but not well to think too long. Rather, should we regard the variety of present existence as cradles," for our infant spirits^ and the earth as a school of discipline, where we acquaint ourselves with God. We pass hence,, through fields of almost infinite space, to those 232 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. triumphal heavenly gates, like coruscations among the stars, and enter where worlds are fuller, brighter, mightier. The starry light leads on to heights and glories, heavens more and more resplendent, Divine Light making all creation very beautiful. There, in our rest, we shall not be lonely. All our good thoughts are true, and will be found truer. They will have more abundant fulfilment than any man hoped for. All those we loved and love will gather to us, and we to them ; so large a company that no empti- ness of space is anywhere, all worlds being filled and in fellowship with joy. Then, as universal praise resounds, the choral bursts rushing from orchestral stars, our Saviour, the grandest sight of all, appears. Through starry heights, in sympathizing being, float- ing in light. He comes in human form, with face as the face of man ; jewels of splendour in His hands, around His feet circlets more beautiful than the ruby, on His head a crown of many gems — every gem resplendent with the life of living souls. The throne of that God-man, Jesus Christ's Throne, is the spirit, the life, the holiness, the beneficence of Love, that passeth all understanding. Soon, very soon, for in a moment, lo, we die, will all this become the Supreme Reality. God, being all in all, we shall see, in His great Light, that the conflict against Satan and his host was a mighty conflict ; that the natural history of immortality is a history very wonderful, very true ; and that the raptures of glory to come are so full and large that no heart, nor mind could foreknow of all that the Love of God bestows. XXVIII. BibtnB l^talt'ng a SKntbrnal ^imcfple. ' ' To put Religion into deep mourning, give her a coffin for writing- desk, and a skull for inkstand, is gloomy ; but not profound." — Anon. "Death ! . . . Let it come, then ; I will meet it and defy it ! As I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul ! and I shook base Fear away from me for ever." — Sartor Resartus, bk. ii. ch. vii. AS we look on living things they pass into death. That of which even metals and rocks are formed dissolves, little by little, into thin air. The sun floods hill and valley with splendour, but soon the light passes away, and we are in a realm of darkness. ' ' Laid low, very low. In the dark we must lie, All things will die." Lord Tennyson. Are death, dissolution, darkness to be the end ; making that which was and all that now is to become as nothing } Is creation a walking up the hill and down again, an empty show ? Are we no more than sparks and flashes enduring but for a moment ? Nay, all things will change ; but " Never, oh ! never, nothing will die." Lord Tennyson. ( 233 ) 234 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. The knot, as to dying and living, is hard but we may untie it. Our dying is not a death that finishes, and all at once. We die daily, but we live daily ; the succession is as day and night. The two form a parable. The daily dying makes room for restoration of that living substance which enables us, in the dying, continually to live on. We should not live unless we died. It all unites as part of a higher transaction. Through our weakness, which Christ took upon Himself He died by crucifixion ; yet, still. He liveth by His power Divine. We, by sin being weak, are also weak in Him ; we must die, though we have been born into the Divine nature ; but we are also strong in Him, so that we live and shall live by the power of God (2 Cor. xiii. 4). This conflict in our Redeemer, in ourselves, and the victory, are represented by a fac-simile in the world's procedure. Whatever passes away, reappears some- time, somewhere. Rocks and metals dissolve, but are not lost : they pass mtoITother states,, other places, other forms. The sun, brightly shitting-in our faces, wastes not a single beam : the light of it, the life of it, tend to our inner and outer renewal. Every ray, with all it works in us, are further transferred, and again transformed, to things beyond. Life, not death, is the grand principle which rules the world. All mysteries are being interpreted. That barren- ness of the long-ago past, whether of nothingness or of chaos, passed into the fruitfulness of creation. We know not how, but possibly the formless mass, or mist, became fertilized cosmic dust, the germs of DIVINE HEALING A UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE. 235 worlds. Thus formed, by power and light, they began to move in new thoroughfares of being. Our sun and other suns, the planets and other planets, were made similarly and of substances similar. Not less closely than our limbs, bones, muscles, veins, nerves, are articulated in the body ; were all parts of the universe, knit together in one system of dying, of healing, and of life. The splendour of a sun, the glimmer of a glow- worm, the genius that blazes in a human countenance, are wrought by one Eternal Power. All differences are by degrees or kinds of energy sent forth to be the worlds' working forces. " Our music in divers tones from one strong harp," and all discords in the harmony are corrected by the Master acting in unity with Himself and all His works. Our own bodies are of network within network, and every one taken separately represents the human frame. Place by itself the bony structure ; then cai3seT;he muscular portion to stand up ; lay apart, in order, the arteries and veins ; now hold up the form of nerves, as a white ghost ; lastly, think of the inner man, the spirit of all, and cover the whole with skin. These networks, of complex but greatly similar adaptation, form one body. This body, dying in the old substance and living again in the new, is a small symbol of the large process in the universe. The Eternal Power for ever differences the forces and works of nature by special afflux and influx from Himself. " Oh, the little more, and how much it is ! And the little less, and what worlds away ! " Robert Browning. 236 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Every star is drawn somewhat out of its own elliptical movement by the attraction of other stars ; but the forces which cause the wandering, being in relation to all other, are corrected and the right path is coniirmed ; so also, we believe, with thoughts and things beyond the reaches of our soul. By chemistry we discover that the noxious may be rendered an agent for salubrity, and out of the hurtful can be brought a power to heal. From Biology we learn that there is a force of life which raises new life from no life. The food we eat is dead, but being eaten is, when we know not, made part of our own new living. Nor this alone, every landscape is fit to nourish moods of mind, or gay, or grave, or sweet, or stern, as in truth designed ; and so we rise in thought, making our intelligence from things not intelligent, and nourish our intellectual grasp of the world's arrangements. MoraJ^^ Philosophy gives the fact that in our work mental, moral, religious, we refuse evil and choose good. The damp is on our brow, hope's vigour renews our heart. We feast in spiritual pleasures, we revel in hope's assurances, our love delights in love, sacred emulation strives, these are chased by Death and overtaken ; but the worn man finds inner and outer renewal, and as in life renewed, by sleep that seems like death ; so in death, that seems like sleep, he passes through an open door to immortality. Our nature, that shrinks from death, thrusts forward the best faculties venturously, and finding in each thing and every and everywhere old powers becoming DIVINE HEALING A UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE. 237 young again, and old life new again, rejoices in the life beyond that dreaded death, and says, " I die to live again." The same truth is arrived at in other ways. Calling things "phenomena," we mean that whatever we know by means of our senses is not the reality itself, but a show, or appearance of it. A tree is the product of various forces and substances which are combined into the form of a tree. An animal is the product of forces and matter, somewhat different, shaped and quickened into that particular creature. Forces are made to be the workers, sub.stance is the material worked. Think of work done by the unskilled labourer, then of the skilled artist, the wise statesman, the devout theologian ; they represent the works of unintelligent forces, of those tending to beauty, of those adapting and conserving, of those carrying into higher life. The differences are due to the putting forth of more or less special energy to effect higher and higher completeness in the scales of perfection. Well know and do your own work, then you will have some conception of God's work. Few of us do justice to the material side of nature, the loveliness of flower and leaf; the splendour of sky and sun, of star and sea ; the mechanism which controls the dashing cataract, the rushing comet, and the human frame ; all moving in orbits of mystery whose elements are not only unknown, but probably undiscoverable by mortal men ; because the complete mental representation of the properties of even one 238 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. object is precluded by their number ; and because of our mind's incapacity to grasp the past whence they came, to comprehend their present, or to trace them in that future whither all things are being carried for a fuller manifestation (Rom. viii. 21). This truth, that all things are being healed, that the whole creation is subject to the redemptive pro- cess, passes from universal comprehension to the speciality of our own personal life. Our battle- ground is here. The Christian becomes a high-souled scientific thinker. He takes the human body, and therefore the whole material order ; the mind, and therefore all and every scientific arrangement; the soul, and therefore all that is spiritual and moral ; not merely into connection and union, but into that capacity and prospective possession of endless degrees of glory which belong to us as Sons of God. Our Jesus, the representative Man, the perfect Man, was also perfect God. In His Body He took our nature, and that is, outwardly, of the earth, earthy. In His soul. He took not only the dying part, but also the spiritual living part, and conjoining all to God is our guide, our star, our sun, assuring us of the new heavens and the new earth — our everlasting dwelling. XXIX. ■^C^e Supernatural ?^ealtng of S»tcfentss. "The old Eternal Powers do live for ever; nor do their laws know any change. ... To steal into Heaven — by the modern method, of sticking ostrich-like your head into fallacies on earth, equally as by the ancient, and by all conceivable methods, is for ever forbidden." — Thomas Carlyle, John Sterling, ch. ix. MANY things in nature are a surprise, and not less a strange delight. Delight is even a weak word with which to express the feelings of a naturalist who wanders for the first time in a Brazilian forest. The grasses are elegant, the parasitical plants are so novel, and the beauty of flowers, the foliage of glossy green, the vegetation splendidly luxuriant, fill the beholder with overpowering wonder. The merry noise of insects is so loud as to be heard on the deck of a vessel several hundred yards from the shbre ; but, within the recesses of the forest, universal silence appears to reign. This paradox of silence and sound, like universal space, apparently empty, but crossed and recrossed with numberless forces, reminds us of many mysterious services and wonderful influences in nature which carry the power of healing. ( 239 ) 240 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. These influences are so strange that deadly poisons have power to preserve the Hfe which they usually destroy. The heavier gases, by the law of gravity, would sink to the earth and bring destruction to man and beast ; but by the law of diffusion, being com- mingled, they are made healthful. In the lagoons which skirt the coast of Brazil, marine and fresh water animals live together. A certain kind of frog, genus Hyla, sits on a blade of grass, a little above the water, and sends forth a pleasant chirp, and when several are in company they sing harmoniously on different notes. Some butterflies, Papilio feronia, when they chase one another make a clicking noise, audible at a distance of twenty yards. In certain briny subterranean lakes, hidden beneath volcanic mountains ; in warm and hot mineral springs ; in the wide expanse and depths of the ocean ; in the upper regions of the atmosphere, and where is per- petual snow ; — are worlds and worlds of life, living and serving we know not how nor why — our knowledge is as nothing. The whole enigma lies before us ; but the solution is at present far away. We can see few, and only a little part, of the wonders that fill the ^earth-pbut those prove more than we J^now, and that there are marvels where naught is seen. Our ability to think of these things which are separated from us, is by power from their Cause, the Divine Mind's Will : a power, not alto- gether latent, but growing in us as seeds grow in the earth. Not less our intellectual light in art, science, healing skill, is a spark of that greater Light and THE SUPERNATURAL HEALING OF SICKNESS. 241 Skill with which the world is illuminated, and with which nature's maladies are healed. These two worlds of God and Nature are in us, the Unseen and Seen, blent but distinct : as wax and the seal, as the material !Bible in print and the Spirit in our soul. The body of things, forcing itself into sight, we must look on. The Spirit we picture into shape because we can only picture ; for we are in a zone of blended night and day whose horizon circles on the outer rim of Heaven, not further. By Heaven we mean those realities which are made known only in part by natural phenomena. We may think of this in further relations. Paralytic men have been known when their will was greStiy~Exdted,irsay^43y~5ieldanger of fire, not only to walk, but to run. Truly said Lord Bacon — inragmatiofPis much akin to miracle-working faith. We have innumerable examples of dying men appear- ing to relatives and friends at a distance ; and of the dead, seeming so dead_Jiiat-b3rTTbTest could^life be discovered, living again. Besides, Deep calls unto Deep, and~OTi5~bctd "passion wakes another until at last seven devils, worst of all, are awful as the dead spea.king to the living. " Acknowledge, O Christian, thine own dignity ; and having been made partaker of the Divine nature, do not by degeneracy of conduct return to thine own meanness. Bethink thee of what a Head and of what a Body thou art a member. Remember that thou hast been rescued from the power of darkness, and translated into the light and kingdom of God." R 342 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Belittle these events all we can, they prove that our will, our wish, our thought, are susceptible of influences, splendid, weird and many. Some of us would be daring as Caesar, eloquent as Demosthenes, noble as Bayard ; but we remain humiliated and obscure ; what we can do we shall do nevertheless sometime, some- where. The wind does not say what it sings amongst the sounding leaves ; nor is that moaning of the surge all the language of the sea. The finest and divinest of man's nature is not yet revealed. There is the same distance, infinite, between the letters of our alphabet and that psalm, " The Lord is my Shep- herd," as separates things now from what they will be. "Hark ! the voice Of the whole universe is our protest — 'Death shall be subject unto life.' " lohn Cleland, Scala Natura. Jesus is the only one who, as yet, possessed the vital po\5jer able to brookJie mutiny of Death. Oi the many healedrt^y-H-im only few are named. A nobleman's son, and thereby many were made to believe (John iv. 46-54). A woman with an issue of blood was cured, whom no other physician could aid (Matt. ix. 20-22). Two blind men in a house, received sight, to show that Jesus is the light that lighteth every man (Matt. ix. 27-31). A paralytic, a leper, the Centurion's servant, Simon's wife's mother, the im- potent man at Bethesda, were made whole ; the opening the eyes of one born blind, the restoration of a man's withered hand, the cleansing of ten lepdrs, the healing of the daughter of a Syro-phenician THE SUPERNATURAL HEALING OF SICKNESS. 243 \yoman, of one deaf and dumb, the opening the eyes of one blind at Bethsaida, of two blind men near Jericho, and the healing of Malchus' ear ; are other particular puttings forth of power by which Christ manifested His glory. Every one whom He healed could use the words, said by David long before, " Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits : who forgiveth all thine iniquities ; who healeth all thy diseases " (Ps. ciii. 2, 3). These healings were wrought variously. Some- times bjT a word, reminding us of Creation by the Word of God ; also of illumination, and help by Holy Scripture; and that Jesus was Himself the Word. Some afflicted ones were cured with a Touch : the Lord brought Himself into personal contact with the sufferers — making himself one with them. On others. He laixLjJisJhands more impressively, making them conscious that His person and power were acting for them and in them. He also cured by laying hold, as if to give more help, aiding their consciousness to realize and take part in what was being done. He made clay and anointed the eyes of one. He moistened the eyes of another, put His fingers into the ears and touched the tongue of a third, laid hands on one person twice. In all this there was meaning, to instruct the healed ; power, to quicken their con- sciousness ; a calling, to awake a greater sense of need ; make them more effectually endeavour to be fully receptive of the blessing, and to respond, in body, soul, and spirit, to Him — the Giver. Others were healed while endeavouring to do as they were 244 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. "■ commanded : an example that blessings are found in the path of obedience. One was purified of her malady by the touch of His garment, she touched in faith and was saved ; others touched, not in faith, and received no benefit. Some had to plead hard, cry aloud, follow on, and obtain the gift as by fdrce : a lesson that there are those who must determine to cvercome, they must strengthen themselves- and be strengthened by means of conflict. Difficulties betide men in order that by overcoming difficulty their peculiar constitution may have those special charac- teristics which shall fit them for definite works, honours, and blessings in the kingdom of Glory. Every human being is different, there is something marking man from man, woman from woman, and child from child, with an excellence not owned by another. It is that the excellence may become more highly excellent. The ordinary and miraculous pro- vidence of God, the usual and uncommon works of Christ, are to give more prominence and power to that excelling individuality in the future world. Nothing is in vain. Are you conscious of a fault ? pray and strive against it : Satan is very busy in that fault. Are you aware of anything in which you can excel ? try to excel : that excellence will shine in the light of God. Christ's miracles of healijig_are a symbol and pattern of that purifying, strengthening, and en- nobling which will-_fiJ^^-our-4uinaan nature for the Divine Presence. They tell of God's nearness to us, and of our dearness to Him. God, in His great love, THE SVPERNATURAL HEALING OF SICKNESS. 245 came in Jesus Christ to be bodily with us : God was in Christ. We are not left subject altogether to the world's physical powers. We are not so wholly flesh and blood that, being flesh and blood, we cannot and shall not inherit Heaven. Christ took our flesh, and it was nailed to the Cross. He was blood of our blood, and the blood was shed for us. We are not formed as the animals were formed, nor is our lot as theirs. Christ is one with us that we may be one with Him; Our flesh and our blood, so far as they partake of the mere^animal, will die and not be raised again ; but whatsoever in our frame has been taken lastingly to abide in Christ, whatsoever He has wrought in us by the miracle of His Life, by the power of His Works, by the greatness of His Love, by Holiness unspotted, by Obedience perfected, by Death mysterious, by Resurrection and Ascension glorious, will abide for ever. "Many, O Lord my God, are Thy wonderful works which Thou hast done, and Thy thoughts which are to us-ward : they cannot be reckoned up in order unto Thee : if we would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered " (Ps. xl. 5). Our life on earth, for which miracles are done, not merely begins the body ; it concerns our Earthly and Heavenly future. The mind, begun in that body, is evidence also of a living mental principle— created, and dependent upon the greater Living Mental Principle by whom the world is governed. Our Father warms us at His fire, feeds us with His bread. Shall we close our eyes not to see the fortune that awaits us, shut our ears not to hear it.' Miracles, 246 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. wrought on behalf of truth, show that truth has Divine sanction ; light a candle in us by which we discern God's presence ; quicken our moral sense so that we read, even in nature, that wrong-doing may be repaired ; and that, as a child may grow out of evil ways, we can rise to truth and goodness through Jesus Christ. We have not less a moral than a material heritage. The i dea of pray er could not come, were it not that some superhuman force gives further reach and higher meaning to our desires. In finding God, a light, a beauty, an ecstasy, comes to us. Our spirit is with the Immortals, and in a moment we know of eternity, and the knowledge" Is "assurahce^of possession. O, wonderful power I O^Thfinite nature of man! that thus fills a thousand universes ! that thus transcends all time I Thus consciously filling, our growth is ever inward ; taking possession, more and more, of the outward. When we think, and we do think sometimes, it was too much that the Son of God should die for us ; His hands and feet be pierced ; His heart be wounded ; His head crowned with thorns ; this, so great love, reminds us that He is a full, perfect, sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. We shall further think : the miracle of love, the miracle of work, the miracle of self-sacrifice, was to bring us into the light of Heaven as perfect creatures. That light will not detect one speck or flaw in us — believers are made perfect in Christ. Satan and evil spirits may examine in vain THE SUPERNATURAL HEALING OF SICKNESS. 247 for a fault : as Christ is so shall we be. Angels ad- miringly look, but see no blemish. So highly valued are we, that the greatest miracle of all was wrought for us. Christ passed by the angels, took hold of us, and wrought His wonderful redemption. God's all-piercing eye will search us ; and see our body, soul, and spirit, not as they were in Adam — but as they are in Christ ; not see our sinful, but our sanctified nature ; and He will say of every one, as He said of Jesus rising from the waters of Baptism, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." We shall then know the full power and meaning of all the miracles. Nature, not now all good, shall be " very good." The history of the world is war : peace, perfect peace, shall at length ensue. The Healing Miracles wrought by the word of Christ, wrought by the touch of Christ, wrought by the hand of Christ laid on us, will be made very glorious in those ten thousand times ten thousand ; who, coming from the graves, are not lame — but leap and run ; in those who, no longer blind, see the King in His beauty ; in those who, no longer deaf, listen to the music of the spheres ; in those whose tongues are loosed to sing all strains of heavenly praise : " Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen " (Rev. vii. 12). O, wondrous transformations ! prefigured by all former wakings and advance of life "across the seas of possibility." O, wonderful per- sistence of Purpose Divine ! to build domes more and 248 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY: \ more glorious, and, while laying wide foundation iri the manifold, teaching us to look to realms beyond ! To that beyond we hasten. "As we step Across the threshold we already feel That nobler forms are around us, and the frame Of Nature vibrates to a grander strain." ^ John Cleland, Scala Naiura. XXX. iSlbine fl^ealtng UlebeaUiJ in tjbe ®ia ■^Testament. " One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves." Lord Tennyson, In Mentoriam, Concltision. "Take this way, and you become a mere clod of the earth; fire, energy, spirit, have departed ; you are the soil without the sun, the dross without the gold, the garment without the man." — Unbelief. THE great truth that God is the Creator and Healer of all things, who leads them on to perfection, is made known in all times and circum- stances by many special acts. Physical evil extends to the whole visible framework of things. We find, so far as our science extends, that the materials and conditions of other material worlds are, however various, substantially similar to our own. Heat and cold, storm and calm, calamity and catastrophe, prevail everywhere. No two things, anywhere, are quite alike ; but all thin^, everywhere, are liable to evil. The ceaseless, all-prevalent change adds to variety, and the variety is good ; the weakness tending to ( 249 ) 250 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. vanity and departure from rule, is controlled by forces working symmetry ; so that amidst change we find order, and corrective of weakness strength shows itself. Nature, the mask of the supernatural ; evil, indicative of a greater evil ; and the good, demon- strative of a greater good ; are symbols prophetic of nature's transformation, of evil being conquered, and of good so magnified as to be glorified, because of Christ, " who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father " (Gal. i. 4). By various researches we are learning the causes and preventives of disease. This knowledge already effects the saving of life, and enlargement of health; strengthens our thought, kindly relations one to another, and to the universe. The variability in everything, in man, in animals, in plants, in metals, and in earths, is essential to advance. There is no equality anywhere, except in the fact of transition ; no permanence of work, or endurance, except in capacity to become something else. Nature and life are not as a dead sea. The able to rise, will rise ; the superior, will not remain the inferior ; advance_i§, Jhe law for all, specially for life and rnind. You are conscious of a marking-off which distinguishes you, as a person, from all others ; use it to be better and to do better : "The inspiring Angel came. And touched thy lips with sacred fire From Heaven's own altar flame. " It is a great and good faculty, when we cannot by mechanics and figures prove a fact, to pass beyond DIVINE HEALING IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 251 them and perceive other and greater proof which is outside mechanism and figure. Evidence and proof are not less many-sided than life and the universe. Historical, literary, metaphysical, moral, and that by which we know apart from proof as with regard to axioms, all these evidences are shadows of a greater knowledge on its way to us. To Christian people, all light by which they now see is a shadow from the face of God. When they are in the nearer light eternal wisdom will be theirs. Those we count false notes in the rhythm of the universe, are not false notes ; but those minors in the grand strophes which will make one great music. Confusions are being fashioned into intelligible order. Chaos passes into nature's loveliness, flowers bloom, plants fruit, animal ignorance is laid aside for human knowledge, and our earth, though but as a grain of sand, is the theatre of splendours and powers concerning spheres surpassing all description. The remedial process concerns the softly falling rain, makes it iridescent ; plucks safety out of the nettle danger, and elevates man to God. On Divinely laid stepping-stones we cross the stream of time, stretch out our hand, and grasp the far-off interest of daily events. The light of a candle, in one moment, fills arid reveals a space four miles in diameter ; the light of mind shows the work and purpose of God which fill all space and occupy all time.