Hearing the Inaudible. 333 the sea-shore or sitting in a tranquil meadow, the ripple of waves in soft murmurs among the pebbles; the, to all other ears inaudible, insect music, and vibration of grasses in responsive touch; grow into sounds sonorous and grand as the thunder-peal; or are full of sweetest harmony as melodies of heaven. This cannot be put away as a freak of imagination. There are two parts in every sensation-what we receive and what we add. Some men have less feeling than others possess, but none are without consciousness as to mysteries of the universe; nor unvisited by thoughts of a life beyond the present; nor dead to the stirring impulses of conviction that the sorrows of mankind will be remedied and their pleasures enlarged. " 1 "Bounteous Giver of all good! Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown; Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor, "In the strictest of sciences-Mathematics-it can be easily shown that no really great advance, such as the inventions of Fluxions by Newton, and of the Differential Calculus by Leibnitz, can be made without the exercise of the imagination." In Nature is something like a galvanic circle, something that reveals itself in peculiar processes of thought -like that sudden solving of the problem that for fifteen years had haunted Sir W. Rowan Hamilton. There are many instances, thoroughly well attested, in which knowledge of the death of a relative at a distance has been conveyed, with all the particulars, to persons during their sleep; and there are examples of some special information, buried in the bosom of the dead, being imparted in sleep to the living. "The singularity of the facts conveyed, and the impossibility of their coming through any ordinary channel, ought, on every principle of philosophical and of forensic evidence, to be admitted as furnishing proper proof of an invisible interference." "2 Can they be scientifically measured? Doubtless, they can be known according to the measure and kind of a man's ability" av трâyμа exeι dúo Xaßás "-to discern the near τρᾶγμα ἔχει δύο λαβάς and other side. Swedenborg-though dreamer, was a man of spiritual "Mental Physiology: " W. B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S. 2 44 Physical Theory of Another Life," cap. xvii. : Isaac Taylor. insight-states, "the whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world collectively and in every part; for the natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual world, just as an effect does from the cause." Delitzsch says-" The creation realised in time is actually only the temporal realisation of that which was everlastingly present to the triune self-consciousness of God; and of the latter as of the former the same principle is true, that it is God in the totality of His nature from Whom and in Whom it has its ideal existence." Formulate the fact-The doctrines of the Conservation of Energy, and Uniformity of Law, require that there be no sudden wrench, nor absolute break anywhere; nevertheless, the creation and continuance of the visible universe are not of smooth continuity and invariable uniformity; but that infinitely various and complicate operation by which things, visible and invisible, work in splendid unity. We rightly push back to the furthest our knowledge of the Great First Cause; but cannot do away with some original production of the visible universe, from the invisible. If we speculate on the future, no limit can be assigned to the marvellous, ever-unfolding phenomena. If we look inward, we cannot remember how consciousness began, nor can we examine its essential nature. Beginning, continuance, consciousness, termination, are equally mysterious. To ignore the invisible, breaks the doctrine of continuity, disrupts the grand chain of entity. To be told that the visible universe is only a huge fire which burns itself out, and leaves nothing but ashes-dead worthless residuum--is enough to startle every one. Science, acknowledging the kindling, as it owns quenching of the fire, allows that the visible forms but a part of the universe. Shape the fact. I. Did the visible spring out of an order, or no order of things, with which it had no connection? II. Will it pass into an order or no order of things, wholly unconnected with it? III. Is it a transfer from the invisible; which, passing from grade to grade of realisation, becomes transposed into some other order of things with which it is intimately connected? If the scientific affirmation is correct, that the requisites for existence connect every organ and organism with the past-we must hold, that the scientific 1 "Bible Psychology," p. 63. Three Mysteries. 335 doctrine of Continuity is proof of transposition of past into present; and of the present into some other order with which it is connected. The third proposition is true; so when "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, Shakespeare. there will be a continuance, or state, into which the present visible existence is an avenue. Those who, in the name of science at one end, or in the name of religion at the other, shut up the path and affix a placard—“ No Road This Way,” mistrust their own principles.1 The physical properties of matter are well called"the alphabet of that great book the Universe." In the universe are three mysteries: the mystery of matter, the mystery of life, the mystery of God. Matter seems simplest, but the circumference of darkness is mysterious and tremendous. Matter, as to what it is, and how it is, eludes and will for ever elude our grasp-except that it is the external of power. When we apply the laws of matter to living things, we find something lying beyond; something, sui generis, working with and through