- We measure not men by bodily stature but height of soul. That soul is the light and guide leading the body to great amelioration, and the soul 252 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMJI/MTALITY.' suffers no defeat ; whether in prayfir or pati«]ce, in life or death, it goes straight to God. The ancient fable that any who seized and bound Proteus would know of things to come, means that he should discern a divine plan in all changes and use it for good. The ancient Revelation tells much more clearly of the healing process which brings wisdom and righteous- ness, sanctification and redemption. Now we aim so to live that there be ' ' No earthly clinging — No lingering gaze — No strife at parting — No sore amaze ; But grandly, gladly. We pass away From the world's dim twilight To endless Day ! " The writings in nature are like ancient cuneiform inscriptions which cannot be read by unlearned men. God, willing all the willing to understand, has written out the truth plainly in a Book. All the true-hearted may become wise, and run safely winningly for a prize, every one in his own calling. They leara that^the conflicts in physical nature, the pains and deaths of living creatures, were the work of an Evil Being ; who~also'fed7our first parents into transgression ; then began the process, and was given the promise of deliverance, and of more than restoration (Gen. iii. i s). The whole of nature made new will partake of everlasting splendour, and the spheres all have their parts in God's great anthem (Isa. li. i6 ; Ixv. 17 ; Rom. viii. 18-23), DIVINE HEALING IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 253 The two-sortedness of things that led to the death of Abel, brought another man, Seth, whose son, with those like him, called upon God for the great cure, and separated themselves from wickedness (Gen. iv. 26). The covenant made with Noah, the answer to that call, confirmed the fact that greatly as wickedness may prevail — through men desiring to have it so — the goodness and wisdom and power of God will bring a cure that shall make things better and greater (Gen. viii. 21, 22; Isa. xl. 4, 5). The purpose is an eternal purpose (Eph. i. 3-5). Evil men all al ong, J:hroiigh^_stress of the wrong donejn Paradise, rather trusted in themselves than in God, counting that their own power, skill, self-will, would do all they desired ; but the Cainites found themselves with their brass and iron, musical instru- ments, and secularity beneath the waters of the Flood. Succeeding wicked men, who constructed Babel, brought upon themselves great confusion. Natural things seem God's commissioners to effect His will. Lucifer fell from Heaven, Adam was cast from Paradise, Nebuchadnezzar was driven from human society, and Haman was hung on a gallows. There is no telling where evil stops, if men let themselves be enslaved by it. One devil lets in seven others wickeder than himself, and they make bubbles, dupes, the fool-tools of that great Fool whose sin drove him out of Heaven. The Eternal is leading on to the cure of all this. Every truth has a moral, every fact serves a principle, common-sense leads to a higher sense, and pure 354 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. homage will come as the expression of unfeigned lips (Zeph. iii. 9). The realities of- art and science are being assorted, the secular becoming sacred, and the sacred enters all that is secular, for they are all of God. In working this healing work, the wilderness of our present existence will be made a paradise of God, and Heaven come with the sweet surprise of a perfect reconciliation. We shall know as we are known (i John iii. 2), being divinely taught (Isa. liv. 13), and bodily healing coming as promised (Exod. XV. 26), faith will save God's people. The healing of Marah's waters was a type of salvation (Exod. XV. 23-25), and not a feeble person being among the tribes (Ps. cv. 37) was a beacon of hope assuring that truly to admire the beauties of nature is to worship Him who made them, and that soon all men should see a symbol of the Saviour in the bright stars, the blue heavens, and in all things wisdom and power. Moses healed Miriam of leprosy (Numb. xii. 13-15) as a revelation of God's presence, and that the wicked should not always triumph, for another power and life were at hand. David relied on this for his own safety, the forgiving of sin, healing of disease, redeeming from destruction (Ps, ciii. 2-5). The Book of Job exhibits Satan as the malicious destroyer, and God as the Divine Healer and Restorer. To Hezekiah's life fifteen years were added (Isa. xxxviii. 5-21). Jeremiah shows that to serve God truly is a means of health and cure (xxxiii. 6). Ezekiel (xxxiv. 22, 23, 26, 29) speaks of saving, of shepherding, of showers of blessing, of honour, coming DIVINE HEALING IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 255 to men through faith and obedience. Again and again prophet after prophet declare that the peace of the innocent will come upon men through the Blessed Intercessor. The cunningness of vice is a paltry imitation of the wisdom sublime in infallible truth, even as none are so insolent in elation as the abject, and none so arrogant as the meanly proud. The great and good knew it. Prophets, kings, believers, stood on the banks of the river of life. They drank of the water, lived a fuller life, and by means of their fulness we and other men are made richer and better. Pre-eminent as the means and power, the personal blessed and blessing One, is the Lord Jesus. He is King, Priest, Prophet ; as the One whose rule restores ; as the One whose sacrifice takes away sin and death ; as the One whose words are healing and life ; as the One appointed before the founding of the world (Eph. i. 3, 4). This Jesus in His life of sorrow, and death of shame, exhibits that great fact, unaffected by the false ingenuity of those who profess to see no great unholiness anywhere, which thrills in the hearts and moves in the voices of men like St. John, St. Peter, St. Paul ; makes their sorrow articulate in confessing their own sin and the sin of the world. Following are Augustine, Dante, Milton, John Bunyan, Luther, and a host who say that sin poisons the springs of life, corrupts every joy, hampers science, and debases art, causes all manner of physical, mental, and spiritual agony. The gladdening One, who comforts us in our 256 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. ' sorrow ; the healing One, who takes away our sick-f ness ; is Jesus. He brings into our experience, even in this time, the fulfilling of the great ancient promise. Living men, there are tens and tens of thousands, of every age, temperament, character, station, who have a personal conviction that their sins are done away with ; and that because of this they and all things with them, the worlds and all in them, are rising to heights of happiness, immunity from evil, escape from death, and to possession of everlasting life. These men have an ancestry of those immediately before them, and going back and back into the furthest past. They belong to a multitude beyond number, to lives in the remote past, and to generations yet to come; They are witnesses of a deliverance already in part experienced ; of a joy already in part possessed ; and they have in this a key to the solution of every enigma ; for palsied energies are quickened as by an electric touch. Matter and spirit, earth and heaven, sinner^nd Saviour, are so intermingling and inter- mingled that we already see, as in vision very beautiful, the filling of the earth with " the knowledge pf the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea " (Hab. ii. 14). : They say a beautiful painting of Jesus may be seen in one of the foreign cathedrals. It touches every heart where is a true love of Christ. A mirror is so placed to reflect the picture in such manner that on the roof, for old and young to see, is the figure of our saving and healing Lord looking down on all. May we too, looking up, see J^sus also DIVINE HEALING IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 257 beholding us and sending down miracles of power, of goodness, of healing, forgiving our sins, curing our diseases, crowning our life with loving kindness and tender mercy ; making every one of us an epitome of the great natural history of immortality. " Father, before Thy throne of light The guardian angels bend, And ever in Thy presence bright Their psalms adoring blend ; And casting down each golden crown Beside the crystal sea, With voice and lyre, in happy choir, Hymn glory. Lord, to Thee. ' ' And as the rainbow lustre falls Athwart their glowing wings. While seraph unto seraph calls, And each Thy goodness sings ; O may we feel, as low we kneel To pray Thee for Thy grace, That Thou art here for all who fear The brightness of Thy face." Farrar. XXXI. Bibme l^ealing lUebEalctr in tje Njfo Testament. " These signs shall follow them that believe : In My Name shall they cast out devils ; they shall speak with new tongues ; they shall take up serpents ; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them ; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." — Mark xvi. 17, 18. Jesus Christ was the Greatest of all Healers. HE healed all that were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias, saying, '' Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses" (Matt. viii. 17 ; Isa. liii. 4, 5). Healing was the work of Christ's life ; healing for the body and healing for the soul. He understood the great mystery of the world's existence. He saw all its terrors, all its splendours, in their inmost meaning as irrefutable facts. In word and act, in life and death, Jesus was the great Healer. His words of doctrine not less restored the soul of man, than His deeds of healing renewed the body. He never turned away from the faithful, and He healed all the sick who were brought to Him. Divine influence extended beyond His bodily presence ; stretching into and saving the far- ( 253 ) DIVINE HEALING IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 259 off in distance ; even as now He saveth the far-off in time. The grandeur of Christ as God's Servant, a healer of all men, of all things, of all worlds, would surpass every effort of human understanding did we not exercise and strengthen our faculties in various in- vestigations of the universe. Around the body of our sun, limiting the space to that in which twelve planets revolve, is a cubical sphere of three thousand six hundred millions of miles in diameter. The space around the sun, extending to the nearest of the fixed stars, is about forty billions of miles in diameter. Further beyond are so many worlds, so vastly ex- tending, that probably no finite creature is fully acquainted with every one ; and none but the Almighty knows all the provinces of His universal dominion. Now when we think that Christ is such a wonderful Saviour and Healer that through His power. His goodness, at all those distances, in all those innumerable worlds, and throughout all time. He preserves and renews not only the earth, but those many worlds ; we do not wonder at the choice of Sir Humphry Davy, " I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing." Jesus sent joy into the hearts even of strangers, and never withheld help from a friend. He bent over the sick, turned not from the leper, rebuked disease, drove out evil spirits ; and with a look, or a word, or a touch, healed all. The wretched went to Him as their friend, and sinners came with teara. He supported the weary, and comforted the heavy- 26o THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTAUTY. > laden. He helped and saved the pure-hearted with words and works of power. Supernaturally to heal was His daily, His hourly work. To confound those who say, " Miracles are im- possible," Divine healings are of such frequent oc- currence in our own day that no one, with any experience in this matter, can doubt. The signs, promised in confirmation of the faith of those who accepted the Apostles' preaching, are given now also. Men, women, and children become new creatures. Should every one of the things be written which Jesus does for the Church, the world could not con- tain the books (John xxi. 25). It is of no avail to talk of the laws that govern nature. Most of those laws are not laws at all, merely modes we are accustomed to. Disease as much breaks the so-called laws, as it fulfils them. Health,^ jiot_disease, is the law and order of nature. Disease, howev^luFenters^s a drstnffier. To restore health is an amending of ~tllat which disease has marred. Jesus is that Restorer. Through every cubic inch of atmospheric air in- numerable forces are momentarily passing, making and unmaking worlds ; shaping and unshaping the things in those worlds ; and forming part of mental plans and moral purposes which concern men, angels, and God Himself Mind cannot know, nor tongue tell, nor hand write, all which is meant by the forces in that cubic inch of air } We cannot see the minute- ness with microscope, nor the vastness by use of telescope, but this we know — these forces acting DIVINE HEALING IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 261 according to circumstances, some of which they make and by some of which they themselves are made, are certainly reducible from their countless diverse ex- pected and unexpected forms to other grander forms ; nearer representatives of the Spirit of Power, the Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Life. The Lord of Creation acts more slowly during our time in maturing the grape from water and air, than Christ who gave the wine at once transformed. The unbeliever, in a slip-slop way, talks of normal and orderly and natural as if he knew all about what can and cannot be done : whereas, he cannot know. Think of a man whose mind, will, affections, life, abide in God con- tinually. Is there not something in that intimate association, a truer rooting than of plant in the earth, and a nobler influence than of sun in flower .? Is it an incredible wonder that Christ should live in and act in that man, and be to him as the Great Physician, the Life, the Lord of all ? Certainly not. Death seems to accord with the laws of nature, but is premature death quite lawful ? If I do the devil's will and go down, as all experience shows ; and if I do God's will and go up, as happier experience proves ; is it not quite in law for descent and ascent to be sometimes so accelerated that a man dies in a moment, or lives in a moment .-• It seems a clearer and better vindication of natural law to recall the dead, from the disastrous result of disorder by disease, so that he may live life's natural period. "Nature is conquered by obeying her," so Bacon said ; and our surgeons make a boy walk, who 262 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. . was lame from birth; and those to see who were born blind ; by animal magnetism, or whatever else they call it, vital energy is shed on the paralytic and on the hysteric, so that new life begins. Is higher science refused to Christ, the King of men ? If you think so, or do not think so, make an experiment. Follow that Christ : do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God, be as a brother of Jesus ; rather, regard Him as your crucified King ; show that the spirit of self-sacrifice is not dead, associate yourself lovingly with the more than seven thousand faithful ones ; and when Jesus has made these acts of con- straint free acts, when you find a new power of life in you, the old bad passed, the new good remaining, the spiritual miracle so natural will make you know that to Jesus all things are possible. Why is not Divine Healing more Openly Displayed NOW? It is. openly displayed, the world is -full of it, but we shut our eyes. Light shines, but unbelief, " like the pupil of the eye, contracts in proportion to the outward brightness." Elijah was a prophet like fire, and his words burned. He brought down famine in his stormy zeal, shut up the heavens, and thrice caused fire to descend. He raised the dead to life, and spake words from God. What availed all this ? He thought his work was vain, and asked God that he might die. As for Jesus : from the many towns and villages, out of every street, came strangest DIVINE HEALING IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 263 assemblies. The child led its blind father, the father came carrying his sick boy. Men bore those who were helpless with fever, with convulsions, with all manner of disease, and possessed by the devil. There was a mysterious power and goodness in Jesus that drew the wretched to Him, that fascinated them with His sympathy, and then made them sing in health and joy. The dumb praised Him, the deaf heard Him, the blind went away with sight restored. -At every resting-place, in every day's travel, a crowd of demoniacs, of lunatics, of paralytics, were healed by a word or a touch. Of what avail ? Wicked men pierced His brow with thorns. His hands and feet with nails. His side with a spear. The seeming failure arises out of a real fact.^JLJn- belief wilful]y_acquires"an incapacity-to^^iiscer-a Jxuth : whether physical or spiritual. If Jesus Christ stood by such ""aTman'with healing to save his body, and truth to save his soul, that man would not have the capacity to receive or use the gift of healing, except in detriment to the soul. If Christ were pressed and thronged by a thousand men — not one deriving a blessing by the contact ; and a faithful woman weak and suffering as that poor one with the issue of blood, touched but the hem of His garment — she would be made whole every whit. We do not see how Divine Healing could have been more openly or largely exercised by Jesus unless human freedom had been coerced. If the indolent, the wicked, the unbelieving, the malicious, had been healed ; that, by lengthening their present life, would the more deepen and blacken their future condemnation. 264 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Divine Healing was and is more openly displayed than ungodly men think : the power was imparted to the Apostles, and to all who believed their testimony. ' With the command, " Preach the Gospel to every creature," was the promise, "Lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." The whole Church, and every faithful member, was miraculously endowed. In the name of Christ devils were cast out ; men who took up poisonous serpents were not hurt ; they laid hands on the sick and the sick were recovered. It seems good to our Lord that His believing people, living in a sick and perishing world, should be able to heal the living and to quicken the dead. Healings are placed amongst the powers of the Church (i Cor. xii. 28), nor is any limit affixed either as to time or individuals. Like other gifts, they are bestowed, severally, as God wills according to every man's capacity (i Cor. xii. 4-1 1, 29). Some few, like St. Paul, have every gift, being able to use all. These healings in our material bodies are effected by force, the force or power of the Lord Jesus, and they are proof of His Godhead. View it thus : If all the men in the world, who have lived from Adam till now, stood by the paralytic man, and by the dead man, and commanded the one to stand, and the other to live ; it would be vain as running up a hill to catch the passing moon ; but Jesus not only heals one man, He heals aad-saves^ all who put their Irus^ in Him, He saves to the uttermost all who draw nigh unto God by Him ; and He enables the Church to do even greater healing works than DIVINE HEALING IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 265 those He did Himself. Through Him, we all stand face to face with the sweetly solemn and beautiful lovingness of God. Directions are Given for the Use of Healing Power. " Is any sick among you ? let him call for the elders of the Church ; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord : and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall TarseTiiTrrup;^and"if'he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him" (Jas. v. 14, 15). The kind of oil is not mentioned. The sick person was touched on the forehead with it, or a few drops were poured on the head. The anointing was symbolical of the Holy Spirit's influence. The elders of the Church were the ministers, other officials, and men of faith. The means of healing, prayer and anointing with oil7"were~Ttot-^HediGiHal-j^flor--S;Uch as are em- ployed^y'physiciansy but a Divine prescription for conveying new vital energy in an. easy^and a simple w^. So simple that when we contemplate the external and internal structure of any, even the least complex of living things, we are amazed. The thousands and tens of thousands of move- ments, of adjustments, of compensations, fill us with wonder. When man, the most mysterious and marvellous of creatures, is found to be so easily acted on by the Saviour, showing that in Him man lives, moves, and has his being ; we see why St. John wrote, "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou V 266 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth " (3 John 2) : for in so blessed and blessing a condition, body and soul are closely intimate with their Lord. The neglect of such means is, first, owing to decrease of faith ; and, secondly, to " the licence of would-be scholars overtopping the modesty of the Christian." By Divine Healing our Life is made a Divine Life. Naturally and spiritually every man has his own pattern of life. The wicked man, though he knows it not, fashions his existence into the manner of that Evil One who goes to and fro in the earth, up and down in it, seeking whom he may devour. The righteous man, being made a son of God, is trans- formed into the outer image and inner likeness of Christ who made, redeemed, saved him. Such a man if Divinely healed as to the body, so that he lives and not dies, is endowed with Life Divine both as to body and soul. He knows that he has a life to shape, rough stone to hew, build, and carve into a temple such as the Master loves. The best work in the world, done with tools, is but a type of this ; and he does it, not only for himself, but above all for the glory of God, J Divine Healing does not Give a Man Earthly Immortality. It does not take us wholly into the risen and incor- ruptible' body of the Lord. We still remain of that DIVINE HEALING IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 267 in which He suffered and died. Our humiliation is to be like His, and we are to die ; that as our natural birth passed into the spiritual birth ; our natural death, which carries us to the grave and corruption, may be changed into that glorious resurrection which brings us personally, body and soul, into the Divine Presence for ever. We bear about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus ; that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh, and mortality be swallowed up of immortality (2 Cor. iv. 10, 11 ; i Cor. XV. 52-54). Meanwhile, Jesus abides with us alway, everywhere, even unto the end of the world. He is the same to us yesterday, to-day, and for ever ; and we are the same to Him (Heb. xiii. 8). This marvellous concentration of Christ in every believer, as a whole Healer and Saviour ; and the like mysterious centralization of every believer in identity of person and individuality in Christ, by which Christ is in him every moment, and he in Christ ; is an incom- prehensible wonder. We attain some apprehension of it by use even of what is common : for every physical thing gives many lessons in things spiritual. Take a lens. With this we see that which is invisible to the naked eye. We gather into a point the glory and splendour of distant realms. We search into the unfelt and the unseen. We obtain a vivid representation of their true figures, their colours, their positions. Indeed, rightly under- stood, the universe as a whole is a concentration on a grand scale ; man and all other creatures, as parts, are concentrations on a small scale of the Eternal whose 268 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Personality fills all things, and yet dwells in the heart of the lowly and contrite (Isa. Ivii. 1 5). The Final Result will be a Grand Consolation. ' Meanwhile, we are,, those brave adventurers who conquer their own lustsTtKeir own ambitions, with the sacred name of duty : " 'Tis not price, nor outward fairness. Gives the victor's palm its rareness." Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho ! No, "the best reward of having wrought well already, is the having more to do." Nature's wonders are an introduction to heavenly splendours. " The more fair this passing world of time ; by so much the more fair is that eternal world, whereof all here is but a shadow.'' We do not fear death, it is only a kiss, because we fear God. We now stand under the shadow of our Father's Temple, and as we listen to the murmur of countless languages, the voice of creation passing into the sweeter speech of Redemp- tion and Divine Healing, we shall soon behold the full splendour of God's architecture, and then all things will burst forth into fullest praise. Talk not of destiny : it is the apology of wilful human hearts for sin, and with it would they make God to be no God. The life of Jesus is the great example and lesson for all mankind ; and the death of Jesus is a wondrous treasure ; because He, rising from it in holy and exhaustless love, is proved to be more than con- queror. That death is the stilling of human unrest DIVINE HEALING IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 269 and disturbance. That resurrection life is the Divine Life mirrored in us ; not only mirrored, living in us with all power of healing. The great hurt of sin is cured. The deadly wound of the universe, that brought destruction to all, is now healed, and is giving place to God's grand consolations. "No sigh, no murmur the wide world shall hear ; From every face He wipes off every tear." Pope. XXXII. popular Objections as to Healing bg Jpattf). The Words oj a Blasphemer. — " Now when miracles are insulted and denied as the figments of a barbarous age, when the faith they might support is in such jeopardy as it never was before ; when a tithe of the wonders wasted in the deserts of Sinai and the parts beyond Jordan would shake the nations with astonishment and surprise — when, in short, the least expenditure of miracle would produce the maximum of result — then miracles mysteriously cease." Reply. — They have not ceased. God has always wrought them when and where He would : they are wrought in our own day. Statement of the Case. THE prayer of righteous men has alwajfs_been effectualr TnTheOl3~Testarnerrf times, Elijah prayed tfiaTtt might not rain, and it rained not. He prayed again, and the heaven gave rain. In New Testament times, St. Paul, writing of powers possessed by the faithful, places amongst them " gifts of heal- ing'' (i Cor. xii. 8-10). St. Mark records our Lord's words — " These signs shall follow them that believe : In My Name shall they cast out devils ; they shall speak with new tongues ; they shall take up serpents ; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them ; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover'' (Mark xvi. 17, 18). St. James (v. ( 270 ) POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO HEALING BY FAITH. 271 14-18), giving directions as to the confession of our sins, and our use of prayer, ordains, " Is any sick among you ? let him call for the elders of the Church ; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." Then he states, "And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up ; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." Some_ofL±he_difficulties and objections as to good men being able to heaTthc-skk by laying on of hands, by anointing, "by prayiflg;--aFe-4:hese : and the usual answers follow. I. If by faith and prayer we could heal the sick, they would never die. Not so : by Tiatural law and Divine appointment, men are to dFe ; "buf it is not of natural law, nor of Divine appointment, that we should die out of due time, before our bodies are perfected and fully used. The prayer of faith is not to prevent aged Simeons departing in peace ; but when sickness is untimely, and death would be preniafufe, we are told, "The prayer of faith shall save the sick." In some cases, we have to suffer for our own faults ; and at other times, afflictions are caused by other men. What- ever is for chastisement and correction we are to endure for the deepening of piety and the spiritual advancement in us of grace and power. As Christ prayed, so does every believer, " Not what I will, but what Thou wilt" (Mark xiv. 36); and it is certain that if we do our duty Godward, we shall do it to the world, and to ourselves. ^^^ THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. II. Could we provide for our wants, take away trouble, overcome obstacles, *nd do miraculous works,, by means of faith and prayer : the graces of industry, of patience, of perseverance, of skill, of self-denial ;; and all the advantages derived from the extension^ of art, of science, of self-culture ; woujcl^ fail. Greater were that evil, than all the good promised to faith, and prayer — though miraculous. This objection supposes that a special power given to good men in times of extremity, will make bad men of them ; so that they abuse to all manner of misuse that which they know is only for exceptional and special cases ; and given because the ordinary means are not sufficient. When God delivered Israel from Egypt, and promised that, if they were faithful to Him, sickness should be taken from them ; and none of the evil diseases which befel the Egyptians allowed to afflict them (Exod. xv. 26 ; Deut. vii. 15) ; the promise did not set them free from ordinary care, and common use of means, whether for prevention or cure of maladies. The meaning of all such promises is well set forth in the desire of St. John (Epis. 3, verse 2) — " Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." No miracle will be wrought to release us from the necessity of disciplining our bodies and minds and souls that they may be brought to the utmost perfection. Nor is that all : those who use the power of prayer to heal, are men taught by the Holy Ghost ; and such men will not make that evil which is ^iven for their own POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO HEALING BY FAITH. 273 andjjthers' good. Faith works that physical, mental, and moral process which, enabling us to be, to do, and to become whatsoever God wills, causes us to rely- on being so under His care, and on so receiving His blessing, that our bodies will prosper and be in health even as our souls prosper. It is said of Caesar that he was great without an effort. Much more may we say of God's children — "those who have His grace and gifts are graced with the sense rightly to use them." Such men are the flower of this lower world. They may be called great with its true emphasis. They cheer us on our pilgrimage, inspire us with lofty emulation, teach us to struggle ; and, filling us with hope, we endure, we conquer. III. Faith does not always effect a cure : there are notable cases ^^f^fajljire.^ St. Pau^was not delivered from the thorn in the flesh, though he prayed thrice (2 Cor. xii. 7, 8). Timothy (Epis. i, v. 23) had infirmities and often. Trophimus was left sick at Miletum (2 Tim. iv. 20). Epaphroditus, sick nigh unto death, does not seem to have been raised to health by any prayer of faith, but by the mercy of God (Phil. ii. 27). Reply. — These and other cases show that the gfft of healingjvas^noty-andis.JK3.t,_tQ be used as a magical charm. The power is given at God's chosen time and in selected mannerT Otherwise, ra^h professors migliTTirfolize the gift; and be like those Chinese sailors who, to insure a safe voyage, worship the magnetic needle. If a man is rash, tempts providence, goes beyond the powers given him, he, not less than T 274 TH^ NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. his works, is in danger of something worse than mere failure. Adversities often come as a trial. Affliction is needed for discipline. God chastens us for our good. There are lessons to be learned, graces to be acquired, faults to be amended, and qualifications to be attained, fitting us for the reception of gifts. The power of healing is subordinated to all this. In con- firmation of our faith, in fitting us for work and more work, as a means of persuasion that men generally may know of God's presence with His people, the power to heal is used intelligently by the Church in accordance with Divine Will. IV. The power of healing is not now exercised by the Church, an3~'any^-€ttterttpf^fo^Te-establish faith- healingT' as a means of cure, would provoke ex- travagances, impostures, and rash assumptions. Pro- fessors of clairvoyance, mesmerism, spiritualism, would vie with Christians, and many would be the asserted marvels. Reply. — The Gift is not only exercised, but used largely by individuals, and has never, though much neglected, been obsolete. It is true that after man's strongest efforts, little may be realized ; without those efforts, there must be little. It is not so much in many works and their great extent, but in the quality that we seek the stamp of God. Moreover, if God promises help, in answer to prayer, greater than can be attained by use of ordinary means ; we, certainly, while using all proper means should earnestly pray for that help. Christ declared that wonderful signs should follow those who believed ; POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO HEALING BY FAITH. 275 St. James gave directions for use of one of the signs, healing by means of faithful prayer ; and we neglect a privilege, turn aside a blessing, and are men of disobedience as to duty, when we cease to expect the blessing promised, and do not use the appointed means to gain it. The conviction that God works with us, and by us, will not weaken, but augment, our every force. It was not amidst His own Divine splendours, nor amongst the pageants and banners of earthly wealth and martial might, that the Son of God set the exemplar of a holy life. In His humiliation, as a man, poor, forsaken, sorrowing, oppressed, with the afflictions and sins of the world wearing Him, wasting Him, carrying His life to the grave, He was Holiest of the holy. No promise that He gave at such a time should be forgotten ; no direction coming to us by Inspiration can we allow to be neglected. Enough of objections. As a rule, those who give themselves to the public teaching of unbelief, as to Scripture, are addicted in private to superstitions. To such superstitions as fulfil the fable of Circe, and degrade men into mere animals : not to look upward, not to soar. Observe now that Divine Healing rests on principles whrchnsverjrone ought to know. I. Though pain, disease, death, were the lot of all living creatures before the creation of man ; the origin of these afflictions was by a slapernatural evil power ; and although man was created above the natural order, and not subject to this supernatural evil ; he brought himself under bondage to its mischief through 276 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. transgression, being deluded by Satanic guile. The promise and gift of healing are an assurance and a se^l^^f deliverance ; and that if he and others pray in faith earnestly neither the malice of Satan, nor any natural calamity, shall carry them to such untimely grave as brings ruin to the soul. II. In sickness, disease, death, there is always more than medieaL skill_ can either detector~HeaI^ Every finite thing, indeed, touches' the infinite ; and all natural order is a concrete of some spiritual pule. We fight against powers, not only of the world, but of spiritual wickedness in high places. It becomes us consequently to use the whole armour of God. If we neglect to use the appointed divine weapons and gifts we are verily guilty. The will of man avails much, and greatly more avails when sustained by Divine power. When in obedience to our Heavenly Father, and by help of Divine Grace, we abide in Christ ; there comes into our soul at every time of need a new, signal, special, definite, baptism and sealing of the Holy Ghost ; and this, when God wills, gives healing power to the body. The spiritual blessing is always greater than the material gift. III. Whatsoever was written and done in old time is for our learning ; not only for a time, but all time. No event, nor teaching, nor work, nor miracle, can be separated, as if of no further use, from the Church universal. Healing and Redemption belong to all ages. Whatever was good, will be productive of more good, as men grow in faith. Whatsoever was bad, becomes worse ; until at last the wicked POPULAR OByECTIONS TO HEALING BY FAITH. 277 being most wicked, their evils are the greatest. We must not allow our trust in Divine Providence to become an error, deadening and benumbing our use of God's promises, and Christ's healing gifts ; nor ought we, in the use of natural means, to forget that God has graciously added to their power by other helps. The alertness of an inspired will, the noble energy of a sanctified spirit, will not neglect but lovingly, faithfully, zealously, with insistence that takes no denial, use the prayer of faith to save the sick. It was the will of our God that by miracles and healings men werrtetJ-into the Faith. It is His Will now, for 15od changes jigt,.-that His servants by these signs ""show— the agnostics, the secularists, the worldly, the unbelieving, that His arm is not shortened. We avail ourselves of all that science knows, and thank God for it. The resources of civilization are ours, and we use them to the utmost. We labour in wise and kindly nursing ; and thankfully call in that medical skill which the devout and learned and experienced physician and surgeon have at command. It is God, however, the real Physician, who gives the chief medicine ; who makes drugs, operations, kindness, nursing, to have true healing power ; who takes away sin, sickness, death ; giving righteousness, healing, and everlasting life. We live and work as children of the Most High God : a noble life now, a nobler life hereafter. In the natural, everywhere touching the supernatural, we have the natural history of immortality. XXXIII. Hfmttations of IBibint ?^ealfng. "If you say you cannot believe, you say right ; for faith, as well as every other blessings is the gift of God ; but wait upon God, and who knows but He may have mercy on thee." — GiiORGE Whitefield. " To make easy things seem hard is every man's work ; but to make hard things easy is the work of a great preacher." — Archbishop USSHER. I. /^^ENER-AtXY,_DJYme--_Healings^Jike the ^^-^ J&ingdQm of God, begin within. A man's soul is helped, and thence health is diffused through the whole man (John i. 12 ; iii. 3, 15). Sometimes believers help, and are helped as Jesus was at the grave of Lazarus (John xi. 41, 42). Then, conscious of that help, they are able to say, " Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast heard us, and hearest us always ; for our will is Thine, and Thou makest Thy will to be ours. To live is Christ, and death is an open gate to life eternal." The first limitation of Healing by the prayer of faith is the Divine Will. II. All living creatures are lirnited by their grades in life. The lowest are without consciousness. Those with consciousness or physical senses only, possess ( 278 ) LIMITATIONS OF DIVINE HEALING. 279 no intelligence ; and only the higher intelligence, as in man, seems able to worship. Neglect to use this high intelligence, Godward, causes loss of the spiritual faculty ; and the absence of this, with the accompany- ing inability to believe ; limit even Christ's power to heal (Matt. xiii. 58). A natural fact is in relation to this spiritual truth. Sound waves are propagated in the atmosphere somewhat as ripples are spread on the face of a pool. If by propulsion of other ripples and waves you fill up the interstices of the water, or of the atmosphere, the face of the pool will be level, and the atmosphere be stilled, so that no sound is heard and no ripple seen. Evil men deaden in them- selves all motion Godward ; there is no rising of their spirit to the spheres, no movement in them of the water of life. They are incapable of receiving any spiritual gift, and their incapacity to receive renders even the prayer of faith in vain (i Cor. ii. 14). III. One star differeth from another star. The earth did not ^ways serve^for^ivitTg^cre'atures, nor are all men faithful. The gifts to the star, the earth, the man, are distributed by infinite wisdom ; and those to the man extend beyond what is necessary, even to all those uses by which he may become perfect — even a Son of God (John i. 12). The perfection is various; we are not all prophets, nor apostles, nor workers of miracles ; some have wisdom, others tongues of mystery, there are those who heal, and some reveal things that are hidden ; there is a faith that removes mountains, and a charity that will hide a multitude of sins ; while some, like Andrew, lead their brother 28o THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. to Christ. These men, seeking excellent gifts of influence, of health, or of longer life, are only limited, as to themselves, by the power to receive and the faculty to use ; and limited, of God, by those pur- poses they are to serve in this life and that to come, and the places they are to occupy around the throne of God. The variety on earth is great, the variety in Heaven is greater, and the perfection of one is adjusted to forward the development of all. The limitation is by the purpose of God in fitting every man and all men for the best use. IV. Science^ reveals^ a unity of power-_wBrking in all things and everywhere. This unity limits~ex£ess. The eye, the hand, the head, must not behave as were they the whole body, or schism would arise, and in prevention of this the providence of God^ is wonderful. The study of nature, by those capable, becomes a growing delight in the exuberance of natural beauty. The sense of duty in some makes the whole course of life one victorious march to spiritual empire. This duty involves a moral scheme, a heavenly future, the giving of account. A peremptory alertness, cheery swift decision, determining to win, are marvellous in removing obstacles. He who thinks aright of all this will seek perfection in the doing of all God's will ; and God who leads on every stone and tiny plant that it may be something wonderful, is certain so to guide His sons and daughters that they shall do and be all that is best in the best manner at the best time. The limiting is not less a work of goodness than of wisdom in harmony with a universal plan. LIMITATIONS OF DIVINE HE AUNG. 281 V. Sin_is_yie_onLy-JirLtialuraLthuig_^^ nature ; yet nature, touching the supernatural on every side, is itself supernaturally pierced and in every direction ; this limits the working of unnatural exploits. No man is set free from the duty and privilege of sub- jection, or from personal co-operation with God. Very seldom, if at any time, does God interfere to cover the dulness of His own people. The diligent soul is made fat, the not diligent becomes lean. If a child of light wilfully goes into darkness, he will suffer loss. Religiousness is no excuse for want of skill. The clever and prudent~surpaSs the stupid. He who abuses health, strength, and wealth, in mere display and reckless life, remaining poor and blind and naked as to God, will be taken away and put to some use — not to be preferred. The salt that loses its savour, the ground that will not bear fruit, the fig tree that in season bears no figs, are cast forth. The darkness of space around the stars gives distinctness to their light, even so wicked men even now are a foil to the righteous ; and when these wicked are gathered by the angels they are gathered to subserve a purpose, as in a fire, for God will not allow any- thing to be in vain. Neither shall the sons of Sceva (Acts xix. 13-16) prevail; nor yet even better men accomplish by prayer that which God's providence requires to be done in and by the well-ordered use of means. Limitations are preventions of unnatural exploits. The general and special providence of God thus 282 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. disallows_grace5^ and gifts and powers to be used apart from \\\p^r\^\na^^_c,^J\\n^{^\\\\ and nhedienre whigh accord with all the Divine Will. His limita- tions restrain us to those uses which belong to our individual grade of being. His limitations are for our higher definiteness and power in uses to come, to keep us in accord with the great harmony and com- pleteness of the universal plan, and to prevent unnatural exploits. We cannot telljwhy some prayers are answered, and o thers are as if unheard." Our faith says, "They are deferred to be the more preferred ; " but our fears sometimes call out, ahd loudly too. James, in prison, was not delivered, probably, because God meant him to have a martyr's crown. Possibly, though that is not our thought, not having been specially prayed for, he was beheaded. Peter, prayed for continually, was saved alive (Acts xil. 1-9). There is no want of power in God : He governs the world and is Lord of all power. There lacks not wisdom : He guides the stars with a science oT which our knowledge is but as a letter or two of the alphabet in which the universal book is written. There is no failure of goodness : He richly provides food for every creature, and gives them joy in the eating. The righteous truly prosper because of their righteousness ; they have the promise and potency of this life and of that to come ; but they are not unduly favoured. They are preferred, both as !to nature and grace, but the preference arises out of their keeping in the natural and spiritual order, and out of rightly using the powers thereto belonging. LIMITATIONS OF DIVINE HEALING. 283 There is no favouritism with God, the race is not ahvay to the swift, nor victory to the strong ; but, certainly, he that will not run shall not win ; nor is the coward, who flies from the battle, reckoned amongst the valiant. There are many reasons why it should be so. The first is, every one should aim at perfection in skill, in faith, in strength, in zeal, in love, in patience. He who serves God best, who makes best use of natui-e, who does most good to men ; he who is best, who thinks best, who acts best ; will find all things work together for his good. Men, faithful as Abraham, pure as Joseph, valiant as David, temperate and diligent and wise as Daniel, are eminent here ; and hereafter, in their grander occu- pations, will be of brilliant life, sparkling in the splendour of the new heavens and the new earth. The providence of God, when the whole is seen, brings into accord all the limitations of God. Sometimes, in our musing, the gloom becomes a shadow, and the shadow thickens into a gathering out of darkness an awful shape of evil presence. Ghastly and cold, with deathlike face and hands, the body of evil is dressed in the terrible show of guilt. Such a demon has haunted all men, since the world began, who neglected their youthful time ; who strove, not to be better, but to make wicked rugged steps for worn transgressing feet to rest and rise on. Mother's self-denying love, father's good counsel, they had not or heeded not ; they were cast loose, or being loose cast off themselves. They sought know- ledge in the mines of iniquity, and worked in the fire 284 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. to forge instruments of sin. In outward form they are men, but inwardly they live and die as the beasts, regardless of God. They diffuse evil by defiling what they touch, and every use they abuse. Selfishness, ingratitude, unbelief, make a wretchedness whose transformation is to more hateful sharp malignity setting all good at naught. Their heart-sin, their living depravity, their awful unbelief, turn aside all that prayer can ask, all that God would give. They refuse the obedience of holiness that God requires ; and, so far as they can, make " the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all " of none effect. The end of that gloom is not necessarily death. For those who, like St. Paul, come out from the con- viction of sin, of weakness, of transgression, into true penitence and life of the spirit, there is no condemna- tion (Rom. vii. 9-11, 18-20, 24; viii. 1-4); but the entering of great light and of strong consolation. None are left in despair, but those who so forsake them- selves-asIdellberately^tQreast'otf^lttearT^'ltTeverence, all love, of God. Even^for^tTTese" while there is life tHBfe is hope. When the darknesF arid unbelief and fear cease to possess the soul and no longer take them from the Saviour, they may be saved. His merci- ful countenance ever beams on men to beautify the life of all who can be beautified. Even for those we count hopeless and helpless .it brings some hope with help and joy. It becomes us to say, " Oh, Father, better than all fathers on earth ; oh, Saviour, more saving, than all others ; oh. Spirit Divine, that bringest back and receivest all wanderers ; thou art our Father, LIMITATIONS OF DIVINE HEALING. 285 our Saviour, the Sanctifier. Remember not our sin, nor that once we meant to live evil and bold, and evil and bold to die. Oh, work, thrice Mighty, thrice Merciful, thrice Holy ; if it be possible, work the impossible. Thou showest the future misery of the lost, that some glimmering of contrition being found in the impenitent, the day-spring may arise that they be not for ever benighted, and that mercy may bring rescue to the perishing." With trembling wonderment we put up our hands in prayer, and with awe bow down our head, being glad at the thought of their restoration so overpassing belief and hope. We think of ruins rebuilt ; of harvests gathered, the fruit of heaven's benediction, from fields unsown by human hands ; of places, once overspread with wickedness, filled with righteousness ; and thus endeavour to rise to the height of Divine mercy. We speak as our- selves once dead, having been made to live. Our redemption and life quicken the wish that He who in His Death saved the dying thief, may in the fulness of wisdom, the majesty of power, the richness of exhaustless love, set aside every restricting limitation, and bring back the banished. When the fierce tempest raged, He, calm and still, did save the perishing. " ' Save, Lord, we perish,' was their cry, ' O save us in our agony ! ' Thy word above the storm rose high, ' P,eace, be still.'" Thring. XXXIV. application of ^iiencE anti ^IjilogopSg. " No hand, but the hand of God alone so governs the masses of the universe as to hold them in order ; and so touches our souls in their inmost depths that we and the earth and heaven are knit together, and there is one Life everywhere. The forms of things, their essences, their aspects and behaviour in sadness and in splendour, are notes in one responding chord, parts of a grand harmony soon to be all-prevalent. " — Note Book. MANY facts, attested by honest, capable, pains- taking witnesses, show the reality in our own days of healings which exceed the limits of all known natural and human means, so that no reasonable doubt ought to exist as to their being given of God, in confirmation of our Christian Faith. Clerg)'' and laity of the English Church, various non-conforming ministers, medical men, lawyers, and professors of physical science, with a large number of healed persons, present indisputable evidence that the Gift of Healing is now, as in the Apostolic age, one of the signs which follow those who believe. We receive and transmit not less a moral than a material heritage to those who come after us. It is certificate of a good ( 286 ) APPLICATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 287 time in the future when burning thoughts and faith in Christ will animate and save many souls. No Christian person hesitates as to the possibility of supernatural cures. When medical means fail, supplication is made in Church for Divine help. What so^dmrhon as' the proverb, " Man's extremity is God's opportunity ? " We believe in the efficacy of prayer, of regeneration, of conversion, and of Divine power in the use of Holy Scripture to enlighten, to heal, to strengthen men. Not a few, conscious of renewed spiritual life and power, possess the consola- tions of God ; and know that they are in union with their Saviour by His dwelling in them, and by their abiding in Him. These consolations are as light from a world where is no darkness at all ; as echoes from Heaven telling of the music there. We go somewhat further. The higher reasonable exercise of thought, imagination, feeling, emotion, enables believers to live habitually in truer and more joyous conceptions and anticipations than all that men of art and science can picture. Believing souls prospectively enter, where the spirits of just men possess the nearer view and presence of their Lord. They experience a cessation of all human anguish, possession of assured happiness, in the light that shines on them from the realms of eternal life and love. These uses of the highest spiritual faculties not only obtain knowledge of God, but partake of the Divine Nature (John i. 12 ; Eph. iii. 19). They not only naturally and physically heal many of infirmities ; but are channels of Divine grace, fitting those who 288 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. are healed for the use and enjoyment of more glorious things to come. It is not. hard for ingenuous, intelligent, well-read persons, of disciplined intellect^ to^j^ove, for them- selves, the reality of the asserted spiritual and physical healing ; and then to confirm that proof) so far as they have knowledge, by scientific investigation. I. Daily Evidence of Divine Healing. Carry yourself beyond mere animal exercise of the senses to view what the arts accomplish in helping and adorning our daily life. Then raise your thought, by repeated efforts, into mental view of those artistic and scientific achievements by which the highest styles of beauty and the structure of worlds are revealed. Study the greatest pictures, hear the noblest music, examine the constructions and uses of scientific instruments in connection with the theories which they show to be probable. You will then have looks of things coming from great distances, and sometimes be almost wild with pleasure. Stars, millions and millions of miles away, will touch you in the night. Intuitions like sensations, and sensations like intuitions, will come as from vastnesses and worlds and powers making you already as one of the immortals. Hands there will hold you, whispers here will tell you, feelings continually assure you, of something working in all, for all, tran- scending all. Having done this, having ascended from height to APPLICATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 289 height of scientific and emotional exercise, you will be conscious of the great contrast between things seen and unseen ; between the physical and mental faculties ; and will find yourselves already higher than mere mechanical and animal nature. You will conceive somewhat of scientific men's passionate yearnings for more knowledge. You will discern, even though at a distance, the believer's unutterable desire after the Divine Love, the fervent aspirations of a devout spirit, the admonitions of conscience, and the delights in God, which render the Saints so divinely strong and beautiful. You will find that advanced accurate science is the grand super- structure of the House of Mental Life for occupation of highest intelligence ; and that the sanctification of science. By spiritual ascent to God, is as a golden crown for that intelligence. All holy men, cultured to- their utmost by every discipline and experience, inward and outward, are the saints of God : His specially healed ones, who are to be greatly glorified. All who wilfully make themselves sensual, worldly, vicious, by continuing in spiritual, mental, and physical ignorance ; are a lower sort of men, not healed, but not yet eternally judged. It is well to think of them as breaches in walls, as ruins, as dead things passed away, yet not passed away ; which Nature, God's Priest, covers over with vegetation of moss, of fern, of flower, so that they serve, though once wicked and hurtful, to reflect the vast power, vast wisdom, vast goodness, which makes them as darkness for the dis- u 290 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. play of light ; and, even in lowest state and ministra- tions, to be examples of God's infinite patience and beauty in all righteousness. Daily experience, led up from low to high, and descending from high to low, recognizes in these two sorts of men, that continual conflict of good and evil by which the Spirit of God is leading all who love what is good into healing which fits them for a higher life ; and by which, all who refuse good, who make themselves incapable and unworthy of healing are conformed to meaner uses. "In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth ; and some to honour, and some to dishonour " (2 Tim. ii. 20). II. Confirm this Daily Evidence by Scientific Investigation. First Step. — It is not necessary to assume that any new force has been discovered ; nor to suppose that some dominant thought lays hold of the mind, and, of itself through the mind, influences and heals the body. The processes, possibly, are not less physical, though used by Intelligence, than those intelligently used by Athanasius Kircher, when he made a fowl lie motionless on the ground with its beak resting upon a chalked line ; than those exercised by Czermak, who caused a cray-fish to stand on its head. They may be due to disturbances either by exaltations or by inhibitions of forces at the nerve centres. No physi- ologist, however, could have anticij[)ated the facts APPLICATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 291 before their actual discovery ; nevertheless, the facts, even viewed merely as physical facts, enable us to judge with some accuracy concerning those more complex physical, nervous, mental actions, which continually exhibit new fields for research in the living and in the dying. Second Step. — All things are known to be, more or less, in a magnetic state — positive and negative. Our earth is a great magnet. Every atom is a small magnet The human body is an organic and a psychological magnet. The forces of the universe vary continually, positively and negatively, to effect their different operations in producing phenomena, adjusting them, elevating them, and in manifesting the Eternal Power. Third Step. — What is called " Spiritualism " may be reduced to Materialism, seeing that its results are effected by ^physical forces. Some persons possess a marvellous influence ; of which, a larger number, are in various degrees susceptible. Even medical men and their students have had their own wills suspended ; been made to assume ridiculous positions ; and to perform strangest and what, in these men's usual state, would be impossible actions.^ In this way we obtain knowledge of what may be called " infatuating powers," of existences prolonged ; incarnated so to speak in new forms, new bodies ; carrying us to the ' Dr. Heidenhain, in "Animal Magnetism," states, "Most of my experience is from experiments on Dr. Paitsch, Assistant at the Surgical Clinique ; Dr. Kroner, Assistant at the Gynaecological Clinique ; Messrs. Beyer, Drewitz, Aug. Heidenhain, Poper Wallentin, Students of Medicine ; and the wife of the laboratory servant." 