those laws to an appointed end. Passing from life to a region more mysterious—that of mind, we find something as much transcending life as life transcends matter. It is of no use, theoretically, to drive life into the structural depths of the universe; to transfer mind into the thick darkness of the past; to conceive of the Great Cause as only operating aforetime; we do not get rid of Him, nor of them. A scientific conception of the universe embraces, Matter, a manifestation of Energy; Life, an unveiling of hidden Existence; Mind, affording conception of Highest Intellectual Power. Against this are a few sophistries of the old speech from under the Tree of Knowledge, but we append replies to them. "Everything in Nature is natural, and not supernatural; or it would not be a part of Nature." Then, if a bird flies into a room it belongs to the room, and is part of the furniture, "Every unknown cause must be accounted a natural cause." "The Unseen Universe," p. 211. Then, we are to build upon ignorance, and call the house knowledge. "We know nothing about causes, we can only trace antecedents and consequents." Very well, then do not speak about that of which you know nothing. "Matter either made itself, or is eternal; in any case, it made everything else." Science teaches that matter was formless, and without properties; that motion came into it from without; and without it Nature was not possible: hence we do know something of cause. High energy is ever passing into lower forms; the reversal of low energy into the higher can only be accomplished, even under most favourable conditions, by escape of the far greater part; and, when the lowest form has become universal, there can be no reversal except by reinfusion of energy from without. No amount of pushing by unintelligent force in time and space could create the world we live in, any more than the shaking of pebbles would build Westminster Abbey; nor are the vibrations of atoms equivalent to moral emotions of will, love, reverence, in a selfconscious intellect—they are at least vibrations plus emotions of the soul. We are told-"It is impossible to conceive the Supreme Being acting otherwise than we actually see in Nature." Babble. Turn the assertion-"It is impossible for us to conceive the Supreme Being acting as we see in Nature," and every atheist in the world will say "Amen." "6 'Progress," we are told, "is necessary to existence, or life;" take the reverse- "Progress is necessary for non-existence, or death;" both are true. "The highest effect is to bring man into perfect harmony with law;" yes, but the aim of science and intelligence is to control natural law for spirit to use. obedience to law are life and safety;" yes, but knowledge and power to subdue and use natural law are imperatively demanded for life and safety. There is something unseen in the seen, something transcends Nature in Nature. "In Some admit that miracles are theoretically possible, but deny that any have been wrought, and would ignore them by means of truisms. "If we neglect gravitation, we shall be dashed in pieces at the foot of a precipice, or be crushed by a falling rock; if we despise sanitary law, we are destroyed by pestilence; if we disregard chemical laws, we are poisoned by a vapour." "Yes," we reply, "because God, who liketh simple folk, approveth not of simpletons." It has been The Supernatural not Unnatural. 337 proposed that we erect two hospitals; in one the patients are to be "physicked," in the other "prayed for." Evidently the proposer had need of both remedies. The wisdom and order of Divine conduct, whether in giving or withholding, cannot be tabulated by man, to form a theory of prayers, and a register of faith, for production of results. Sickness unhealed, sickness healed, whether rod or reproof, may be for the glory of God. Out of folly, wisdom may be got; from sickness, healing; from poison, medicine; by conciliation, things contrary turn to our part. Noise is made about the supernatural being unnaturalas if what came into Nature from without, did not thereby become natural. Walking on the sea is a plain reversal of laws; but so also, antecedently, is sending a message under the sea. If the latter is accomplished in our days; so the former, in the example of Christ and the experience of Apostles. To say "The alleged sea-walking and submarine telegraphy have nothing in common; because to accomplish the miracle, either the body or the water must have been invested with new properties; and, in the tele graph case, it was merely required that old and persistent properties should be ascertained and utilised"—is really to assume that we know all about the miracle that is to be known; that there are no energies, either in heaven or earth, by use of which a man may walk on the surface of the sea. To our forefathers, telegraphy was an impossibility greater than the miracle wrought by Christ. It will be established, if ever men do walk on the sea, that they do so by ascertaining and utilising the at present unknown properties of the universe. We explain why miracles are wrought; but definition of the unknown quantity, how they are wrought, is imperfect. To say "Whatever is contrary to universal and invariable experience is antecedently incredible,” were a truism, if man or nation had universal and invariable experience. The saying of Professor Baden Powell-" In Nature and from Nature, by science and by reason, we neither have nor can possibly have any evidence of a Deity working miracles; for that we must go out of Nature and beyond science"1is not less destitute of scientific accuracy than of comprehension. It restricts science and reason to our present 1 66 Essays and Reviews: Studies of the Evidences of Christianity." |