292 THE NATURAL HISTORY OP IMMORTALITY. borders of fearful abysses where madnesses in deviltries may drive out all saner senses. Fourth Step. — ^Symptoms of the magnetic or hyp- notic state are a more or less marked increase or diminution of consciousness. At times intensity of force ; some memory, when but slightly acted on ; no memory at all when greatly acted upon. There are sensory perceptions, but these are not always pro- ductive of conscious ideas ; just as any one, deeply engaged in thought, pays no attention to other events. These four steps have brought us to a grander yet somewhat analogous fact. Persons, in high spiritual sacred excitement, respond to the Spirit of God ; even as persons, under hypnotic or magnetic force, are subject to the will of the operator. Sanctified persons endeavour perfectly to obey their God ; and the secularly magnetized are subjected to their operator ; even as the sanctified act as God's children. The enslaved by hypnotism, and with its continuance being more and more degraded, are not to be less blamed than pitied. Thus something in material and mental nature partially reflects and imitates the healing that takes place in physical and spiritual nature. There is something which brings into intelligible view the psychological states of the prophets, of saints, of healers. By these things, which we ourselves in part control, we obtain a sufficient verifying aspect of that Divine action by which some believers are enabled APPLICATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 393 to work faith healings for the body, and possess special ministries of salvation for the soul of man. Symbols in nature, laws in instinct, morality in reason, carry us to the substantial and the eternal. . There are interesting facts about the origin of diseases. Formerly every disease was new. In the boyhood of our earth it is not likely that spring water and new milk tended to gout, gastritis, or to an overstrained liver. Without wine, beer, and ardent liquids, men would be free from the maladies which are caused by indulgence in them. Ground being plentiful and game abundant there would not be famine ; and the digging for roots and the catch- ing of fish requiring much bodily exercise, the diseases of sedentary existence would be unknown. All living soberly, actively, healthfully, there would be no inheriting of constitutional weakness. Civiliza- tion brought the diseases of civilization. Probably "jrheumatism^ would be as strange to uncovered limbs, as " corns to unfettered toes." As wants increased the need would grow for physicians. With large use of paint came the painter's colic, and when men did not over-much write there would be no writer's cramp. In absence of worry, gambling rage, anxiety of speculation, men's minds would be in equilibrium. Without printing, their eyesight was undisturbed by the small size of type and the con- fusing colours of ink. The use of gothic type has made half the German children near-sighted ; and compositors, who have to pick out these complicated letters, are compelled to use spectacles long before 294 THE NATVRAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. age causes weakness of vision. Drunkenness, created by craving for stimulants, which the will does not sufficiently resist, is a malady that descends from father to son, cursing many generations with untold evils. Diseases spring into existence, and multiply, and become more complicated, as our habits show undue pressure. Sores appeared on the hands and faces of girls employed in counting "greenbacks" in the Treasury Department at Washington. The arsenic in the colouring matter of the notes was carried by the fingers of the enumerators to the delicate skin of the cheeks. We are told of the morphia, the chloro- dyne, the chloral, the chloroform, the cocaine, the naphtha-fume habits, becoming persistent and incur- able in those weak-minded persons of whom they take possession. Dr. Gelle, a French physician, has called attention to the Telephone Tintinitus. It is a nervous excitability, with buzzing noises in the ear, giddiness, and neuralgic pain, caused by aural over-pressure through use of the telephone for many hours during many days. The cure is perfect physiological rest. Only those are afflicted whose organization is markedly nervous. The electric light, in over use, causes in some persons a special form of ophthalmia. A curious sequel appeared in 1879 and 1880 to the Influenza epidemic. Cases of coma were reported in Hungary, and thence spread to other parts. They were an aftermath of Influenza. The victims fell into a death-like trance, lasting about four days, out of which the patient awoke in extreme exhaustion. APPLICATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 295 Recovery is very slow. In Italy it was called '' La Nona," "the falling-asleep" disease. Very rapid deaths occurred, owing to cardiacal paralysis and comatose attacks. In the Sentinella Bresciana, reported in the Standard newspaper (March 17, 1890), was a state- ment that Drs. De Maria and Fontana had under their care a young man who had been sleeping for twenty days. He opened his eyes once every day for a few moments, did not speak a word, and immediately was fast asleep again. The youth is stated to have been reduced to a terrible condition of emaciation, and so pale that he might be supposed to be dead, except for the slight respiration which was observable. To call these " The Aftermath of Influenza," is no explanation ; nor have we any explanation of In- fluenza itself. Whether it is malaria from the in- undated lands of China, or any other specific poison, we cannot tell ; and if we could tell ; why this or that result, and not others, should be produced, would still remain inexplicable. All known causes, all antecedents, go back and back to the beginning of time ; and then centre in Him who made Time by Creation, and measured its portions by the motions and durations of things. In like manner, our remedies, our healing sciences, are the product of experience as to the general effect of certain things on other things. No one knows why they should have special effects, why a spark ignites gunpowder and does not ignite flour, why one 296 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. form of phosphorus is deadly and another health- giving. It is owing to the constitution of things. How long will that continue ? Who gave that con- stitution ? Cannot the Giver who gives discernment to the chemist, the artist, and makes them as gods among men, import a spirit-power, a psychological force, a penetrative possessing influence, to some sacred minds by which, the hitherto unknown powers, may work healing by means of faith? If the know- ledge of nature works much, knowledge of God will work more. A sufficient number of verified fitting scientific facts, are proof which carries hypothesis beyond doubt into certainty. The healings wrought by our Lord, and after Him by the Apostles, and after them by men of our own time, in the presence of numerous eye-witnesses, competent to judge, are to every sane man, not infatuated by unbelief, a demonstration of marvellous works. " Wake up my soul to Thee, that I may live ; All that I ask of T}iee, Lord, Thou canst give. Give me the heart to pray, give me the power, When I kneel down to Thee, hour by hour.' Damon. Quoted in " Daily Readings " by Elizabeth Spooner. XXXV. JFuttSer applfcation of defence aniJ ^fiilosopSg. "Let us once ^gAin assail your ears, That are so fortified against our story." Horatio says, ' ' 'Tis but our fantasy ; And >vill not let belief take hold of him. " Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, act i. sc. I. What do We Learn in the Pathway of Experience? STRICT and most observant watch of nightly darkness and of nature's daily toil ; the press and impress of work to alleviate human want and woe, which make men mingle day and night in cease- less labour ; show in nature and in man a disturbing power, controlled by a greater power, making, main- taining, and renewing all. Dark matter is made light on the earth, and to shine in the suns for use of their attendant planets. Particles of substances, by peculiar vibrations, awake into sound, warmth, and brilliancy. The helpless, like that cripple from his birth, who had never walked, are made to walk and leap with joy. Everywhere in the heavens and earth, the melting and passing away of elements are not for ( 297 ) 298 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. their ending, but renewal. All things, even those which seem opposed and destructive, serve and pre- serve one another. It was so, it is so, it ever will be so, until divinely altered. Eternity is in a moment, and the infinite enters our smallest sensation. "We might not this believe, without the sensible and true avouch of our own eyes ; " but it is, though seeming impossible, a fact which, stretches into the gross and furthest scope of things, giving such strength and renewal that graves stand tenantless, and the sheeted dead live again. The slightest things, the most trifling events, suggest ideas to the. thinker, link all that is, and extend the whole, like Homer's chain, from earth to heaven. What is It that We Discern in the Orderliness of Nature ? "Our trust in an all-pervading orderliness which, makes the blast that rocks the tree, shake a different world in every leaf," schools every sense in the beautiful soul, and makes it become more beautiful. Orderli- ness does not deaden our free will, nor benumb our effort in the affairs of life. It is part of the orderliness that there is something great to do. There is a persistency and a consistency, called in science " the conservation of energy," which will not allow the wilful and godless man to obtain at last that pardon, through fear of the devil, which would make Satan a saviour. It is, however, possible, seeing that the whole APPLICATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 299 universe concentrates in every atom, and all the past and all the future meet even in a moment, for one, like the dying thief, by a new experience, by exercise of the never-withholden Divine grace, of a power yet undestroyed, to receive light from the far-away who comes near, and life from the Eternal who is not less in the now than in the eternity which He alone comprehends. The undestroyed capacity of foretaste as to another felicity, and of will, for Divine Service, is one of the most interesting evidences of that great faculty in man which makes him capable of higher work than any yet rendered ; and of that unspeakable love with which God accepts us, and of that infinite wisdom by which He heals us. Something wonderful beyond all wonderfulness, in science, and in Sacred Scripture, " Bids the long ages flee Of doubt, uncertainty, and strife ; Gives back the ancient unity, The love, the beauty, and the life. Reign of the wise and just, Age of the good, the great, the true. Through these thick clouds of smoke and dust We calmly wait for you." It is a great part towards our individual spiritual and physical healing that we really acquaint our- selves with what we profess to know. We talk of the Holy Spirit sanctifying, but have we the witness in ourselves that we are sanctified .'' We speak of knowing Jesus as the Saviour, but are we assured that He is our Saviour ? can we say, " He died to save me ? " We read of being born again, of 300 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. being converted — can every one say, " I am a child of God ? " The faith we ought to have is a sure firm trust like that of St. Paul — " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Gal. ii. 20). Give Godralt'the glory of whatever is in man. There is no power in nature, -Jio power in us, except as divinely given ; and mercy comes through the Blood of Jesus'; therefore we pray for all — " Lord, all-pitying, Jesu blest, Grant them Thine eternal rest." The loss certainly is infinite if all our life we turn from and neglect the love of God. That loss can never become other than a loss though Divine Wisdom may prevent it passing into utter ruin ; and we thank the Almighty that the orderliness of nature, as discerned by science and revealed in Scripture, so rules king and peasant, so governs the miUions of our race, so takes part in the discipline of life, that it fits us all for progress, if we will, into higher degrees of service. St. Paul who healed the impotent man at Lystra, and the healed man himself; Elisha who recovered Naaman, and Naaman who was recovered ; passed into greater strength by healing and being healed. Those who talk of the wearisomeness, stale- ness, and unprofitableness of things, could make even this present life a sphere of realization for any prizes, worth all life's struggles. The grand old world is in every part of it linked to the indestructible ; the secrets of it and of God may be so known that APPLICATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 301 elevated feelings shall drive all shadows from the soul, kindle enthusiasm into a holy virtue, and make nature the groundwork for a Building of God eternal in the heavens. Do WE Learn from Experience and from Nature's Orderliness that Supernatural Cures are Per- formed ? ii> f' ' Every physician is aware that the saving of life, and the sinking away by death, cannot always be ascribed to human skill, or to the failure of drugs. Sudden changes, for better and for worse, come unlooked for. Rallyings of strength, or loss of power, renew life, or sentence to death, beyond the hope and fear of practitioner and patient. Cancers, tumours, consumptions, and other fatal diseases, have been removed in a way that set at naught all human skill. Broken bones, joined in less than twenty-four hours in answer to prayer, show that all things are possible to God. Objection. We are told, " the age of miracles is past." There is no warrant for that saying. The Pharisees declared of our Lord — " This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of devils " (Matt. xii. 24). They spoke in savageness and lied ; for it was not possible that the flash and outbreak of Satan could find place or shape in Christ, the form of God (Phil. ii. 6). Men would fain deny 302 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. that which is, and explain that which is not : their false explanations do not enlighten but befool the mind. There is in nature, and specially in man, a power subtler than material force, mightier than regiments of armed men, which fills our mind with holy aspira- tions, and strews our path with things to love. Were we to translate this knowledge into the art and part of doing good, in little things and great, we should always be able to raise common things into a higher region, and find that there is really a universal work- ing toward some universal result ; that some good men know secrets as to what is about to happen ; see possibilities and realities of a higher region and a higher good ; that there is a day dawning that will not deepen into night ; everything big with wit and instruction. We will Try to Find the Instruction. Imagination, strong thought, wishing, willing, are a great power in science. Sensations require a certain streHgtli- of stimulation, if you get lower than the lowest thinking force, there will still be sensation, though you feel it not. Imagination, however, is sometimes so vivid that unfelt sensations are actually felt by it, and become a very joy, or a very torment. In some diseases a man is so dead and yet alive, that deep pricks with a needle are not felt ; while gentle stroking with a camel's-hair brush are perceived. Thus, and in similar ways, we learn of nature's efforts APPLICATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 303 to make nature right ; and if we begin to practise the same natural art we, ourselves, may be healers too. Besides imagination, thought, wishing, willing, are other forces. Dr. Rudolf Heidenhain gently stroked once or twice along Dr. Kroner's bent right arm, at once it became stiff. Other muscles, other members, can be acted on in like manner. The effects are similar to states produced by catalepsy. This shows how easy it was for our Lord, with His Divine know- ledge and power, to work every kind of healing. Unusual forces may be communicated to any part of the body which shall restrain or even take away the usual forces. One individual may be the slave of another, as were that other a master demon. This throws fresh light upon various marvellous occurrences. It warrants belief that if our better powers, holiness, faith, love, obedience, were thoroughly studied and exercised they would bring the whole man, and the whole life, into union with God. There might be men among us, great or greater than the Apostles, men in whom Christ so dwells that His works are visibly done by them. There are realities within our reach that believing hands may always grasp, and be led on continually to higher service. There is need that sound-mindedness be preserved, lest we endeavour beyond our faith, and so go beyond our powers, as did the Apostles when they attempted and failed to heal the lunatic boy (Matt. xvii. 15, 21). There are two safeguards : Forgiveness of sin, con- sciousness of it being verified by the making of your 304 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. life free from wilful sin ; and the Gift of the Holy Ghost, proved by that soundness of mind which pre- serves you from acting independently of the Divine Will. A man, thus safe-guarded, becomes part of Jesus, who took part with him. His soUl is stamped with the Divine Image ; he is one with Christ, and Christ with him. Such a man will discefh what others have no senses for, atid possess powers to which' they come not nigh. Hewill do in his sphere what scientific men do in theirs. The scientifit man's imagination goes below thfe number of sixteert vibrations to the second, at which' we begin to hear ; and, not hearing, will be fit for irlvestigation as if he heard ; and will speculate wisely as to the fiber perceptions of other creatures. He learns artificially to quicken the heart- beats ; and that functional disturbances are due to changed conditions of the central organs of the nervous system^^the brain and spinal cord. He finds that some men easily excite those nervous centres, others cannot ; some men are very susceptible of excitement, others are not susceptible ; and that the same operators ahd operations do not always produce the same effects. The processes are said to be through decrease and prevention, or by increase, of activity in the ganglion cells of the cerebral cortex. That is no explanation. It is like saying " you raise your hand because you will raise it : " nevertheless, experienced men use these unknown things and forces to overcome mental maladies and to heal physical diseases. Not greatly unlike is that operation APPLICATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 305 by which men in union with Christ use the powers of Christ against unclean spirits ; " and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease " (Matt. X. i). Some scientific men concentrate every power of body and mind to prevent evil and advance good. They are recipients of gifts for various scientific administrations. They are workers for God. They are, in physical and physiological research, what gifted converted men are in the researches and ventures of faith. Some times men of science fail. Sometimes men of faith fail. The errors of both are due to want of more accurate Tsnowledge. In nature, and in use of Divine grace, ignorance, weakness, and self-will are the causes of -all- error. Ignorance, weakness, and self-will behave unseemly, are apt to vaunt, and be puffed up. Forgetting that there are differences of gifts and diversities of administrations, we are liable, in science, to confound mental and material processes as were they mostly the same. We do not sufficiently discriminate between the physical defect and the mental or moral error." Philosophers, aiming at the abstract, sometimes also forget that we only know mind in connection with matter, and only know of matter so far as we are instructed by mind. The wisest men see that the universe is not so much mechanism, as an organism ; and not so much an organism, as something more and better than both. Having many of the attributes of each, with others at present only in partial use, it rises into a X 3o6, THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. higher scale of being than either through great enlargement of each. With motions, other and more than mechanical ; with life, other and more than physical ; with arrangements, other and more than sentient ; there is advance into the mental, into the voluntary, into the emotional, into the moral, into the responsible. In every particle of the world, in all the worlds, there is a moving power with an inward stimulation so that things are as they are, that they may become something else. A Power forgiving our sins, healing our diseases, and enabling us to become all we can that is best. The scientific man lays hold of the outward sub- stances and forces of the worlds ; the philosophical man apprehends the external arrangements and pur- poses of things ; the religious man, uniting the strength and wisdom of both, is in personal union with the indwelling, presiding, eternal Power. Christ, God and man, unites the Creator with the creature ; and informs the creature with a Divine Personal Presence. Men like St. Paul, St. Peter, St. John, have many gifts, including those of healing. Other men find, and will find, that abiding in Christ as He abode in God, marvellous signs accompany them and follow them. These are signs of the real and material things which prove and approve our faith. They are harbingers, coming from heaven and earth, telling of a nobler science, and of a grander philosophy, yet to come. Our hints, scientific, philosophic, religious, are a base on which every prudent man may erect that APPLICATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 307 superstructure of reasonable faith which brings good hope, and nerves him to pray concerning the future account : " Dear Lord ! remember in that day Who was the cause Thou cam'st this way ; Thy sheep was strayed ; and Thou wouldst be E'en lost Thyself in seeking me. ' ' Shall all that labour, all that cost Of love, and e'en that loss, be lost ? And this lov'd soul judged worth no less Than all that way and weariness ? "Just Mercy, then. Thy reckoning be With my price, and not with me ; 'Twas paid at first with too much pain. To be paid twice, or once in vain." Part ofCelano's Great Hymn {died about 1255). Translated by Richard Crashaw, 1646. XXXVI. CDonUtttons of ^otoet as to jpatt6=|^ealtng. " So are prepared, as one would think, A race of men, right manfully to do The work of life." Rev. John Godson, Eirene, or Peace on Earth. MAN is a miniature of nature. An abridgment as to the whole ; but, in intensity of mental power, an enlargement as to every other creature. He is a being, as the stones are beings ; but partakes of motion, as the stars ; and js sentient, as the animals, but vastly more intellectual than they. He is lower, but like the angels in knowledge ; and as a maker, a ruler, a moral existence, is a symbol of God. He is not as one of those lakes, which have no outlet ; is not a mere glass, in which other things are only reflected ; he receives as a reservoir, but puts that which is received from nature to higher use. He makes and remakes it in other shapes. He causes it to serve future and greater purposes in art and science. He uplifts his material strength by spiritual power, and is a poet, an artist, a discoverer. He makes things new, even himself in wish, in thought, in C 308 ) CONDITIONS OF POWER AS TO FAITH-HEALING. 309 action ; and intelligently takes part with nature and with God in that universal process by which all things, all worlds, pass into other states and further conditions. The wise man, the_ggod.,man, is a healer. We do not overpraise man. He is small, yet the very head and heart of our earth as to intelligence and feeling. In him all sides of matter, of spirit, and of responsibility, mingle to form one person. He balances, sways, and judges all things. Because of him ships go down to the sea, overcome wind and wave, to bring treasures from afar. He_pqssesses present and future possibilities of existence which are beyond all imagining. Were all nature, at this moment struck immovable ; and the sun to rest sus- pended ; and rivers cease to flow ; and tides cease to roll ; and all men be dead ; we should, we are sure, live in a better world in complete and supreme happi- ness, to such glorious destiny does the high service of God in Christ, and Christ in man, bring all the faithful. We feel it, we know it, our spirit blends consciously with Him who is from eternity. Our intellect grasps the law of things, goes beyond the things visible and invisible, intelligent and unin- telligent, to the Being of beings, and rests in His immeasurable grandeur. St. Paul, an example to us, said, " I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me " (Phil. iv. 13). Man appeared in nature when its might and beauty were prevalent, as if the perfection of that was but his beginning. Of him also, in fulness of time, came that other beginning, that infancy and infant, the 310 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Babe of Bethlehem. The holiness of that Babe turned the Shadow of the Cross into splendour. His resurrection threw open the Gates of the Grave. His ascension brought us unto, and through the Portals of Heaven. His enthroning made Immortality the great truth of our destiny. Every infant is represented in that one Infant. Every man is naturally represented in that first Man ; and all men are naturally expanded so as to be supernaturally and spiritually represented in the second Man, who lived and died for the whole world. Whosoever receives that second Man, Jesus, into his own heart and mind, in nature , in person ^ in destiny, becomes a son of Gocl. A life of humiliation con- forms him to the humility of Jesus. Crucifixion of the flesh, of the corruptible, gives him resurrection in the incorruptible, in the renewed life of Jesus. In fulness of time, because of timely service, he will carry that service beyond time, and ascend the everlasting throne of Jesus. Of such men, and not of the Apostles only, Jesus declared, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also ; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father" (John xiv. 12). Jesus not only heals men and makes them great. He enables them to heal and make others great. He, who wrought so many miracles of healing, gave the same signs to follow those who should afterwards ; believe, and they did follow (Mark xvi. 18, 20). \j The healing process is twofold : the saving of the CONDITIONS OF POWER AS TO FAITH-HEALING. 311 ^^ody, the salvation of the soul. It separates the good frotntKe~Ba37"and shows what both are. The good, act as Christ acted ; do that which makes other men show their true selves ; the tree good and his fruit good, or the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt. St. Peter gave an example of this power, when he declared concerning the impotent man, " By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man stand before you whole " (Acts iv. 10). By this same name, and with like power, are men now con- verted, are men now healed. The healing, at present is wrought individually, as a drop here and there ; but soon a plentiful shower of grace and blessing will come to refresh the whole earth (Hab. ii. 13, 14). What are the conditions of power as to this great healing-?- — — ^ THe~crnalifying condLtjons f or reception jitflpower to heal ^e strong faith,_fervent_kuie^aml_surr,ender of the whole man to God. There must be subjection to the Holy Word ; union with the true Church ; witness, of the Spirit as to membership in Christ ; sound mindedness so that thought and motive, being and doing, through abiding in Christ, are responsive to His will, and prepare the soul adequately to receive, and rightly to use, the gift. When this high spiritual state crowns due mental activity and clear- ness, and the Lord inquires, "Are ye able to drink of My Cup, and be baptized with My Baptism ? " our deliberate, loving reply is, " Lord, by Thy help, we are able." Then the Lord confers those graces and gifts 312 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. which we require for due performance of our functions as members of Christ's Body. Our soul becomes as an open scroll, on which are written the marvels of an everlasting Will ; and these marvels, " like truths of science waiting to be caught," open inward, and God within lights all our face. The governing conditions of the power to heal are that wisdom in our faith which asks according to the will of God ; and that power proportionately to under- stand, according to the analogy of faith, the truths which are set forth by the gift conferred. Then that completeness and well balancing of character with the trials and temptations, accompanying the gifts, will be added to strengthen them and enlarge the believer into perfection. It will be further found that right-mindedness, fired with zeal, is a ruling condition for the performance of good and durable religious work ; and for prevalence in prayer as to enlargement of capacity to receive and use any heavenly gift. This right-mindedness takes us away from faith in our own faith to faith in Christ : that is, into full belief as to His truth and power ; puts us in posses- sion of them, makes us sons of God (John i. 12). " What more near to God, more like To God, than such a life ? Blessing and blessed ! " The conditions for use of any gift are not fastidious- ness, as to what we eat and drink ; not the living in guilds, as sisters or brothers ; not a disposition to sadness rather than gladness ; " heaven opens in- ward." Useless vexation and worry consume force, and propagate a deteriorating influence. Pleasurable CONDITIONS OF POWER AS TO FAITH-HEALING. 313 sensations, rising from the sense of forgiveness, and of union with God through Christ, impart a good tone, well keep up the brain, and act most beneficially while conveying a delicious consciousness of latent power. At such times, though the body may be sinking under dire disease, the soul will soar aloft. Much of the noblest work is done at times when, though hands hang down through weakness and pain, the soul is verily present with the Lord. Prayer should not be a murmur ; nor an attempt to make our will God's will, instead of His will ours ; but be used as something divinely appointed to foreshorten the tract of time, and hasten the crescent promises of ancient Inspiration. When we are most like Jesus, according to our place and work in the Body of Christ, our personality is carried to highest attain- ment, our character is stamped, elevated in style, and our labour made to prosper, in " The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill." Having thought of the qualifying, the governing, the practic al con di tion s of faith-healing, remember that present gifts and graces are earnests of greater possessions in this world and in that to come. The cheerfulness and strength imparted by this conviction soon render the poorest home cleanly and bright ; raise low conditions by diligence and economy ; give that holy sort of mental culture which, strengthening the whole man, shows well in contrast with the victims of vice. Such a person lives with more purpose, day by day, strives to know the reason 314 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. of things. He takes the thing, or things, most adverse to him before God : if those are not amendable, other things will be ; or he will know the wherefore. He is not in continual fright as to body or soul. He ventures, but only in that assurance of faith and sound-niindedness which, being God-guided, never fails. He is a man, like St. Paul, who makes even the thorn in the flesh a delight and an advantage to the spirit. He is a man in whom God lives, for whom Christ died, whom the Divine Spirit teaches. He will not lack any good thing ; nor can anything that God's power, wisdom, love, should effect, be impossible to that man. There is no inward cancelling of senses misused. His powers are well exercised in the noble deeds which overcome the world, the flesh, the devil. He cannot have a better preparation for the future life. All things being made possible to him, the highest dignity assured to him, as son of God, he is most nobly introduced amongst the angels. He has been healed of sin and all weakness. He has been a helper and healer of other, his wayfarers to Heaven. He is assured, as to possession in the new life, of those most excellent things which surpass all understanding. " But oh ! Thou bounteous Giver of all good. Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown ! Give what Thou canst, — without Thee we are poor ; And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away." Ccraifer. XXXVII. Farifging of Bibt'ne l^caltng. " He giveth power to the faint ; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength." — ISA. xl. 29. " Somewhere in the grief help for the grief is hidden. On the Divine side of sorrow, seek consolation for the sorrow in new relations to God, with fuller interpretations and larger uses for man." — Anon. ALL truths are bound together, and are number- less as the worlds : they comprise the Works of God, and the Words of God, representative of the Divine Nature. They form one splendid reality vast as the universe and vaster: for they mean all that universe, and the Creator of it. The power of God in truths and things may best be discerned, not so much in the great and terrible, as "in the meek loveliness spread around us in softness still and holy." His goodness, to embrace us, slides down by thrills through all creation, entering eye and ear and heart in every place. His goodness and beauty, being thus around us ; He gives power to the faint, and increase of strength to them who have no might ; so that His goodness restores us to Paradise, ( 31S ) 3i6 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. and we have in ourselves example and proof of that Divine Healing which brings salvation to man and to nature. Life is stronger far than death, and will reign for ever. " THe changing seasons, ever coming, going, Like four Evangelists, His praise record ; Nature, herself, is but a verger showing The silent, glorious temple of the Lord." Lord Tennyson, God, of whom we thus know, is that Infinite, who occupies infinitude ; that Eternal, of whose Life eternity is the symbol ; that Almighty Wisdom, whom the worlds represent. He would be hidden and unknowable, were not the invisible things of His Godhead^^clearJy seen" by the thin^s_Jhar are made (Rom. i. 20). How can we know surely that He giveth power to the faint; and jhat to tlferaTwhTrhave no might He increaseth strength? We know it by_creation. There was a time when not one of the many worlds now in existence could be found. Themselves, the things in them, and their laws, began in a state altogether different from the preisent. Scripture j.ssures us of this, and-science declares it as one of the greatest truths. When no world was, not even a chaos, but all weak, shapeless, barren ; God, with His strength, made things ; in wisdom, shaped them ; in great wealth, rendered them fruitful ; thus, to them that were not. He gave power to be ; increased that strength that they might continue, and be very beautiful in the warmth of life and in brightness of intelligence. VERIFYING OF DIVINE HEALING. 317 This greatest of all proofs, because a universal fact, is not so vast that we are unable to grasp it. In fact, we lay by the side of it, so to speak, another proof which we gather from the future. It is this ; no particle of matter, however small ; no life, though so little that we cannot see it ; no force, even if it be unfelt ; perishes. They are all carried on, moment by moment, into something else, somewhere else; and reappear as by a resurrection after they seem to be dead. Thus that grandeur of proof, which almost terrified us by its vastness filling the universe, is now before our eyes stamped into everything, more specially in ourselves, as a message from the Eternal. He giveth power, to us when we faint, and when we have no might He increaseth strength, enabling every one of us to say, " Because He lives, I shall live also ; " and this truth of the world of life repeats itself within the spirit world. The truth filling the universe in its grandeur, and embracing all in goodness, so that not one little thing is passed by, greatly consoles us ; it is the light and life of men. Elihu, of old, spoke of it — " God my Maker, who giveth songs in the night . . . teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven" (Job xxxv. 10, 11 ; xxxvii. 2-13 ; xUi. 2). Indeed, God is all in all to us. His Life lives in us, and will live for ever and ever. He is the truth and power of our manhood in the natural frame ; making all our race of one fellowship. He is 3i8 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Divine Life and wisdom in our vital and moral existence ; so that if we do not depart from Him, all is well. We go from good to greater good, from high to higher. There is always new life before us, a continual healing, even a fresh living when we die. All is well ! " Even through the hollow eyes of death," our greatest poet says, " I spy life peering." The triple truth in the universe, as a whole ; in every part of it ; and specially as to men ; may be further proved by Holy Scripture. The healing process appears first in the promise of a Saviour (Gen. iii. 15). The essence of it is a supernatural healing working in nature and more abundantly in men. The Patriarchs were told of it, and tell us of it, in the divine gift of all nations to Abraham that they may be blessed in him (Gen. xii. 1-3 ; xxvi. 3 ; xxviii. 13, 14). The Deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and the Giving of the Law, are by the same God, the Healer (Exod. xv. 26). The Prophets make plain that the splendour of the Temple and the Sacrifices prepare for that greater healing by the Gospel, when God's glory shall cover all lands (Hab. ii. 14) ; and all nations be brought unto God's great city (Rev. xxi. 26). The whole centres in Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God ; whose Birth, Life, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, are the means by which the elements of nature, our own flesh, mind, and will, are so taken into the Person of the Eternal Son ; that all things, and we with them, are to be glorified (Rom. viii. 20-22). VERIFYING OF DIVINE HEALING. 319 " Hark ! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers : ' Prepare the way ! a God, a God appears ! ' ' A God, a God ! ' the vocal hills reply ; The rocks proclaim th' approaching Deity." Alexander Pope. A man's and a nation's religion is the chief fact about them. The thing they feel, believe, act upon, as to their duty now, and their life to come. The fact that we are God-made men, God-preserved men, is a reality grand enough, when pressed into the heart, to make the very poorest drudge a hero. It is pressed into the hearts of millions, and they are so healed as to be delivered from all their troubles, and made able to live for ever. Even those who will not come to Christ, know that our Faith declares plainly as to our little present life that we are but "portals of our- selves," we reach upward high as Heaven, and down- ward low as Hell. Even wicked men feel in their heart, it is better to rise to the one than sink to the other : the one is Life eternal, the other is Death eternal. Our minds yield richer store of nobler, greater beauty the truer and higher as we look ; and more awful wonders when we plunge to seek in depths unlimited. The teaching and work of Jesus, when understood and acted upon, enable a man to attain all worth ; when not acted on, a man goes down to all worthless- ness. This, that so ennobles us, rests on the invisible ; not only as the real but the only reality, because it abides every moment in the eternal ; and this resting on and in the eternal tells of everything — " The work is all Divine." Science, all the sciences endeavour to 320 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. go into the deep infinitude which they can never fsthom, but will ever try to fathom. Things known are hut- a filni_on_ the -illimitable ocean; and nature, vast as it is, becomes to every one who rightly thinks of it a miracle ; and we, ourselves, are a miracle — the miracle of God ; and thus are a proof, of ourselves and in ourselves, of the great work which He is doing. That Book of Job is a grand book, one of the most ancient books in the world. A book for all time, for all men. It is the oldest statement of that wonderful problem : man's ways and destiny, God's ways and providence. It is simple for the meek and under- standing heart. It is a parable of God and Satan ; of good and evil ; of Divine purpose conquering, healing, the maladies of nature and the diseases of men. It is a summary of Providence. So true is it, so plain is it, that the man of clear eyesight, and a vision discerning good and evil, enters the repose of reconcilement with God ; and is so healed, as Job was, that his latter end is better than the beginning ; for all things material, all things spiritual, are healed and made sublime in God. The true becomes the real ; shams, lies, are the rubbish to be burned that, if there is any gold in it, the gold may be found. The great mystery of existence, and of good and evil glares upon us with its terrors, and beams in its splendours. We look through the shows of things into the things themselves ; and thus learn of our- selves, that " they are wealthy who are rich within." Through our trials, our sufferings, our work, we gaze VERIFYING OF DIVINE HEALING. 321 into what they mean : that Creation is the shadow of God ; that the laws of the world are representative of greater laws ; that these laws and Creation co-operate in God's great Healing Purpose. This Healing Pur- pose now is only as a beam of light crossing the infinite, but soon we shall know fully the Divine Idea itself; which puts it within the power of every one who will to rise, even from what seems Death and Hell, unto the Highest Heaven ; for He is God who gives " power to the faint ; and to them that have no might . . . increaseth strength." ' ' Therefore we come, Thy gentle call obeying. And lay our sins and sorrows at Thy feet ; On everlasting strength our weakness staying. Clothed in Thy robe of righteousness complete : Then rising and refresh'd we leave Thy throne. And follow on to know as we are known. " H. L. L. XXXVIII. iWoiiern ©xpErfente ag to jpatt6=|^faltng. " I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. " — 3 John 2. " Christ's thought and power are reflected in the thought and power of every true Christian ; even as every natural flower is the reflection of a spiritual on the other side. " — Scrap Book. General and Particular Examples of Divine Healing. MOST devout men know, by actual experience and by the reliable testimony of others, that certain periods of their lives are the scene of physical, mental, and mor^il healings — not less than miraculous. These good times are as those brightnesses when the sun hangs for an hour golden in the west as if just to show how glorious he can be. Our own personal experience extends to things which cannot be fully explained as parts of an un- guided and merely material course. Their time, order, and continuity were so welded together as to be certainly providential. There is no mingle-mangle, nor is there present completeness, in any man's life. ( 32» ) MODERN EXPERIENCE AS TO FAITH-HEALING. 323 The infiniteness, about and within, by which the thoughtful person thinks of a thousand universes, and finds them all too narrow for his universality ; or concentrates in a luminous point, or bright moment, the great extent and manifold movements of a large city, or the myriad desires, labours, and events of a whole life ; show that life to be a part in some vast process where is no unheeded portion, and prove that man's mind to be in relation with the Power and Wisdom guiding all, completing all. Pass to that which others know. A lady, daughter of a clergyman, the assistant minister of a church, in which the writer for some time rendered service, was immediately raised, by the effect of earnest prayer, from a state in which she could neither stand, nor walk, to perfect health. She came down from her chamber, partook of food, and without relapse lived several years. This happened some time before the late revival of assurance as to faith- healing. An interesting fact is related of the Rev. Henry Venn. About six months before his death, he left the Rectory of Yelling, and settled at Clapham near his son. His health rapidly failed, and he was often on the brink of the grave. His medical friend, Pear- son, observed that Mr. Venn's mind was so elated at the prospect of death, that it actually proved a stimulus to life. On one occasion some fatal symp- toms were observed, and Mr. Venn said, " Surely these are good symptoms .■" " Mr. Pearson replied, " Sir, in this state of joyous excitement you cannot 32+ THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. die!" At length, on the 24th of June, 1797, at the age of seventy- three, his happy spirit was released. Thousands of jrien^^and women have received answersTd"prayer, deliverances, arid healing comforts, which exceed^dThe natural orden Th^ prove that prayer for-afr sorts and conditions of men, and our general thanksgiving for mercies vouchsafed, are representative of power, and of not less actual gifts. Dr. Lloyd Tuckey, in a number of the Nineteenth Century Review, gave a graphic account of what he had seen at Nancy, Amsterdam, and other places. There are well-known Orphan Institutions, Philan- thropic and Mission Works, maintained by means of prayer to God without solicitation to man. The Miiller Orphanage, at Bristol, has thus been supported during more than fifty years. Mr. George Miiller wrote, from Darjeeling, that since the 5th of March, 1834, he had received .£"1,194,415 os. o\d. There are, he stated, 5986 pupils in sixty-six schools. No debts are contracted, no goods taken on credit, no appeal is made for contributions. We thus learn that there is more in everything than weTcaa see, "that atiiaze ~indeed-the very facul- ties of eyes and ears." Within every man's thought is a greater thought. Within every man's character is that which may make it higher, or carry it lower. In all outer relations and circumstances is a deeper and a higher, a vaster and a wider, the natural everywhere touching the supernatural, and the common shaking hands with miracles many. M. Henri Lasserre, author of a very beautiful MODERN EXPERIENCE AS TO FAITH-HEALING. 325 French translation of the Holy Gospels, was greatly afflicted with sore eyes, producing blindness. Listen- ing to the suggestion of M. de Freycinet, he used water from the Lourdes Grotto : his eyes became suddenly well. He wrote a charming narrative of this and other marvels. He has since published a translation of the Gospels, so much required by the French people, that in one year it passed through twenty-five editions. It was blessed by the Pope, received Imprimatur of the Archbishop of Paris, but now, alas ! the so-called " Sacred Congregation," fearing that those Gospels will alienate the people from Romish observances, have condemned and suppressed the translation. It is to be hoped that Lasserre will not be daunted, nor turned aside from any work God gives him to do ; but always say as did Robert Browning — "I have looked to Thee from the beginning, Straight up to Thee through all the world. Which like an idle scroll lay furled. To nothingness on either side, And since the day Thou wast so descried, Spite of the weak heart, so have I Lived ever, and so fain would die. Living and dying. Thee before. " Christmas Eve. ' A dignitary of our own Church, the Rev. Canon Basil Wilberforce, has written in reply to many inquiries, as to his own personal experience, " I have no shadow of doubt that I was healed by the Lord's blessing upon His own word recorded in St. James V. 15, 16; but, as in so many other cases, there was sufficient margin of time, and possibility of change of 326 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. tissue, between the anointing and the recovery, to justify the sceptic in disconnecting the two ; arid, therefore, my own experience has been of more value in strengthening my own faith than in the direction of public testimony. I can only say that my internal ailment was of such a nature that leading surgeons declared it to be incurable except at the cost of a severe operation, which leading physicians thought me unable at the time to endure with safety. While endeavouring at the seaside to gain strength for the operation, the passage, St. James v. 15, 16, was im- pressed with indescribable force upon my mind. I resisted it, and reasoned with myself against it for two months. I even came up to London, and settled in a house near the eminent surgeon that I might undergo the operation, but the spiritual pressure increased until at last I sent for elders, men of God,- fuU of faith, by whom I was prayed over and anointed, and in a few weeks the internal ailment passed entirely away. ' This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in mine eyes.' . . . The immediate effect upon myself was an influx of spiritual joy and com- plete rest in the Lord's Will. I was not conscious at the time of any physical change, and it was only quite gradually, after several weeks, that the internal trouble slowly healed and passed entirely away." — The faith and healing of this man are precious to many besides himself. He was no fugitive from life's duties, nor a man of cloistered faith. It was not the healing of a recluse nor of an ascetic ; but of one who knows the world, the ways of men in MODERN EXPERIENCE AS TO FAITH-HEALING. 327 it, who has proved all things, and holds fast that which is good. He knows — " God's in His Heaven : All's right with the world." The Rev. George Morris says — " I cannot but be assured that ministers of Christ and Church-workers whose daily life is a constant activity of mind and body in numerous pledged engagements, on the un- failing discharge of which so much of the deepest needs of others continually depend, need scarcely ever allow even great suffering, or natural peril from their condition, to interfere with their regular work, provided they act simply in faith in our Lord." ^ We add, it is not every one who can receive this ; and no man should thus venture unless firmly persuaded in his own mind ; if not of faith, it will be a sin. It is impossible to read the cases of healing recorded by Mr. Morris and not for a man of faith to know that the power of God was displayed. The experience of the Rev. W. E. Boardman,^ of the Rev. A. B. Simp- son,^ the remarkable life and works of Dorothea Trudel,* are a testimony not to be disregarded by any sound-minded person. They are proof that the prayer of faith saves the sick, and that the Lord raises them up. The Rev. James Thomas Butlin, B.A., and Scholar I "Our Lord's Permanent Healing Office in His Church : " Intro- duction 2. (Elliot Stock.) « " The Lord that Healeth Thee." (J. Snow & Co.) 3 "The Gospel of Healing." (J. Snow & Co.) < "DoBotheaTrudeljor, The Prayer of Faith." (Morgan & Scott.) 328 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Vicar of St. Clement's Parish, Nechells, Birmingham, was miracu- lously cured of brain congestion ; and his wife was not less marvellously healed of an internal disease of twelve years' duration. His experience, during many years, extends to scores of cases. The diseases were of various kinds ; and, not a few of them, surgical cases. The spiritual was far greater than the temporal blessing, though the latter was like a resurrection.^ This gentleman stated that a woman was healed of two such dangerous tumours that the Surgeons of the Hospital would not operate, fearing that she could not live through the operation. She is now well. He further states, " I have known scarlet fever to leave within an hour or two of offering prayer. I have known bones to return to their true position after being for long out of place. Heart disease, dropsy, scalds, wounds, have all been healed in my experience. Cancer has been healed ; and in some cases, where it has not been healed,, it has lost all its terrors, and the pains have entirely ceased ; though the patient has lived, perhaps, six months after taking the case to the Lord." 2 " I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the world and out of it." Robert Browning. All cases are not healed. There are notorious deceivers, manufacturers of spurious miracles. Man's, wickedness ought not to render our faith void. The • Letter to the Author, October i, 1889. « Ibid. MODERN EXPERIENCE AS TO FAITH-HEALING. 329 answer may not come when and how the faith and prayers of true worshippers would have it ; but in these cases God means to give more and better of another sort than that is asked. The love which knows the need of all creatures will certainly provide for them. There must be struggle, privation, and probation, that patience may work perfection by experience. It is no real objection that those who heal others sometimes remain themselves unhealed ; and not a few die early. It was said of our Lord, " He saved others, Himself He cannot save." Of old time, " women received their dead raised to life again," but they themselves died. Men who " stopped the mouths of lions and quenched the violence of fire," were at times " destitute, afflicted, tormented." The Apostles and early Christians laid hands on the sick, recovering them ; but did not always themselves receive deliverance. The power is not in man, but in God. ,The fact is we must every one go right down to our own work and do it not less patiently than diligently, not less in sorrow, if needs be, than in joy. Those we call the lower graces com- plete the higher. Possibly, when lowest we are highest. Did our faith need confirmation concerning Divine Healing, science reveals analogous processes, not less mysterious. The Rev. Albert Warren stated, in the Standard newspaper, May 28, 1890, that within his own experience he knew of marvellous healings by means of mesmerism, or hypnotism. 330 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. " A woman, fifty-eight years of age, cured of almost total deafness of fifty years' standing. " Cure of white swelling or housemaid's knee. " Instances of painless operation, both in the con- scious and unconscious state. " Cure of a little girl, the daughter of one of my parishioners, of a severe form of St. Vitus's dance." He states, " In addition to these, I have constantly removed minor aches and pains, and, for the most part, almost instantaneously." Within our body is a central motor mechanism used for carrying out definite movements. It is in connection with other centres which are stimulated by the nerves of the eye, of the ear, of the palate, and of the muscles of the skin, so as to give rise to certain changes. These changes, when consciousness is main- tained, lead to ideas of the particular movements. When consciousness is absent, the changes only stimulate the relative motor mechanism, and the resulting movement is automatic without any or very little idea in the chief central motor mechanism. Hence, a conscious idea gives rise to a projected movement, and an " unconscious perception " of a sentient movement acts as a stimulus. A patient, who cannot feel the contact of his foot with the ground, can manage to stand or walk by looking at his limbs. A mother, unable to feel the pressure of her child on her arms, can sustain it so long as her eyes are fixed on it ; the moment her eyes are withdrawn her limbs drop powerless. In certain conditions of body and mind, sleep is MODERN EXPERIENCE AS TO FAITH-HEALING. 331 brought about by the ticking of a watch ; the mem- bers of the body are rendered motionless ; speech can be made automatic, the speaker not having any in- teUigence as to the words. Commands are obeyed ; the greatest follies are committed ; and not only can men be made to dream, they shall dream of the things they are told. Fontaine wrote admirable verses in his sleep. Mathematicians solve problems, schoolboys learn their tasks, all sorts of mental feats are done asleep ; and remembered, or not remem- bered, in waking moments. Alexander is said to have planned battles ; and Dr. Haycock, of Oxford, to have delivered sermons ; planning and preaching were both well done. One side of a man can be made immovable, great disturbances be effected in the sensations as to colour, and the ordinary phenomena of colour-blindness be greatly changed. Professor Cohn produced results by which a completely colour- blind person distinguished, while subjected to one- sided hypnosis, colours which in her normal state were totally indistinguishable. Dispassionate and sufficiently extended investiga- tion shows that there is a general testimony of Christians as to various miraculous manifestations, physical and mental, of Divine healing. There is something hidden in every one of us. Only higher faculties, unwontedly used, can bring it into play. There are senses which give suggestions that are not wholly apprehensible. These are indications of a higher power exhibiting itself as a token of some greater harmony soon to be discovered. Science 332 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. attests natural workings which are somewhat akin ; but no person should enterprise such undertakings unless capable of procuring scientific results ; or, being a believer, is in possession of a Divine gift. The gift will be attested by soundness of mind, and by the witness of a holy life. Life is not a dream, but the theatre of vast thought, energy, and service for God and man. The most valuable knowledge comes by toil and suffering ; and, when life is duly lived, the transition is to higher degree. ■ " There are heights Beyond our dreaming, There are joys Beyond our scheming, In the purpose and the counsel Of our Lord ; And our peace is folden, Within the promise golden — ' I am with thee, and will keep thee, To the utmost of My Word.' " Clara Thwaites. Perfect faith in our Lord as to our body and soul, our joys and sorrows, our life and death, has to be wrought effectively in us by study of Holy Scripture, by prayer, by meditation, by our daily conduct, until by Divine gift of more and more grace it becomes a part of our character. Then our life every day will be as the fruition of yesterday, and the future will come with riper fruit and better. Angels visit us, as they did the Shepherds at Bethlehem, though our work may be secular and poor ; and will come to us when in sacred service, as to Zechariah ; and perfect MODERN EXPERIENCE AS TO FAITH-HEALING. 333 faith receive secrets of God, wonderfully brought, as marks of high honour, taking us into Divine friend- ship. Thus our life will be moulded into form more godly. Some of us live to experience all that the Holy Spirit has spoken and written : we bless God for it. The peace of God in our minds, the love of God in our heart, experience of truth in our life, are proof indeed that God fulfils every promise. If we are of lower grade, not less lovely, as children with Jesus, we shall know the power of His word to create all good in us. Though He came to us a Babe who could not speak ; He being then so feeble, that mother's arms sustained Him ; yet had He with His own hand spread out the heavens. We, by faith, become His fellows ; and, though in weakness, are made very strong ; He, of small life here, had but narrow room ; yet could not the whole world hold Him, nor the devil restrain Him ; and we too, who are nothing at all, have share in Him who is the All in all. Sometimes there is a needs be that we should not heal ourselves, nor make others better, being sub- ject, as He, the Lord, was, to the Father's will ; but when weakness and darkness fly, strength and light will come. Then the horizon is illumined, then we are Divinely Healed, then we dwell in the splendours of an unquenchable immortality. XXXIX. a Mm (BxtiWtnt Simag. "To thine ownself be true ; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. " Hamlet, act i. sc. 3. IF you examine a beautiful statue, a noble picture, or an ingenious piece of mechanism, the whole will be found complete ; and part to part so adjusted that nothing lacks anywhere ; discourse of reason extends all through ; his own inward greatness has been the artist's model. The world, in every part, is filled with more beauty and greater order. Take time to view the mystery : it coils all things that they may have a greater spring, and it gives all to us. Study the smallest and largest as to spaces and durations ; mark how the various events fit into one another, moment to moment, act to act, and form a universal master- piece ; the knowledge of which shows that our memory is a blessing from Heaven. The past foreruns itself and prepares the present, ( 334 ) A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 335 the present foreruns itself and prepares the future. Truth is wrapped in truth, and events are more fittingly strung together than the jewels in a neck- lace. This proves to a good man, that if he well arrange his life, force, will, and wisdom, he shall stand complete in use and beauty. He will not sail, as fabled Hercules, amidst disasters, but truly and safely ; for the wisdom and strength of God guide the frail bark, his body, and sustain the weakness of his spirit : "Time and its events, during the whole course of nature, Are co-operant for noble way out to the light." Solomon said long ago, " The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be ; and that which is done is that which shall be done : and there is nothing new under the sun. . . . No man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end " (Eccles. i. 9; iii. 11). In all the greatness. He is beyond us ; and in the infinitesimal littleness. He escapes ; nevertheless. He is never away. In every grief, somehow, somewhere, help for the grief is given ; and on the divine side of sorrow, consolation for the sorrow is found. No surprises, nor chances, nor miracles, come unawares to set at nought the providence of God ; or add a thorn too much in the believer's chaplet of suffering. Whatever was, is, or will be, are parts in the universal arrangement of Wisdom, foreseeing all ; of Power, constraining all. That we may not regard the arrangement as fated, and leaving no room for freedom ; fortune or misfortune, life or death, poverty 336 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. or wealth, miracles and signs and wonders, are touches of the Master's Hand to denote His presence. " By one great Heart the Universe is stirred : By its strong pulse, suns climb the brightening blue." We also know of the Master by another wonder : all great things are made of little things ; and when we lay hold of little things, they go lessening and lessening, till at last God alone is behind them. " Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin : and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these " (Matt. vi. 28, 29). The lilies are guided in their way and the guidance makes it lovely. They are a picture- promise that we shall be yet more lovely. Consider every beautiful thing, we shall, be, more beautiful ; every strong thing, we shall be stronger. Observe Christ's miracles of healing, they promise that we shall be healed. ^AJJjthat^-He did in His earthly life, was but the beginning of good things to be. done in His Heavenly Life. He climbed the heights, we shall ascend whither He is gone. He entered the most glorious place of Majesty, thither shall we follow Him. We can never come to an end of all the good that Jesus is to us. Eternity only is vast enough that we may duly praise Him. Infinity only wide enough to contain all the happiness He gives. Why then are men so lowly, and why do the holiest suffer so much ? Apostles, even, who healed others, could not always help themselves. The prison A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 337 doors were shut against St. James, though an angel opened them for St. Peter. St. Paul, imprisoned, could not go forth to preach ; nor can our best men, nowadays, always do their best, so do circumstances crib, cabin, and confine them. View the Matter Closely. Only by labour can thought be made happy, and only by thought can labour become highly useful. Occasionally " fortune brings in some boats that are not steer'd ; " yet it is certain, " To darkness fleet souls that fly backwards." Sometimes, like Judah, we cannot drive out the chariots of iron (Judg. i. 19) : either our faith fails, or through neglect of labour and skill, we have to make our profit out of endurance. In study of Scripture, we go on little by little, caring as to every word ; in science, to- day, the infinitesimally small are found to contain wonders great as the universe ; but we cannot all of us achieve wonders as St. Paul did ; nor is every man of science able to discover as Sir Isaac Newton ; nor do all common soldiers gain victories like those of Marlborough ; but if in our place, being en- trusted only with little things, we do our best and put them to their best, God will make the best of us. The Answer Meets not all the Case. That is because of our Ignorance. We make a wrong estimate of things, if we think that the z 338 THE NATtjRAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. worldly style is the highest style. It is of some goQcLto-have pleasure, " to show in high station the brilliancy of pomp withotit ihcufring the lassitude of luxury." It is by far the best to have pleasure in sacrediiess_- St. Paul found, contrary to expectation, that when he was weak then he was strong. There are some Christians praying and praying for better things than they have and for larger opportunities ; but they do not best use what is already theirs, nor do they fully occupy present opportunities. They do not so much desire being conformed to God's will, as bestir themselves that His will may be conformed to theirs. Do all you can do, make the most of time, try so to plant the grain of mustard that it shall grow into a tree : you will soon find that the whole kingdom of God has come into you. The narrowness, where any exists, is your own, not God's. Consider Jesus : sometimes He escaped from the malice of His foes, at other times He endured it. The wicked hands that grasped the stones, could not stone Him ; but wicked hands crucified Him. As He was, so are we in the world ; and of all the present ways of life it is the most excellent. If, like Him, we as sons learn obedience by the things we suffer (Heb. v. 8, 9); and so suffer that, like St. Paul we may fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ and of His Church (Col. i. 24) ; we shall do the best we can, and be the best we can. Christ kept nothing from us. No faculty of His human mind or soul but had to do with our salvaltion. A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 339 He was not always on the mountain communing with God, He was in the plain enduring the contradiction of sinners. Every limb of His body suffered for us, every drop of His blood was shed for us, not so much in grand circumstances, but in a rabble of events, even His death was most ignominious. It was to bring His greatness into our littleness. It was to infuse a divinity into common things, that baser metals might be turned into gold ; that the sins and pains and degradation, the devil brings, may give place to the righteousness of God, the consolations of God, the glory of God. This, God's plan, is the best plan ; of all ways to Heaven it is the most excellent way. " In everything give thanks : for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you " (i Thess. v. 18). Take an example. It is suitable to most men's functions on the earth, and wisely ordered, that they are born poor, live poor, and die poor. Martin Luther was one of the poorest : at school he sang for alms, and sought bread from door to door. Hardship, stern necessity, were his companions ; neither man nor circumstance put on a smiling face to flatter Martin Luther. Thus his large inquisitive soul became larger and more inquisitive, fuller of faculty and sensibility, he became acquainted with realities, and remained acquainted. Intensely real and hating shams, he made other men real and haters of shams. Himself, a teacher and healer, he made others to teach and heal. He greatly prepared for the greater future into which we all are hasting. 340 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. " This is my joy, which ne'er can fail. To see my Saviour's arm prevail ; To mark the steps of grace ; How new-born souls, convinced of sin. His blood revealed to them within, Extol my Lord in every place." Take some common facts. J^W, eyen the comnjonest things in natyre go beyond themselves and show, as we investigate them, worlds of wonders behind a veil : the things represented being greater than the repre- sentation. There is no exception to the rule, it includes the tiny moss and the majestic sun. It follows from this, jthat the joys of feasts, of music, of communion with the Saints and with Godj are as shadows of greater joys. The loveliness of flowers, the gleam of stars, houses good and great, mental and moral beauty, are the faint outlining of more loveliness ; are a transient shiqe of a greater splendour ; are lower structures to tell of heavenly mansions ; are a beauty to be perfected in the pre- sence of our Lord. Being sons of God, we inherit the earth and all in it ; Heaven, and all there is in that We shall enjoy all that God can do for us, and He will enable us to do all that we can for Him. Consequently, let us jiot be anxious for miracles, for visions, tongues of eloquence in mystery, and healings extraordinary ; but endeavour to be all and do all God will have, and that very truly, very simply, very humbly. It is the most excellent way. "Through Time, all things change ; but Spring, After the World's Winter, will bring a new Summer. Though stream cease to flow ; Though wind cease to blow ; A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 341' Though cloud cease to fleet ; Though heart cease to beat ; The Glass of Time, when kindly shaken, shall Run again with Golden Saiids. " These are truths gathered from Scripture, and by research in the searches of scientific men. We add a few more. Death, caused by sin, and a part of the present natural arrangement ; is made by the righteousness of Christ to bring a more blissful life than it takes away. Behind it, is the sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection. Out of the dark valley, we go into realms of light ; from the skeleton embrace, we are carried into the Everlasting Arms of God. We shall dwell in a land where the sun no more goes down, nor the moon withdraws itself ; the Lord will be our everlasting light, and the days of mourning be ended (Isa. Ix. 20). This hath God arranged for us. What will you do with it? George Herbert says — " A nian that looks on glass', On it may stay his eye ; Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, And then the Heaven espy." Those who look on glass, and on it stay their eye, are the feebly scientific who find no wisdom in nature ; who speak of men as villains of necessity ; of fools, as being so by compulsion ; of knaves, thieves, tricksters, who cheat like scoundrels in order to live like gentlemen, as trying to catch the iridescence of a bubble ; and of themselves as clever, all-round men, by spherical predominance. So they turn frorn 342 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. God : kill the physician, and bestow the fee upon the foul disease — " But by bad courses may be understood, That their event can never fall out good." King Richard II., act ii. sc. I. The pleasure seekers, sensual ; the godless, devilish ; fellows of an infinite tongue, even to deny the instinct that would make them better men ; pretend to live aright by wrong ; and profess, if there is a Heaven, they shall win it by debating and denying all sacred- ness, having no faith at all. They are awful men, whose existence darkens into untold horrors. Not reproach are our words, but in warning, that they may seek Jesus the universal Benefactor. " Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in Thy presence will prevail to make. What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, AVhat parchid grounds refresh, as vfith a shoyfer. We kneel, and all around us seems to lower. We rise, and all, the distant and the near. Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear ; We kneel, how weak, we rise how full of power. Why therefore should we do ourselves the wrong, Or others — that we are not always strong. That we are ever overborne with care. That we should ever weak or heartless be. Anxious, or troubled, when with us is prayer. And joy and strength and courage are with Thee.'' Archbishop Trench. The central figure in this life, and the next, whose Life is made our life and our life His own, is the Lord Jesus. To be now as He was ; doing all and bearing all God's will ; not performing, nor desiring to perform, miracles for ourselves ; but striving, by A MORE EXCELLENT WAY. 343 being as He was, to become as He is ; no more wonderful life can there be than this. Good John Berridge prayed, " Lord, if I am right, keep me so ; if I am not right, make me so, and lead me to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus." God's saving of a man by Jesus, and bringing hiip out of sin into righteousness, is like His making out of dark masses the splendid sun ; for the saved man will shine as that sun. What a universe will it be when the multitude of saved, that no man can number, are suns in God's iirmament ! The bright- ness of all being the brightness of Christ's counten- ance, once sad and dying on the Cross, now joyous and alive for ever on the Throne. Lord, make me Christlike. There is something better than all great gifts; a way more excellent than the path of earthly honour ; something that excelleth all other graces. It is the consummation and perfection of all. The perfection .of faith, the perfection of hope, the per- fection of love — the supreme love of God. Love rests in perfect confidence on God. In trouble thanks God, and out of the worry He then brings peace : for trying circumstances are always places of wonder. Has some sin caused pain, or sickness, or loss ? Confess the sin, try to amend the past misdoing, then thank God for keeping you yet alive ; and the pain, the sin, the sting, will go. Love to God works all this, comforts you under calumny and injustice, enables you to rejoice and be exceeding glad because God leads you by a way He knows to be best. Whether in ill health of mind or body, if bereaved 344 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. of those you love, you have David's confidence, " Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Love will abide when faith and hope have done their work. Love suffereth long, and is kind ; envieth not, vaunteth not, is riot puffed up ; behaveth not itself unseemly, endUreth all things, a.nd never faileth. O ! what a harvest is growing ! O ! for the splendour of the New Jerusalem ! Men of the world think not of it, they are without discern- ment because they hear not the clink of chisel and trowel ; but, thanks be to God, all Christlike men shall certainly dwell in the City of the great King ; and, having served Him humbly here, will serve Him very excellently for ever in the beautiful land that seems now far off. "... Then thtough endless days Where all Thy glories shine ; In happier, holier strains we'll praise The grace that made us Thine." Bmnett. XL. ®5£ ^ractkal ^tima of a Jfuture gbtate.— I. " Credo ut intelligam may be th6 most true and most reasonable motto of the large part of Christian faith and life ; but it is not incon- sistent with, it is founded upon — an ultimate underlying intellexi ut crederem."—'&e.v. R. C. Moberly, The Incarnation as the Basis of Dogma in ''Lux Mundi" p. 227. The Science of a Future State. THE evidence, for religtous^trAith is. not of one kind only, but of all kinds. It addresses the whole nature of man, and requires the whole nature, if it is to be fully apprehended. Intellectual conceptions must be quickened, the qualities of a moral and spiritual b^erngfaretobe exercised. Sentient affections, moral satisfactions, physical and spiritual affinities and conviction's, are necessary. ' It is wholly unreasonable to speak of man as merely a rational animal, or as nothing more than a material organism ; he is both rational and material ; but these Eire only a part of what he is. "Other qualities and experiences belong to the heart, the imagination, the conscience, and constitute a spiritual ( 345 ) 346 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. personality. Besides, there are those intuitions of :the future, tTie sense of sin, the consciousness of every possibility in the future, and that whatever it is which not less requires than receives a Divine Revelation. There is not only a fulness, but a many-sidedness in Christian evidence and truth, not less full and many- sided than human life. Religion, indeed, is the practical science of a future life. We must, as Herman Lotze says, " Regard exist-- ence as a precipitate whose genesis never can be understood, and which falls directly, without any interposing medium, on that which forms the content of the existent."^ Other things we can accurately speak of: the animal's soul certainly concentrates its many impressions in thatunity of consciousness which leads it to act. Our soul does the same, but in a wider, higher, grander way. The living element in us conveys its consciousness to our soul ; then unfolds our mind, both to outer and inner life which react on the soul ; then the percipient mind, the reflecting mind, or spirit, with the soul, act on the body. The combination works with a higher activity of steadier, quicker, and peculiar vital feeling. When the con- nection is dissolved, the soul deposits what has been won from life and experience in the living spirit ; and thus the spirit, having acquired, by the body and soul, what it could not without them, enters a new phase of existence. In all this man is above all other earthly creatures. It is folly to assert that other animals are like the man, for they lack that ' " Microcosmos," vol. i. b. v. chap. i. THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF A FUTURE STATE. 347 which he very greatly possesses. It is part of the science of immortality, and in obedience to Scripture, that we discern in man a high peculiarity and exist- ence which we willingly use, so as to be rightly great. Religious men no more doubt the absolute certainty of this than they believe — " This whole earth may be bored, and that the moon May through the centre creep." Midsummer Wight's Dream, act iii. sc. 2. Religious men are those who by the Eternal Spirit have access to the Eternal Father through the Eternal Son. The Church, formed of these men, is the Temple of the Holy Ghost, and every believer is as a spiritual stone in that Temple. Men are builded into that Temple to form a society to be the Home of Christ, and'thence the Spirit of Christ is to change and transfigure the whole order of the world. These men, under different skies and separated by vast oceans, serve one and the same Lord. The Divine life that is in them discerns in mountains and forests and shining streams, in the vine and fig tree and ripening corn, manifestations of God's presence, power, and goodness. By Him who is before all things, and in whom all things consist ; who is not only in the flower of the field and in the | fruits of holiness ; but is that power enabling us to endure unto the end, is that power without which the universe would become a chaos, is that power which is the life of all things and all men ; by Him is also that power by which we know we have eternal life. The life, conferred by Divine Act, 3+8 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. may be called the potency of a germ : but to be more than a potency, more than a germ, we must by living turn it into an act ; and only by this act can we individually realize our share in the common possession of our race — God's Gift of Eternal Life through Jesus Christ. Practical Art as to' a Future State. Regarding ourselves, physically and mentally, we are social beings with an inclination and a necessity to confide in oui* fellow-creatures. We_are further endowed with a desire for knowledge of our relations with^e causes and conditions of our existence ; with objects in the remote recesses of space, in the far-off past and future ; and with the visible and invisible agencies in perpetual operation around us. In pursuit of this sociableness with one another, and of know- ledge as to ourselves and the world, we discern the necessity for moral government, as to individuals and society ; we further apprehend that all phenomena represent one supreme eternal Power. Having, as men, confidence in men, we regard the founders of laws for the government of society, not as tyrants, but as of great practical skill and worthy conservators of communities. We consider that the learned of antiquity who made records of marvellous events, who asserted that they received Divine revelations, and whose character, intelligence, and the evidence they gave of those supernatural events, obtained that credence which rendered Theology THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF A FUTURE STATE. 3-19 possible, were neither deceived nor deceivers ; did not present absurd fictions, inconsistent with truth and moral ,duty ; but inculcated reverence for God, good will to man, and deserved that engrossing influence which they obtained by leading human intellect and affections to the study and love of the grandest and most fascinating exercises of reason. More specially is it true that Christianity, wresting the mind from worldliness and sensuality, has ex- hibited an art beyond all arts in enlightening and strengthening our reason ; in purifying and elevating our life, by giving due importance to spiritual interests, and the needs be of preparing for a future life. The Jews, more particularly conservators of the idea of sin, though sin was never absent from the minds of other nations, specially dealt with it in a twofold character: alienation from God, weakening and corrupting the whole nature; and the reaction from that alienation, by a longing to return and be at peace with Him. They further represented the guilt of sin, as an internal and external hostility to the Supreme ; who rightly and jiistly punishes it. Their propitiatory sacrifices' not only carried the idea of reunion by means of a victim ; but went beyond the victim in requiring an inward free-will offering of the whole human nature, so that man's will might be renewed and sanctified by contact with the Divine Will. This had full expression in Christ who, putting Himself in our place, as the offender, offered Himself also as the sacrifice for us. In Christj.t^ough there was an almost overwhelrping consciousness of the 350 THE NATURAL fflSTORY OF IMMORTALITY. exceeding wickedness, the sin's guilt was victoriously endured, and perfect holiness in perfect obedience worked a full satisfaction, for God and man. None but Christ could take the punishment and make it a fjropitiation. The Cross was a proclamation of God's hatred as to sin ; and, it the same time, man's acknowledgment that the penalty was just. Christ's obedience issued, as it was meant to issue, in death. Now in death alone, there is nothing well-pleasing to God ; but there is much well-pleasing in the righteous- ness that endures to the end. In this view, St. Bernard said, "Not His (Christ's) death, but His willing acceptance of death, was well-pleasing to God." It is by a practical piety taking Christ's act of obedience and infiising it by aid of Divine Grace in our own nature ; and by fellowship with Christ's suffering, by crucifying our affections and lusts, that the mystical union of Christ and His people is accomplished ; and by this fellowship we are made partakers of the Divine nature. The Crucifixion did not come as the unexpected and disastrous result of a wonderful and glorious life ; but as the crowning act of noblest endurance, of holiest resolve, of most perfect obedience, which Christ Jesus undertook as Son of God and as Son of Man. It may be asked, by those desiring to put the science of a future life into practice, " How do we obtain evidence concerning the truth of all this 1 " Reply. — Dogmas of science, and in every age scientific men present their dogmata, say Gravity, Conservation of Energy, Circulation of the Blood, THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF A FUTURE STATE. 351 have to be corrected and enlarged again and again, and tested ; because they can never be so completely- represented as that no other verifying or antagonistic truth need be stated. It is not so with the truths of religion. " They are offered for acceptance with their full proofs, from the first moment that they are offered at all." Not one is brought for acceptance by any man without intelligible and sufficient reason for that acceptance. Doubtless, the seer, the prophet, the lawgiver, the apostle, knew what, why, and in whom they believed. These were the holiest, the best, the most capable, of their time. They spoke with an authority, a zeal, a power, more than of friend to friend, than of parent to child, about sin, redemp- tion from sin, and the inheritance of eternal life. Men listened and obeyed through conviction that words of truth were spoken, and that the Spirit's true endowments had come to mankind. This primal authority is also a large part, as it ought to be, of our own intelligent conviction ; because the authority was, even at first, not accepted without reason. The power of intelligence and the beauty of life in those early teachers were confirmatory of their every statement ; and true endowments stood out plainly from false ones ; the false tending to their own undoing, and the true to their own triumph. There is in all truth an essential relation, correspond- ence, and harmony between it and all hearts and minds, capable of the truth. Communion with Divine Truth is that abiding of our spirit in the Divine Wisdom which, conforming us more and more to it. 352 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. is the secret of our high knowledge as to the Word of God, and which lapse of time confirms by much experience ; every man's experience, by-and-by, proving the truth. The art and science of a Christian life, of an assured conviction and safe progress in the truths of immor- tality, are to be exercised in the reasonable deference to that authority which at first and all along has been reasonably accepted. Thousands and thousands believe, neither ignorantly nor unreasonably, in ever- lasting life who are without ability to state logically why they believe ; yet, their belief is a life growth of true experience, and saving apprehension as to Chris- tian Truth. They feel and know certainly, by Divine inward witness, that God has made known the mystery of His will and good pleasure, that in the dispensation of the fulness of times. He will " gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him " (Eph. i. lo). Those abstruser parts, the doctrines of our Faith, are, in some respects, more confirmed by science, by investigation, and by general consciousness of fitness, than are the historic portions evidenced by testimony — though that testimony is of fuller and more precise character than can be offered for any other book in the world. Scholars have traced in the hieroglj^hics of Egypt ancient ideas of the"Trm]ty7orthe7Spirit, of the Son, and that Son is termed Saviour. In the mystic record of Osiris we find him put to death, that by dying and by the grave he wrought an atonement. THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF A FUTURE STATE. 353 and then rose in newness of life from amongst the dead. These facts show that as Hght from the stars of the sky is reflected in the placid lake, not less plainly do the truths of Heaven shine down into the minds of men. When, through lack of parent's duty and stress of malign circumstances, our natural folly and perversity lead us into open sin ; or, if not into that grossness, beguile us to that which is not worth a life-long labour ; even then God sometimes, and always if we are willing to receive it, opens the eyes of our under- standing and gives a spirit of wisdom as to the riches of the glory of the inheritance of His saints (Eph. i. 18, 19). Robert Browning says — "There are flashes struck from midnights, There are fire-flames noondays kindle, Whereby piled-up honours perish, Whereby swoll'n ambitions dwindle ; While just this or that poor impulse. Which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a lifetime, That away the rest have trifled." 2 A XLI. ®6j iPracttcal gbctence of a jputure Sbtatc— 11. " We cannot dissect the cdmpound, man, into body apart and mind apart ; we cannot remove mind so as to see whether the body will vanish. We may remove the body, and in so doing we find that mind disappeared; but the experiment is not conclusive; for, in removing the body we remove our indicator of the mind." — Pkof. Alexander Bain, t,l,.D., Mind and JSody. " The time of life is short ; To spend that shortness basely were too long, If life did ride upon a dial's point. Still ending at the arrival of an hour." Henry IV., Part I,, act v. sc. 2. BY a natural art and science, natural in the sense of being God-given, young and other persons, little instructed and less educated, rightly and un- doubtingly accept the certainty of Christian truth. They do this on authority. In the same way that students in ^ science accept the dogmata of their teachers concerning the asserted evolution of life, of man, of morals. Let him who smiles at the devout person who walks lovingly in the path of virtue because of a devout parent's sacred influence and authority, go and laugh at the credulity of a professor ( 354 ) THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF A FUTURE STATE. 355 who adopts the whole story as to evolution, and tredulously expects students to accept every bit of the dogma. Will the laugher prosper in the exami- nation ? Are there not more reasons why we should accept Christian Truth, which age after age has ex- perimentally satisfied the intellectual apprehension and sacred consciousness of the ablest and purest of our race ? If a student ought to accept and rely on statements as to laws of nature and science, which every succeeding generation finds more or less incor- rect and inadequate, should not those who are with- out historic knowledge, who cannot sift evidence, who have no acquaintance with the intellectual and ex- perimental facts, accep t those facts which demonstrate that faltlrto.the scholar, and are a life-long witness to him who has lived in the fresh illuminating and deepening conviction of them ? Consider not merely a man's mental endowments, regard him as a moral being. Not only the intelli- gence, but moral affections, moral sympathies, moral perceptions, spiritual satisfactions and affinities, unite to satisfy the Christian believer. These as experienced and verified in the contentment of tried men, in the consoling of those who are troubled, in filling the depth and width of every requirement, have so saturated human life that there is no other evidence in the world, as to high intellectual and moral truth, which in any way comes to a level with the evidence for those holy doctrines which appeal to our intelli- gence, our heart, our imagination, our conscience. This evidence, instead of weakening, strengthens with 356 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. the lapse of ages ; and it is well said, " The fulness of Christian evidence is as many-sided as human life." We safely accept our Creed, that there is One God, One Heaven, One Salvation, One Saviour, One Holy Ghost, One Church, the fulness of Him who filleth all in all. For our Christian Faith we claim that it is the true and most intelligible expression upon earth of the highest truth that is or can be known. Further, there have been from age to age natural coincidences, prophecies, prodigies, dreams, visions, speeches, revelations, healings, which, whatever we may say of the delusions worked by crafty men, are on the whole an insurmountable proof that our life is more than mortal and mechanical. The existence of sorcery everywhere is a moral pestilence that proves the existence of evil powers, as Bacon, Mather, and innumerable others testify ; while not less proving the wickedness of those who follow a delusive and destroying art There are strange phenomena of the sentient and nervous system, double consciousness ; seeing, yet not with the eyes ; hearing, but not with the ears ; of reading by touch of the surface of a written or of a printed page, a sort of sense-feeling. Fear sometimes causes cholera and other diseases. Mental structure influences the physical, and the physical the mental ; we know of it, but very little as to the how or why. Intense view of any colour or colours will produce a change of the image of the colour first formed on the retina. Fear in intensity carried to inordinate arousing produces temporary insanity. This may be further seen in the rr THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF A FUTURE STATE. fascination of snakes and other noxious creaturt over their victims. The excitement caused by ovei looking a precipice will sometimes lead to the castin; down to destruction of the observer. Shakespeare said — " I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong." Dreams, originating from former sensations ; or coming no one knows how or why ; produced by a predominant idea, yet refusing to come when or how or of a sort we most earnestly desire ; the harassed imagination sometimes calling devils and torment, when heavenly bliss is looked for. The attainment of a good is sometimes foreshadowed, or a disastrous event foreseen ; but for the most part we dream of good and evil, and they come or do not come apart from reasonable expectation. Whisper into the ear of a dreamer and you will receive sometimes an answer not less intelligent than if he saw the passing event. Trances, which seem to have no life, some- times people that life with variety of personified images. Ecstasies may be caused by lively imagina- tions of bliss, or misery ; and, sometimes, they possess those who have little or no imagination. These states are unnatural and preternatural, they show depths and heights beyond alF that matefiar measures and figures take knowledge of. They make every prudent man pause. Doubtless, there are dreadful things to which we are now exposed ; and taking the lowest view — " Nature brought us hither ; " then truly Nature may 358 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. take us into some undiscovered country where are evils worse and greater. The extraordinary exaltation of imagination, whether awake or asleep, is not always caused and accompanied by illusions. Fanciful combinations may rest on true and beautiful spiritual conceptions which are the fruit of many years' intense meditation. The torpor and quiescence of some minds, as to anything beyond mathematics and measurements, are happily, so far as mankind is concerned, chastised and corrected by the artistic, the poetic, and by the best of all — religious grace, which, regarded as sacred genius, is genius pre-eminent. Such a genius pro- bably was Joan of Arc, an ecstatic enthusiast of aft ardent devotional temperament, fully confident that she was a heavenly commissioned agent. Her energy moved the masses ; and, despite the falseness and corruption of king, princes, and nobles, rescued the people from degradation and oppression, to give therri liberty and distinction. In Blackwood's Magazine, the May number, 1847, is an account of Henry Engelbrecht. " In the yeat 1623, exhausted by intense mental excitement of a religious kind, and by abstinence from food, after hearing a sermon which strongly affected him, hfe felt as if he could combat no more, so he gave in and took to his bed. There he lay a week without tasting anything but the bread and wine of the sacrament. On the eighth day, he thought he fell into the death struggle ; death seemed to invade him from beloUr upwards ; his body became rigid ; his tongue arid lips THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF A FUTURE STATE. 359 incapable of motion ; gradually his sight failed him, but he still heard the laments and consultations of those around him. This gradual demise lasted from mid-day till eleven at night, when he heard the watchman ; then he lost consciousness of outward impressions. . . , An elaborate vision of immense detail began. . . . He was first carried down to hell, and looked into the place of torment ; thence, quicker than an arrow, was he borne to paradise. In these abodes of suffering and happiness, he saw and heard and smelled things unspeakable." In an hour his hearing was first restored ; then his sight ; feeling and motion followed ; when he arose, he felt stronger than before the trance. No one comprehends all this. Even those who regard it as a sort of instinctive experiment, and the others who say it is a lucky groping in the dark, cannot account for the instinct ; and luck will not find that which has no existence. Certainly in our dreams and ecstasies and trances, when we seem wholly out of ourselves, or shall we say in ourselves and out of the body, we light upon remarkable presciences and find odds and ends of strange knowledge. Those who unbelievingly argue about our Lord's Resurrection, and reason against immortality, forget it is not simply a question whether a man can die and after death reappear in life. The whole fact, all it was and is and meant and means, the far-reaching affinities with our nature, and the essential parts of it as intertwined with the character of Him who rose, must be viewed. Jesus, being what He was, doing 36o THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. what He did, the fulfilment of prophecy, the converg- ing often thousand historic events, mental convictions and moral aspirations from all the past, illuminating, explaining, and showing life beyond the grave to be actual and immortal, cannot be reasoned about as a common individual, with an ordinary life. His life was not only historical, but connected, even as are His Death and Resurrection, with the whole of Scripture, with the eternal counsels and infinite purposes of God. Our teachers, in the exercise of their higher theologic art and science, emphasize this grand fact, the resurrection of our Lord, and all those wonders which belong to it and to our immortality, as those truths which vivify all other ; and make it worth our while to live for them, worth our while to die for them. Lacordaire wrote,^ "The world did not vanish before my eyes ; it rather assumed nobler propor- tions as I myself did. I began to see therein a noble sufferer needing help. I could imagine nothing com- parable to the happiness of ministering to it under the eye of God, with the help of the Cross, and the Gospel of Christ." Jesus, indeed, would have us encircle ourselves with love ; the " loveliness of per- fect deeds, more strong than all poetic thought." This Jesus, whose life, teaching, death, resurrection, brought immortality into the realm of exhibited facts, was truly man — no one doubts that. Was He truly God .' The Church, we as individuals. Scripture and history, in declaring that He was God Incarnate, did ' "Biographical Sketch," p. 34, translated by H. S. Lear. THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF A FUTURE STATE. 361 not, nor do, assert a new doctrine. It was part of the life of patriarchs and prophets that there should be a life so wonderful. Into all history, all fable, all myth, all allegory, the coming of God as man infused a meaning — making the romantic to be real. The mysterious person of Jesus, the marvellousness of His ministry, the spell of His presence, His holiness. His wisdom. His power, present such a character moment by moment, and a whole life long, the like of which has and never had any equal in the world. From then till now, the collected and the individual wisdom of mankind has microscopically tested His every word, passed every event of His life as through a fire, and the accumulating evidence of His transcen- dental Humanity, of His Incarnate Deity, forces conviction on all minds capable of grasping so grand a subject that Jesus was and is indeed that Lord God and Saviour who rightly said, " If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins." When the con- viction of this enlightens a man's mind, and the power of it purifies a man's heart, his life will be a practical exhibition of art and science concerning a future state. As children of God naturally and spiritually shrink from a too free and bold handling of these most holy themes, it is well for them to know that Theology, the crown of the sciences, requires her Ministers, according to their ability, again and again in the course of time with the advancing light of intelligence, to search whether the ages have weakened the testimony of our fathers, or whether new discoveries 362 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. cast doubt on Christian Truth. Well is it for th? Church, and for men generally, that those, most qualified to speak, unanimously declare — that^midst the many differences, caused by the- confused move- ment of the spirit of our age ; Christ remains as that God-man the great and only Saviour. This truth in Christ is twofold. It unifies and sanctifies the two parts of our nature, material and spiritual, in one redeemed person. It is the salvation of both, not the abolition of either. It shows that the Church, the Sacraments, Jesus Himself, the World at large and every part, have a transcendental bodily or material side, and a transcendental spritual side. It gives that coherency to things, and assures that reconciliation of contraries, which solves all difficulties by the act of a coming everlasting adjustment. We are sure that the bond between body and soul is the vital and reciprocal action of each in the fully formed and self-maintaining life of the future. Thus endeavouring to place our Holy Faith as the practical, and only practical science of a future state ; its relationship with the being of all things, and the life of all creatures, bring it before every mind as an object lesson. An ordinary mind is able to investigate it. If he will, can find everywhere in the statements of materialists, and in the asserted facts of spiritualists, evidence of -things-trcmscending all that is earthly. These facts are medlste'and immediate revelation's everything being mediately connected with everything else, while the whole and every part is manifestly of God, and is being carried on THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF A FUTURE STATE. 363 and on to an endless future which is coming every moment. The hallucination pervading some minds degrading them to the acceptance of a gross animal pedigree and a future nonentity ; seems an example of that possession by an evil spirit which takes off somewhat of our wonder as to the demoniacs of old. We win confessions at times from dreamers which reveal their secret thoughts. Doubtless, if we knew rightly how to question these life-dreamers, as to there being no future for men, we should know, as St. Paul declares, that the god of this world has blinded and possesses them. How can a sense of personal worth, the true element of greatness, exist where newborn scepticism, Satan's child begotten of corruption, casts out all reverence for high things and all hope of any great future good ? It is the religious spirit, the thankful heart, the devout mind, the obedient will, which lead us to seek and obtain a beautiful life. If a man has not that true knowledge by which he discerns God in every- thing, nor that sort of good living which is the endeavour to serve God in everything, where can thankfulness, cheerfulness, purity, the sense of large- ness and mystery, be found .' It is the consciousness of supreme power everywhere, of infinite possibilities for every one of us, of perfect holiness and happiness within our reach, that creates a law, a science, high art, veracity, without which can be no vital spiritual power, no lasting beauty in human progress. What infernal being, powerful only in mischief ; or 364 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. what nothingness, unguided ; could from chaos, or from less than chaos, bring all the beautiful worlds where art so beautifully works, and science so skilfully guides, that the evidences of wisdom and knowledge tower up on every side ? The universal proof that the worlds are a production of art and skill, is the fact that art and skill in endless variety and universal extent characterize every operation of nature, every work of an animal, and all works of man. Those things and creatures that are without consciousness are guided by something, not of themselves, to take care of themselves. Were it not, for the purpose toward which all things tend, every one doing its own little part in the great whole, so that the moss on the wall, the oak in the forest, the fish in the sea, and man in use of his liberty and powerrhave consciously or unconsciously the art and science of doing things aright, there could be no right-doing anywhere. This universal fact, if a man scientifically thinks, will be regarded as a demonstration vast as the univei^se, of an art, a science, of an infinite character guiding all things to a purposed future. It is the reflection in men of the art, of the science, of the purpose, that leads us all to think of the future. If the thought leads us to faith in Christ, to fulfil all that for which He redeemed us, we shall do well evermore. We claim acceptance and use of science in a practical form, that we may not only think about Immortality, but carry consistency and accuracy of thought into the formulated teaching of the Word of God, regarding the Way of Life. Then we shall THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE OF A FUTURE STATE. 365 have guarantees of safety from that Word, from the universal consciousness of mankind, and from the experience of the holiest and greatest of our race, that we walk safe and sure. As to the promise and the fulfilment, God has confirmed the same with an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we may have strong con- solation (Heb. vi. 17, 18). Hence, we have no room for doubt. The arrangements are so wonderful, that heavenly principalities and powers are made to know thereby the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. iii. 10). We go further. Those who received Christ, and all who receive Him now, have a divine testimony and a divine work wrought in them : they are born again, " not of the blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John i. 13). This " light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ " has a power like the omnipotent creating Cause, going forth with the omnific mandate, "Let there be Light." " We love Thee, Lord ; yet not alone, because Thy bounteous hand Showers down its rich and ceaseless gifts on ocean and on land ; We praise Thee, gracious Lord, for these, yet not for these alone The incense of Thy children's love arises to Thy throne. " We love Thee, Lord, because, when we had err'd and gone astray, Thou didst recall our wandering souls into the heavenward way, When helpless, hopeless, we were lost in sin and sorrow's night, A guiding ray was granted us from Thy pure fount of light. "Because, O Lord, Thou lovedst us with everlasting love, And sentest forth Thy Son to die that we might live above ; Because, when we were heirs of wrath. Thou gavest hopes of heaven ; We love because we much have sinn'd, and much have been forgiven." /. A. Elliott. XLII. Occupations f^Eteafttr of if)z CSIorffiett. " Sweep all worlds with one loud trumpet blast — Life 1 live for aye I Thou, Death, shalt surely die ! " John Cleland, Scab Natum. " In Death too, in the Death of the Just, as the last perfection of a Work of Art, may we not discern symbolic meaning ? In that divinely transfigured Sleep, as of Victory, resting over the beloved face which now knows thee no more, read (if thou canst for tears) the confluence of Time with Eternity, and some gleam of the latter peering through. " — Sartor Resartus, bk. iii. ch. iii. IT is said, " A knowledge of God and of the spiritual life gradually appears, not as the product of human ingenuity, but as the result of Divine com- munication ; and the outcome of this communication is to produce an organic whole which postulates a climax, not yet reached, a redemption not yet given, a hope not yet satisfied." The prophets and psalmists take the highest places amongst the seers and sages and poets of all nations. They are chiefest, because their prophetic and poetic faculties were directed to reveal the soul's relations to God and to Irrimortality in their exultations, exaltations, and self-abasements. The piercing ( 366 ) OCCUPATIONS HEREAFTER OF THE GLORIFIED. 367 lightning-like gleams of truth, strange and spiritual ; those magnificent outlooks towards the kingdom of the Lord, His presence and glory ; were more than the mere working of the mind of man, more than any disclosure of self-knowledge. They are connected with a body of divinity, a religious and a secular history, joined in every part, and extending from age to age. They were outpourings of the love of God, of the wisdom of God, to make men know the mystery of Christ, the mystery of God ; whereby even angels learned the Divine purpose ; that men should partake of the Divine nature, be filled with all the fulness of God, and be inheritors of everlasting glory (Eph. iii. 10, II, 17-19). Surely, these men heard the whispers of the Spirit of God, they reflected the true light of His Eternal Wisdom. The Nature and Conditions of a Blissful Immor- tality may beJiliscerned, in some'measure, by viewing the occupations hereafter of the Glorified. These may be known — I. By the Renewal of our Nature. Christ, the Son of God, became Jesus, the Son of Man, that He might redeem our body and soul by making reconciliation for sin, and then go as our Forerunner to Heaven. As Son of God He was eternally perfect. Into this perfection. He assumed our nature, took upon Him the whole, " became flesh conditioned ; though, in taking that flesh. He who knew no sin was made sin on our behalf. Not only 368 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. in His Death, but throughout His Life, He was suffering, was learning, becoming more and more conditioned by the sinfulness of man. The Crucifixion coming, " not as the unexpectedly shameful end of a glorious and untroubled life," but as the voluntary and foreseen and prepared "submission to all that constitutes in sinners the consummation and the punishment of their sin." There was no misunder- standing nor failure on His part. The failure of the Jewish people, of personal friends, the accomplish- ment of the traitor's betrayal, all belonged to His bearing our griefs, carrying our sorrows, being chastised for our peace, and being striped for our healing. Thus He redeemed us, and so doing He showed that " of all gifts bestowed on us from above that of helping human beings to become better and happier is the greatest : " for thus are we made fellow-workers with God." This redemption of body, soul, and spirit is proof that body, soul, and spirit do not lose their faculties ; are not so changed as to be another body, soul, and spirit; but are transformed by amelioration, by passing from a diseased to healthful state, by being disciplined, that the experience and betterment, thus acquired, may be carried into the future as the perfected pro- duction of God's power, God's wisdom, God's love, despite man's weakness and Satan's malice. ! IjOur body is regenerated, renewed, born from above, to make it like Christ's Body, which was born by operation of the Holy Ghost. We, new born by the power of God, possess a freshness, a trueness of OCCUPATIONS HEREAFTER OF THE GLORIFIED. 369 Christ-like nature, in place of the oldness and false- ness of the Adamic nature. St. Cyprian says, " After I drank in the Heavenly Spirit, and was created into a new man by a second birth — then marvellously what before was doubtful became plain to me, what was hidden was revealed, what was dark began to shine, what was before difficult, now had a way and a means ; what had seemed impossible, now could be achieved ; what was in me of the guilty flesh, now confessed that it was earthy ; what was quickened in me by the Holy Ghost, now had a growth according to God." ^J Cyprian found, as we do, that the life we now live in the flesh, as believers, is not so much our own as Christ's life. St. Paul said (Gal. ii. 20), " I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Being redeemed, regenerate, sanctified, we are members of Christ, and our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost (i Cor. vi. 15, 19). In our body we are to be alive, and sit with Christ enthroned (Rev. iii. 21). It will not be the dead body, sown in the ground and corrupt ; but a living one of which that was the seed. " Our nature opens and turns out its forces only by degrees. There is an infancy for the individual, and an infancy for the race." Something of this we can understand. We shall understand more, if we live in the clear, deep, habitual recognition, of a living Personal God who lives in us : God essentially good, wise, true, holy, the Author of all that exists ; and reunion with whom is the great ' Cyprian ad Donatum, 3. Translation, "Library of the Fathers," iii. p. 3. 2 B 370 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. aim of all truly rational beings. Our body is the special, covenanted sphere, of God's regular and uniform and spiritual operation. He is pledged to dwell in it, and to work there. It is the home where is kept not only the picture, but that Life of Christ, which when perfected in us will be translated to the throne in Heaven. The Holy Spirit is given to make our individuahty, our personality, live an intenser life. Intense personal life is rich and full and free individual life. It is our markedness of character that propagates our religion. Cyril of Jerusalem spoke somewhat in this guise — One and the same rain comes down upon all the world. It becomes white in the lily, red in the rose, purple in the violet, different and various in all the several kinds. It is one in the palm tree, another in the vine, and all in all things. Thus the Holy Ghost gives what is appropriate to the nature of every man. He employs the tongue of one man for wisdom ; He enlightens another by prophecy ; to another He gives power to drive away devils ; to another He gives to interpret Scripture ; diverse to different men, not diverse to Himself. The statement of Cyril as to personality and independence of character, shows an individuality of inspiration (i Cor. ii. 15 ; i John ii. 20, 27) : sanctification, discipline, not doing away with ; but more individualizing and developing personal characteristics. The conclusion to be arrived at with regard to the renewal of our bodily nature is, — that all Scriptural statements as to a Heavenly City, as to gardens, fountains, musical instruments, songs, feasts, sitting OCCUPATIONS HEREAFTER OF THE GLORIFIED. 371 down with the patriarchs, and having personal com- munion with saints, — refer not to the corrupt and sinful in us, but to that reality and substantial gratification of every sense which will make our future life that of which the present is but a shadow ; that which will be as gold in comparison with present earthly dross. The body, now dwelt in by the Holy Ghost, is that which having been sanctified, and changed from the mortal to the immortal, will be the receptacle of Divine glory. Our Christian life, here and in Heaven, in its effects, its fruits, its results, is the sphere of God's blessed and blessing activity. Our body being the Holy Spirit-bearing body, and the Christ-redeemed body, in a pre-eminent sense, will be the most abundant and many-sided life that the universe knows. " Jesu, Lord of glory, as we breast the tide, Whisper Thou the story of the other side." St. Johtf Damascene, varied by Neale. Til. The Enlargement of our Faculties Will give Diviner strain to all we possess. God, who gave Himself to us in Christ ; and Christ, who was content to be in the world as we are, that the consequences of sin might naturally, spiritually, and inevitably work themselves out in our bodily nature ; and the Holy Ghost who willingly abides in us that our mortal body, soul, and spirit may be Divinely quickened ; this sacred Trinity moulds us that we may fill up in our body and soul that which remains 372 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. of the sufferings of Christ for His people (Col. i. 24). These various experiences make us nearer and liker to Christ than are the angels (Heb. ii. 14-16) ; and fit us by service on earth, done as it is in Heaven, for that Heaven. This means right instincts, right affections, right- mindedness, in perfect obedience._j Plato speaks of educating a child that as the mind develops it may recognize the right reason of things by a certain inner kinship, and welcome truth as a friend. Moderns teach that schooling, in the best sense, signifies sub- mission of the mind that its own individual tastes may be subjected to that abnegation, out of which springs whatever originality is worth preserving. This disciplined subjection makes believers, every one different, all alike accept the truth of the Creeds with reverence and devout fear. Every one of us says with St. Anselm (" Proslog," 4), " Good Lord, I give Thee thanks ; because what first I believed by Thy gift, I now understand by Thy illumination." The Renewal of our Body, of our whole Nature, and the Enlargement of our Bodily and Natural Faculties, lead on to the View of ourselves — III. Enthroned, Possessed of a Dwelling in New Worlds, Occupied in the Trajhsactions of a Glorified State. Every saved man having been on earth as Christ was, will be in Heaven as Christ is. The purpose for which Christ took upon Himself our nature was not OCCUPATIONS HEREAFTER OF THE GLORIFIED. 373 to weaken any part that came out of the hand of God, but to strengthen the whole ; and to fit it for those occupations in which He now, as man glorified, is engaged. Christ claims for His own and con- secrates the whole of Nature. The artist will see, and enable others to see more than they discerned before : " God uses us to help each other so, Leading our minds out." The poet will interpret with more power, the greater magic of the external world. Good men now are a sort of conscience to their sbciety, and keep alive the love of worth. Where all are good, superior character will be the perfected bloom which we shall see and be glad of The Devil is to be cast down from all dominion. The antagonism between the spiritual and the material, between God's will and man's freedom, will end in perfect reconciliation. God was the Author of all that is ; He said, " It is very good ; " and it will be restored good, in a better form. There will be no annihiliation, but a vitalizing, an enriching. The natural and the supernatural will stamp the whole currency of Heaven ; and He who trained us to see the shadow of things on earth, fitted us to see and use and rule the reality in Heaven. The things now in mystery, standing out then and there in clearness, and our intelligence suited to apprehend them, will be as ripened fruit for our enjoyment. Jesu, " Lead us by Thy pierced Hand Till around Thy Throne we stand In the bright and better Land." Baynes. 374 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. Three further reasons may be briefly urged to show that the realm of souls, the kingdom of heaven in glory, has all the apparel of a visible society. I. Material. There are many curious and beautiful symbols beyond those of the Sacraments, of Holy Scripture, of Public Worship, by which God binds His invisible working to our own and His own outward and material and visible methods. This consecration of matter, as the vehicle of Divine Grace, is a vindica- tion of matter : we see the material world rising from height to height, fashioned by the Spirit of God, and pierced in every part with a power of transformation until man, chiefest of all, becomes the Divine Dwelling-place. Our bodies, not less than our souls, are being and will be transfigured to per- fection. The spiritual is necessarily in the body, or how could it be a power in our life and be the very ground of our assurance as to the redemption and sanctification of that body? As bread from the earth, by Divine operation is no longer common bread but Sacramental ; our bodies, through Christ's indwelling, are no longer corruptible but sealed for the Resurrection. Christ, thus leading us ; fulfils, little by little, that other task of preparing the heavenly period to perfect the earthen. Our mansions will bring into regular use "sensible objects, agents, and acts." They will prove that we do right in holding firmly to the OCCUPATIONS HEREAFTER OF THE GLORIFIED. 375 natural, that we may the better reach the spiritual ; and that the whole temporal show has eternal significance, is made up of parts fitted in symmetry, beautiful with all beauty, a prophecy of the future. Gems require setting, and careful guarding ; moral and spiritual truths are to act on life, and this life has body and members of which Christ, as the Head, will surely take care. Brotherhood will not cease ; but the un- certainties, sorrows, and perplexities of individualism, escaping from divisions and despair, attaining unity of knowledge, will find perfection of joy. All that now, with coarse thumb and finger, we do amiss ; all instincts, immature ; all purposes, unsafe ; will be rectified in the new body. Our life, abstracted from the body is immature while in the transition state of hades ; and we cannot think of it, when we endeavour to be accurate, our thoughts are deficient and ex- pectant. The merely animal, fulfilling nought but animal demands, is left behind ; and the moral and the spiritual, even as now, is the great power in us ; the five senses, shared in common with the brutes, will be filled with pure energy like that of the angels. We shall know, as never before, that the material and visible is the organ and vehicle of the Divine ; the work of God's hand, which His hand blesses ; in which He works miracles, and which He consecrates to infinity of use. We may learn further lessons from the Sacraments. They link material life and inward duty to form a perfect man. " All human nature is not lovable, all men are not love-worthy ; but Christ, who loved all. 376 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. gives assurance and example in these Sacraments of what our nature may be made and will be made. The Sacraments, in the elements apart from grace, are weak and beggarly; but with grace they are a visible meeting-place of the eternal and the temporal, of the invisible and visible, to form a material and spiritual continuity of ourselves with the Lord, and of the Lord with us. " We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, And long to feast upon Thee still ; We drink of Thee, the Fountain-head, And thirst our souls from Thee to fill." St. Bernard. Translated by Ray Palmer. Enthroned, our original kingship, which was abdi- cated by Adam, will not be limited to a Paradise, but be a universal sway such as belongs to Christ ; and to us, through Him, as a royal priesthood (i Pet. ii. 9) ministering and administering under God's Diyine sway, mingling and reigning with Christ as part of Himself, bone of His Bone, flesh of His Flesh (Eph. V. 30). The banquets, the celestial wine (Matt. xxvi. 29) the hearing, speaking, singing with a great com- pany (Rev. V. 9-14) ; our feeling, seeing, grasping, smelling sweet odours, and the knowledge that belongs to saintly fellowship (Rev. v. 8 ; xv. 2) ; show that there will be the highest use and enjoyment of all that belongs to the perfect man. In the various worlds, replenished with new-made things and living creatures, intense activity in doing the will of God, will not weary nor waste us ; but be as food and drink to refresh and nourish our whole nature with sublimity of bliss. OCCUPATIONS HEREAFTER OF THE GLORIFIED. 377 This includes all that rightly grows out of our present intuitions, sentiments, memories, thoughts, knowledge, skill. Wherein a man excels, he will then greatly exceed ; not be less, but always more. The careers of certain saints will be star-like, others shine as jewels, according to their several ability. Every grace and gift, useful attainment in art and science, will be of nobler use and beauty. The learning, ad- ministrative skill, which death took away, will be restored in the new life. Every good beginning, not completed through lack of opportunity, will be brought to perfection ; the great being greater, the good and happy better and happier ; tribulation giving way to a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Small trials, rightly endured by those whose greatest strength could bear but a small frag- ment of the Saviour's Cross, will give right to a crown and throne of beauty and honour. Those shall be comforted and enlightened whose days were dark and ways not plain. Meanwhile every Christian sings — " Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on ; The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on. Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see The distant scene — one step enough for me. ' ' I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou Shouldst lead me on ; I loved to choose and see my path ; but nowr Lead Thou me on. I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will j remember not past years. 378 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. "So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone ; And with the morn those angel faces smile, Which I have_ loved long since, and lost awhile." fohn Henry Newman. II. Spiritual. Hooker (" Ecclesiastical Polity," v. Ivi. 9), " Doth any man doubt that even from the flesh of Christ our very bodies do receive that life which shall make them glorious at the latter day, and for which they are already accounted parts of His blessed body .■• Our corruptible bodies could never live the life they shall live, were it not that here they are joined with His body, which is incorruptible ; and that His is in ours as a cause of immortality, a cause by removing, through the death and merit of His own flesh, that which hindered the life of ours." We may add, Christ entering us, soul and body and spirit, we are irradiated and transformed into His own Body and Life and Light. He is bringing us and the world of physical nature out of discord ; into the harmony of a universe perfected by Divine power, wisdom, love, and binding it by chains of gold about the throne of God. He is making us of nobler nature, renewing, transfiguring ; the miracles are moral and material, consecrating, sanctifying, elevating ; the capacities of every man, that will, are made divine. We will, therefore, even now be jubilant in all the curves and circlets of life's activity. In our goings to OCCUPATIONS HEREAFTER OF TffE GLORIFIED. 379 and fro, onward and upward, one Spirit sways us that we may be indefatigable in our heavenward flight — "In pureness, righteous deeds, and toils of love. Abidance in the truth, and zeal for God above.'' Lyra Apostolica. III. The Glory that shall be Revealed. We wait for that till He come ; but it has a lasting meaning in that perpetual insistance in our being of mysteriousness, in those flashes and pulsations of life, which enlighten the present with those grand truths which raise us above low contentments. We are, again and again, replenished with a power by which we know, even when in darkness, that we are the children of light going on to "completeness and security and achievement and repose." Somewhat of the everlasting freshness comes to us. Every sense and all outward things, failings, vanishings, misgivings, obstinate thinkings of more obstinate questionings, shadowy recollections, are not moments breaking the eternal silence ; they lead to a master light of all our seeing, and make the present years a prelude of things most wonderful. These " shoots of everlastingness,'' supreme oppor- tunities of our soul, lead to a stepping forward of our thought, our life, our love. They are not only tokens of the coming glory; not only the disclosure, the assertion of God's presence ; but the witness that we, ourselves, by Divine Help, have begun a work that will be carried forward to sublime issues. The Spirit 38o THE NATURAL HISTORY OF IMMORTALITY. of God, claiming us for His own, renders us wholly- victorious, we are sure, by that which is astir in us, of intenser life, brighter consciousness, of development in this world and beyond it. A radiance will come, ever steadier, more transforming, ruling and gladdening us wholly. Our human faces will have more traits of saintliness, our life more power of godliness, our whole nature possess everlastingness. Perfect, fault- less in body, in soul, in spirit, we shall stand before the Eternal Throne. Toward this creation tends, it is the goal of history, the fulfilment of prophecy, the consummation and perfection by which God's work in time, under whose outer semblance lay concealed an inner glory, passes into the full radiance and splendour of everlastingness. " Lord of mercy and of might. Of mankind the life and light, Maker, Teacher, Infinite, Jesu, hear and save. " Soon to come to earth again, Judge of angels and of men, Hear us now, and hear us then, Jesu, hear and save.'' Heber. INDEX. Acceptance of authority, 354, 362 Acquainting ourselves with what we know, 299 Adam, the first and Second, 12, 33 ; not the first devil, 218 Adaptation of existence to state and place, 50, 51, 102, 265, 278, 279 Advance, the process of our, 46, 81, 84; from rudimentary things to knowledge of God, 69, 81, 88; of science and crown of it, 289 Afflictions of good men, 336-339 Aiming at perfection, 25 Air, cubic inch of, 260 Anatomy of a carp's gills, 57 Ancients, the, 348 Angelo, Michael, 25 Angels, fall of, 203, 217 Angelus rector, 95 Animals, peculiarities of, 59 Anselm, St., 372 Answers to objections as to faith- healing, 271-275 Anthony, St., fable, 200 Appearance, when, of man in nature, 309 Aristotle, as to dreams, no Arnold, Matthew, quotation, 5 Arnold, Sir Edwin, quotation, I, 8, 188, 200 Artist, the Parisian, 70 Artists' work, 334 Assent of human will to Satan, 180 Atoms, 5, 6 Atonement, 138, 234, 246, 339, 349, 367 Augustine, St., quoted, 147, 224 Authority, primal, 351, 352 Bacon, Lord, on imagination, 241 Bain, Professor, Alexander, quota- tion, 354 Bakewell, F. C, on future life, 121 Balance of our life, 20 ; poised with reason, 49 Baxter, Richard, quotation, no Baynes, quotation, 373 Bee and Newton, 58 Beginning of life, 89 Belief, fewer difficulties than un- belief, 210 ; in demonology, 228 Bennett, verse, 344 Bentham, on conduct, 28 Beyond, being carried to the, 10 Biography of the Eternal, 79 Biology, 236 Bird's telescopic eye, 65 Blacklock, Dr., another sense, 113 Blind man not know his own limbs, 68 Boardman, Rev. W. E., testimony, 327 Body and mind interact, 92, 368 Body, natural and spiritual, 29, 91, 368 ; effect on the soul, 73, 74, 92 ; a garment of the soul, 73 235 ; complexity of, 235, 368 glorified, 569-^71 382 INDEX. Bompard, Gabrielle, double ex- istence, 195 Born, anew, 343, 368 Boyle, Archibald, fate of, 137 Brazilian forest, 238 Breaks in continuity, 90 Brougham, Lord, quotation, iig Browne, Sir Thomas, quotation, 108, 113 Browning, Robert, quotation, 14, 181, 23s, 325, 353 Buchanan, poetry, 161 Bull, Bishop, quotation, 123 Butler, Bishop, quotation, ill Butlin, Rev. T. T., testimony, 327, 328 Butterfly, clicking, 240 Byron, Lord, quotation, 87, 119, 120 Carlyle, quotation, 24, 140, 175, 179, 233, 238, 366 Carp's respiration, 57 Celano's great hymn, 307 Challis, Professor, quotation, 77 Change, all-prevalent, 249 Character and Person of God, 80 Character, the most beautiful, 13, 360, 363 ; our, accompanies us, 102 Chemistry, 236 Christ, incarnation of, II, 35, 102, 238, 367 ; the most glorious human being, 26, 31, 53, 86, 210, 238 ; ascension of, 32, 37 ; two natures in one Person, 34, 35, 360, 367 ; Bread of God and Manna of God, 35 ; centre of attraction, 37, 342 ; our example, 53, 238 ; tempted, 142 ; explana- tion, 142, 143 ; resurrection of, I43> 359 ; His work in His people, 179, 185, 198, 238, 242 ; the pacifier, 198, 226, 238, 246, 338, 349, 367 ; did not destroy the swine, 226 ; crucifixion of, not an unlooked-for result, 368 Christ and Satan, personal opposites, HI, Christian, a thinker, 238, 362, 363 Christian man and scientific man, 304, 305 Christianity greater than all inter- pretations of it, 102 Christly perfection, 26, 53, 342 Church, the, 347, 360 Cicero, quotation, xxxviii., 116 Classes of miracle refusers, 158 Cleland, John, quotation, 2, ISI> 248, 366 Cleverness of the wicked, 180 Cohn, Professor, experiments, 331 Coincidences as to dreams, 112 Coming events made our own, 99 Compensations, 265 Complex processes of thought, 94 Concentration of all believers in Christ, 267 Concentrations, 299, 305 Conditions for receiving power to heal, 311-314; governing, 312, 313 Conflict of good and evil, 160, 249- 250 Confused movement of mind of the age, 26, 28 Consciousness of the future, 87, 101 Continuity, breaks of, 6, 89, 90 Conviction of higher things, lo Co-ordinations, 83, 94 Corsican brothers, 176 Cowper, William, quotation, 107, 139, 314 Cradle for our infant soul, 231 Creation, rudimentary, 92, 234, 25 1 ; new, of a man, 343 ; restored, 373. 376 Creative advance, 251, 364 Credulity of the godless, 27 Curtains drawn, beginning and end of life, 33 Cyprian, St., quotation, 369 Darkness and light for all, 39 Davy, Sir Humphrey, saying, 259 Dawson, Sir J. William, quotation, 27, 140 Day, an image of life, 59 Death, messenger with more life, 70. 93. 230. 232 ; of Christ, 246 ; is law yet not law, 261, 262, 276 , Degradation of Satan, 1S2 Demoniacs at Gadara, 155-157 ; not the worst men, 193 ; their state, 194 Demon, the word, 202 ; use of word, 202 INDEX. 383 Demons, subjects of Satan, 206 Demonology, belief in, 228 Denotements of high service, 37 Destruction, of swine at Gadara, 156, 219 ; of the swine, 226, 227 ; is for re-construction, 230, 234 Devil takes his pigs to a. bad market, 156 ; meaning of the word, 184; not called demon, 188 Devils, nine sorts, 204 ; seven entering a man, 211 ; prayed to Jesus, 221 Die, all things, 233 ; nothing dies, 233. 234 Differences, how caused, 235 Differencing of operations, 21, 234, 23s Disease, sign of an invisible evil, 208, 275, 281 ; mental and bodily, 222, 275 ; prevention and healing, 250, 275-277, 301 Diseases, origin of, 293 ; brought by civilization, 294 Divinations, 125 Divine human example, 24; idea everywhere, 58 ; footsteps in human history, quotation, 63 ; love, the greatest power, 138 ; healing, 234, 238 ; interference, 281 Divinity of Christ's Person, 34, 367 Dogmas, scientific and religious, 350, 352 Double existence, 195 Dreams, generally valueless. III, 117, 122; not always resuscita- tions of past thoughts, 112, 120; uses of, 114, 116, 123 ; cause of, 116,357 ; are representative, 118, 126, 141, 357 ; some are morally diseased, 122 ; touch-stone of morals, 122, 147 ; in Scripture, 125-129, 133-135 ; mysteries in, 127, 357 ; Divine communications, 128, 129 Dryden as to dreams. III Duty, sense of, 280 Duvemey, the anatomist, 57 Earth in correspondence with its parts, 59 ; the cradle of our existence, 87 Education, 372 Effects, a mystery, 295 Elliot, J. A., hymn, 365 Engelbrecht, Henry, 358 Enlargement of our powers, 100, 104, 105 Entering a new world is natural, ICO Entity or real essence of things, 16 Epimenides, the Cretan, 230 Epochs in our existence, 48 Eternal, the, a person, 80 Eternal things, certainty of, 9 ; power is more than Nature, 21 Evidence, many-sided, 251-253, 34S> 356 ; as to faith-healing, 286-292 Evil is temporary, 68, 164, 185, 253, 254; existences, 76, 162, 163, 181; One, the, 157, 162; cannot be mechanically explained, 162 ; habit, form of, 180; like a banyan tree, 188 ; origin of, 213 ; physical, universal, 249, 253 Evils of society, 8, 253 Existence, missing the great object of our, 47 ; adaptation of, 50, 51, 62 ; man's three modes, 71 ; a cradle for our spirit, 231 Experiences, two, of the super- natural, 84 Eye, wonderful, 27, 67 Eyes of insects, birds, men, 65, 67 Faber, verse, 185 Fable of St. Anthony, 200 ; Tal- mudists, 203 Face-reading, 40 Faculties, our, correct and lead to right use, 52, 100, 105 ; are God- given symbols, 104 ; enlargement of, 104, 105, 114 Failures as to healing, 263, 273 Faith, have, in our teachers, 43, 361 ; is great at present time, 149, 332; work of, 183, 273, 332 ; practical science of the future, 362 Faith-healing, restrictions, 273, 278- 285; ceased, 274; not ceased, 274, 296, 301, 322-330; principles of, 275-277 ; application of science and philosophy, 286-306 ; not by a new force, 290 ; things in mag- 384 INDEX. netic state, 291 ; transferred force, 291 ; action or want of action, 292 Fall of spiritual beings, 203 Familiar objects, unknown, 61 Farrar, verses, 257 Fashioning of the life-force, 89 Favouritism, none with God, 283 Fellowship, necessity of our nature, 124 Fellow-workers with God, 29 Finite creature exceeds its finitude, Flesh made a spiritual substance, 93 Fly's trunk, 58 Fontaine, dreamer, 331 Fool in scientific man's seat, 159 Footsteps of advance, 46 Force not known apart from matter, 17; a relative quality, 19; not complete in itself, 19 Forces are not all interchangeable, 18, 29 Foretaste, capacity of, 299 Forgetfulness as to dreams, 123 Fountain whence all tlows, 21 Freedom, our, how it is poised, 49 Frog, hyla, chirping, 240 Froude, James Anthony, quotation, IS Fuel of our fires, 66 Future for every man, 9, 14, 41, 88, 100, 105, 284, 285 ; co- ordinate with the present, 49, 88-93 ; seen from the past, 89 ; not wholly future, 98 ; not well to know, 112, 119 Gadara, the demoniacs, two, then one, 220 Garland, G. V., quotation, 208 Genius not by favouritism, 40 ; Sir Frederick Leighton, 40 ; Sir John E. Millais, 40 ; for religion, 57, 97, 3S8 Gennadius, a sceptic, 117 Glass, looking into, 27 Gleams of immortality, 56 Glory to be revealed, 379 God, a person, 14, 80, 124, 316, 317, 335. 34.7, 369 ; His love, 69, 70, 343 ; His work in our souls, 16s, 316, 317, 343, 347; the Great Physician, 277 Godhead, bodily in Christ, 34 Godson, Rev. John, 308 Going beyond ourselves, 84, 86, 90, 94. 340 Golden age, 9 Good and evil are fourfold, 161 Gospel as to demons, 205, 214 Gospel kingdom, entrance to, 44 Government of world. Divine, 151 Grades and differences in every thing. 55 Gratry, quotation, 96 Gravitation in intermediate state, 7S Greatness of man, 308, 309 Gregory, Dr., as to dreams, 113 Gregory the Great, saying of, 97 Growth in grace, 37, 309-3 n Guesses, false scientific, 5 Guidance to perfect condition, 26, 69. 335. 336 Hallucination of unbelievers, 363 Harbingers of a nobler science, 306 Hatch, Dr., hymn, 13 Haycock, Dr., dreams, 331 Healing, universal, 234, 238, 297 ; in Old Testament, 252-255, 318 ; in New Testament, 258, 264- 269 ; by Divine command, 264, 265 ; sciences, 295 ; process, two- fold, 310 Healings, variously wrought, 243, 330, 331 ; are a symbol, 244 Heaven, what we mean by it, 241 ; has the apparel of a visible society, 373. 376, 377 Heavenly condition, 77, 232, 247 ; city, lis, 232 Heber, verses, 378 Heidenhain, Dr., experiments, 303 Hell club, 137 Herbert, George, quotation, 23, 24, 30, 341 Herschel, his thought, 229 Higher life, 88 Highest mind, 86 History, universal, meaning of, 16, 86 Hood, Thomas, verse, 164 Hooker, quotation, 378 INDEX. 385 Hope, a pledge of the future, 104 Human liberty, 49, 50 ; nature is triple, 72 ; personality, 191 ; nature not the source of evil, 218 Hypnotic state, 178 Hypocrite, state of, 212 Ideality, loi, 108, 130, 283, 287 " Iliad," quotation, 108 Image of the heavenly, 93 Imagination, a power, 302, 358 Imaginations, great and ancient, 12 Immortality, instinct of, 60, 99, 104 ; by natural process, 100, loi, 106 ; no earthly, 266 Incarnation of God, 11, 35, 102 Indications of a future, 52, 120 Individuality of man, 102, 189, 370, 371 Individual peculiarities, 102, 109, 278. 373 Infants represented in Christ, 309, 310 Infinitesimal vibrations, 105 Influenza, aftermath, 294 Inordinately wicked not always de- moniacs, 194 Insect's microscopic eye, 65 Instinctive prescience, 118 Intellectual culture, 83, 94, 287, 288 Intelligence presumes intelligence in the Creator, 20 ; not a mere mode of matter, 171 Interference with Nature, 106, 135, 276, 280, 281 Intermediate state, 75 Interpretation of dreams, 1 10 Intuition leads to worship, 125, 288 Invisible influences, 91, 288 ' Irresponsibility, doubtful case, 196, 198 Jacob's dreams, 127 Jesus conqueror of death, 242, 255, 256 ; greatest healer, 258, 259 ; makes men great, 310, 319, 333 ; man and God, 360 Jews, as to demons, 206 ; possessed by seven devils, 211 ; conser- vators of the idea of sin, 349 Job, Book'of, 320 Joseph, husband of Mary, dreams, I3S , Josephs dreams, 128 Justice to material side of nature, 237 Keble, verse, 148 Ken, Bishop, quotation, 124 Kepler, a saying of, 95 Kingsley, Charles, on arguments, 159 ; quotation, 268 Knowledge grows as things grow, 59 ; advance of, 64, 88, 93, 94, 366 ; of the past and future, 82 ; of immortality, 119, 363, 366 Knox, John, 50 Krummacher, a legend, 131 Lacordaire, quotation, 360 Language, a symbol, 66 ; a shaper of knowledge, 85 Lapse of ages, not a weakening of evidence, 356, 362 Lasserre, Henri, 324 Laud, Archbishop, 51 Lavalette, Count de, dream, 140 Law, extent of, 41, 47, 68 ; of sin, 184 Laws are providential, 68 Leadings on of Nature, 99, 100 Legion of devils, 220, 221 Lens, rise of, 267 Life, a pilgrim's progress, 7 ; a book of immortality, $1, 99; of three sorts, 73 ; only from life, 125 ; course of, mixed, 166, 245, 322, 332 ; made divine, 266 ; in grades, 278 Life-germ, 89 Light and darkness for all, 39 Light, a shadow of the Deity, 67 ; turned to darkness, 146 ; of a candle, 251 Limitations of faith-healing, 273, 278-285 Line, cannot make one straight, 55 Linking of things, supernatural, 152 Living principle in the future, 76, lOI Lotze, Herman, quotation, 346 Love of God, 343 Luther, Martin, quotation, 123, 2 C 386 INDEX. 146; conflict with Satan, 182; poor man, 339 " Lux Mundi," quotation, 96 Lyra, Apostolica, 379 Lytton, Lord, saying of, 26 Man, the best, i, 11, 26, 29, 314, 342 ; noblest time and work, 38, 93, 223, 314, 376, 377; as a child, 42, 240 ; not an atheist by nature or birth, 49 ; ever grow- ing, 58, 189, 250, 348, 368, 371 ; instinct points to immortality, 60, 91, 100, 231, 240, 309, 355; is rudimentary, 92, 99-101, 103, 166, 242, 343 ; every, special of his sort, 109 ; measure of the universe, 109, 308 ; epitome of the universe, 187, 308, 309; fall of, 187 ; ancient knowledge of fall of, 187 ; enthroned, 376, 377 Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, saying of, 60 Mastery given to few, 22 Material world, not the whole, 84, 91, 205, 207, 223 Matter derived from mass, 4, 21 ; reduced to atoms, 5 ; not known apart from force, 17 ; not com- plete in itself, 19, 80, 92, 207, 222 Max Miiller, a saying of, 49 Mechanical force acting on homo- geneous mass would not produce properties, 19 Mechanism, central motor, 330 Melancthon, Felix, poetry, 72, 73, 77,83 Memory, reconstructed, 94 ; 334 Men, ungodly, miss great gain, 43, 44, 148, 283, 342 ; are souls made visible, 62 ; a shadow of God, 98, 240, 241 ; good, God made visihle, 149 ; evil, Satan made visible, 149 ; who overcome, 179, 273 ; in relation to two worlds, 216, 283, 288, 338, 345, 348, 369, 371 ; are not devils, 218 ; possessed by spirit of swine, 228 ; evil, their work and fate, 283-285, 289, 290 Millais, Sir John E., on genius, 40 Milton, quotation, 86, 162, 202 Mind and matter, interact, 92, 121, 222, 287 Mind influences matter, 92, 121 ; capable of immeasurable expan- sion, 94, 231, 240, 247, 287, 314, 368, 373 ; as the magic eastern tent and as a prison, 231 Miracle, what it is, 97 ; at bottom of all things, 131, 281 ; not separable from the doctrines of Scripture, 155, 210 Miracles, not impossible, 259, 33T Mischances be made right, 44 Moberly, Rev. R. C., quotation, 345 Moment, every, a miniature of the inflnite, 106 Monsell, verse, 158 Moral sense not less a fact than is intelligence, 20, 355 ; and physical prophecy of our future, 104 Morley, John, foolish saying, 221 Morris, Rev. George, testimony, 327 Mystery of God in man, 35, 36, 371 ; in dreams, 112, 127 ; of existence, 320, 338-340 Nations, the righteous, are strongest, 16 Naturalist's view of Nature, 103 Natural parables, 57, 160, 336 ; production not a bolt shot at nothing, 61, 167, 240 Nature subject to interference, 4, 106, 136, 166, 205, 260, 281 ; not uniform, 6 ; departs for a new beginning, 9, 60, 88, 251 ; its poorest journeymen, 20 ; is infinite, 59, 98, 103, 237, 251, 252, 260 ; a trinity of operation, 64, 81 ; as a whole and in every part a miracle, 98, 131, 153, 237, 281, 317, 336; a time vesture of God, 99 ; two sorts of powers in, 204, 281 ; represents a greater good and bad, 229, 281 ; to be glorified, 247, 268; effort of, to make Nature right, 302 Nebuchadnezzar's dreams, 134 Needle point, 56 Neglect of parental duty, 353 New birth, how eSected, 36, 372 ; fruits of, 36, 372 Newman, Francis, quotation, 377 INDEX. 387 Newton, Bishop, quotation, 120 Newton, Sir Isaac, a time-anni- hilating man, 41, 58 Nothing lost, 88, 317 Objections, by unbelievers, are old, 226 ; and answers to faith-heal- ing, 271-275, 328 Occult knowledge condemned, 145 Occupations hereafter of the glori- fied, 366-380 Opposition to belief in Satanic exist- ence, 224 Orderliness of Nature, 29S, 300 Organs for successive phases of existence, 118 Orwell, Bishop's Walk, 166 ^ Overthrow of evil, 185 ▼ Painting, 256 Parable of God and Satan, 320 Parables, natural and spiritual, 57 Paradox, silence and sound, 239 Past and future made known by Christ, 33 Past is repeated, 81, 99, 334 ; not wholly past, 98, 106, 334 Perfecting of Christ's human nature, 33. 36 Perfection aimed at, 24 Permanent reality, 12, 280 People who are not far removed from the brutes, 97 Personal constituents in the future, 77, 93 ; magnetism, 86 ; prin- ciples of evil, 162, 169-174 Personality of God, 124, 125, 320 ; of evil spirits, 219 Phenomena are representative, 16, 58, 237, 356 Philosopher's view of Nature, 103, 236 Photographic camera, our, 27 Physical knowledge, 16, 249 ; life acted on by demons, 199 ; evil, universal, 249 Plato, quotation, 67, 372 Pope,'Alexander, quotation, 269, 319 Popular objections to faith-healing, 271-277 Possessed men, 155 Possession by demons, 186, 187, 192 ; three modes of, 189 ; not same as temptation, 191 ; not ceased, 195 Power, four aspects of, as to our liberty, 50 ; in dreams, H2 ; unity of, 280, 315-317 Practical art as to future state, 348 Practitioners in the divinity of hell, 44 Prayer for amending of wicked men, 285 Prayers, answered and not answered, 282 Predicting future of individuals and nations, 48 Prescience of future life, 117, 118 Present and future are co-ordinate, 49. 77, 81, 106, 335 Present production of the future, 95 Presentiment, 177 Pressel, quotation, 31 Prophetic states, 292 Prophets, their high place, 366 Protagoras, a saying, 109 Providence, selective, 22, 42 ; general, 59, 91, 320 ; a super- intending, 61, 68, 281, 335, 364 ; particular, 74, 77, 92-95, 320 Priest not make religion, 102 Procter, quotation, xxxviii. Purpose of our life, defeating it, the, 47 > Quality, the essential, for a man, 48 Quarles, Francis, quotation, 176 Rag, use of it, 69 Raindrop, an epitome of worlds, 35 Realities greater than the present, 61 Reality of evil, 153 ; of our better selves, 225 Reappearance of the past, 81 Reasons why the swine were de- stroyed, 227 Redemption, 368 Reflection of Christ's character in men, 14 Relativeness of all things, 6, 60, 106 ; of matter and force, 18, 19 Religion and science, no conflict, 2 Religion makes the priest, 102 ; chief fact in a man and a nation, 319. 363 388 INDEX. Renewal of our nature, 367, 368 Resurrection of Christ, a fact uni- versally connected, 359 Revelation, outer and inner of the future, 97 Righteousness plucked out of sin, 95 Roses, variety of, 10, 168 Rudimentary teeth are relics, 42 Sacraments, 375 Sadducees rebuked for unbelief, 203, 219 Safeguards, two, against going beyond our powers, 303 " Sartor Resartus," quotation, 140, 233. 366 Satan, why allowed, 146 ; enters men, 147, 184; in personal oppo- sition to Christ, 154, 214; mean- ing of word, 163 ; cause of persecutions, 164; nature of, 169- 174, 217; his power, 177, 183, 184 ; his men, 179 Satanic existence, 145, 154, 162, 166-169, 213, 217, 218, 224, 252 Saul's asses, 44 Saved men, glorified, 372 Saviour, great, needed, 214 Sayings, 166 Scenic mental images, 130 Schenk, verse, 175 Schiller, quotation, 116, 222 Schmolk, B., quotation, 7 School of Satan, 143 School-men as to devils, 204 Science enlarges the meaning of Scripture, 3 ; applied to sacred investigation, 4, 83, 208 ; uncer- tain and conjectural, 22, 208 ; will never be rid of wonder, 57, 82, 208 ; of a future state, 345 Scott, Sir Walter, as to devil's business, 188 Sears, a quotation, 7 1 Seeing the far-off and future, 27 Seen represents the unseen, 153 Selecting providence, 22, 42 Shadow of God, creation, 321 Shakespeare, quotation, 28, 48, 79, 87, 92, 146, 161, 163, 334, 354, 357 Sigourney, Mrs., quotation, 114 Silence and sound, 239 Simpson, Rev. A. B., testimony, 327 Sin from a supernatural source, 225, 281 ; unnatural, 281 ; and death, 341 Sleeper, 295 Smellie, Wm., quotation, 148 Smith, Dr. W., as to dreams, 114 Solomon's dream, 134 Sortedness of life, 65 Soul feels and thinks apart from the body, 118, 120 Soul's faculties are true and grand, 60, 251 Sound waves, 279 Southey, quotation, 15 Speaking with unknown tongues, 97 Speech, a symbol, 66 ; advantages of, 85 Spider, weaving, 59 Spirit, evil, not shut up, 181 ; in waterless places, 212 Spiritual beings, two falls of, 203 5to«a'ar(^newspaper,hypnotism, 191 Stowe, H. B., quotation, 62 Substances taking a new body, 94 Supernatural, two experiences, 84; in contact with the natural, 151 Superstition as to dreams, 133 ; guard against, 133 Superstitious men, 228 Supremacy of good, 167, 363 Swine-feeders' testimony, 157 Swine possessed, 219 ; destroyed, not by Divine power, 226 Symbols, their meaning, 63, 65 ; of immortality, 63-70, 320 Talmudist's fable of Eve, 203 Teachers, error of some, 61 ; theo- logical, what they assert, 361 Telegraphy from worlds to worlds, 55 ; spiritual, 177 Temperaments in relation to disease, 198 Temple of Isis, inscription, 224 Tennyson, Lord, quotation, I77> 233. 249. 316 TertuUian, quotation, 147 Testament, Old and New, as to Satan, 217 INDEX. 389 Theology made more accurate by science, 2 ; crown of the sciences, 361 Things act by Trinity of operation, 64; are emblems, 65, 314 Thought made vocal, 85 Thr^e facts connect present and future, 82 Thring, quotation, 285 Thunder psalm, 91 Time vesture of God, 64 ; meeting- place of two eternities, 121 Trench, Archbishop, quotation, 159, 194, 202 Triple character of man's nature, 72, 374, 375 Trudel, Dorothea, testimony, 327 Truth better than error, 225 ; re- ceived on authority, 354 ; in ■Christ twofold, 362 Truthfulness of our faculties, 52 Truths, aU bound together, 315, 317, 318; power of, 315, 317 Tuckey, Dr. Lloyd, statements, 324 Unbelief a viciousness of nature, 18, 148, 149, 363 ; destructive, 144, 148, 363 Unbelievers as to Satanic existence, 181, 222 Ungodliness, mystery of, 174 Ungodly miss many consolations, 43. 363 ^ „ Uniformity not proven, 6, 281 Unity of evil, 225 ; of power, 21, 280, 315 Universalness of natural correspond- ence, 106, 364 Universal tendency to the future, 97. 174. 238, 317; proof of purpose, 364 Universe, the, not wholly mechani- cal, 29, 305, 317, 364; a symbol, 64, 306, 316; a vital system of living 'immensity, 66, 174, 305, 364 ; God's suit of apparel, 103 Unknown tongues, 96 Unnatural exploits limited, 281, 282 Use of means, 277 Ussher, Archbishop, quotation, 278 Variety wrought by change, 249 ; in earth and heaven, 280 Veil pushed aside, 88 Venn, Rev. Henry, 323 Victory of good, 30, 160, 165, 185 View of future from the past, 89 Villains of necessity, 341 Vine, a symbol of Christ, 35 Visible, is emblem of the invisible, 6, 45, 152, i6o, 205, 207 Vision of God, 22, 317 Wandering is in relation to the not wandering, 236 Warren, Rev. Albert, testimony, 329 Whewell, saying of, loi Whitby, Dr., quoted, 211 Whitetield, George, quotation, 278 Wicked man, devil's palace, 212 ; men, put to use, 281 ; are haunted, 283 Wilberlorce, Canon Basil, 325 Wonderfulness of Christ, 52, 234, 361 Wonders, of science, i ; in common things, 109, 160 Wordsworth, Wm., quotation, 95 Workers with God, 29, 337 Work, our, introduction to God's work, 237 World, governing power, 15, 160, 235, 334 ; a shadow of God's light, 67, 321 ; this, and the world complete, 165, 174 ; full of romance, 176, 207, 223, 320, 334; to come, 230, 232, 234, 373 ; spectacle, 264 ; linked to the indestructible, 300 Worlds not governed solely by mechanical power, 17, 18, 79, 302 ; are to be permanent, 74, 230, 373 ; are means to an end, 102 ; two spiritual, 216 Writings in Nature, 252 Xavier, St. Francis, hymn, 209 Xenophon, quotation, 120 Young, Edward, quotation, 109 Young persons receive the truth, 354 Youngest day of eternity, 31 Zeno, as to dreams, 1 10 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 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