The Destiny of the Soul Part 65

The progress of astronomical science from the wild time when men thought the stars were mere spangles stuck in a solid expanse not far off, to the vigorous age when Ptolemy's mathematics spanned the scope of the sky; from the first reverent observations of the Chaldean shepherds watching the constellations as G.o.ds, to the magnificent reasonings of Copernicus das.h.i.+ng down the innumerable crystalline spheres, "cycle on epicycle, orb on orb," with which crude theorizers had crowded the stellar s.p.a.ces; from the uncurbed poetry of Hyginus writing the floor of heaven over with romantic myths in planetary words, to the more wondrous truth of Le Verrier measuring the steps from nimble Mercury flitting moth like in the beard of the sun to dull Neptune sagging in his cold course twenty six hundred million miles away; from the half inch orb of Hipparchus's naked eye, to the six feet speculum of Rosse's awful tube; from the primeval belief in one world studded around with skyey torch lights, to the modern conviction of octillions of inhabited worlds all governed by one law const.i.tutes the most astonis.h.i.+ng chapter in the history of the human mind. Every step of this incredible progress has had its effect in modifying the conceptions of man's position and importance in nature and of the connection of his future fate with localities. Of old, the entire creation was thought to lie pretty much within the comprehension of man's unaided senses, and man himself was supposed to be the chief if not the sole object of Divine providence. The deities often came down in incarnations and mingled with their favorites and rescued the earth from evils. Every thing was anthropomorphized.

Man's relative magnitude and power were believed to be such that he fancied during an eclipse that, by screams, the cras.h.i.+ng of gongs, and magic rites, he could scare away the monsters

27 Pigott, Scandinavian Mythology, chap. i. p. 31.

28 Volney, Ruins, chap. xxii. sect. 3. Maurice, Hist. Hindostan, vol. i. pp. 145-147.

who were swallowing the sun or the moon. Meteors shooting through the evening air the Arabs believed were fallen angels trying to get back into heaven but hurled from the crystal battlements by the flaming lances of the guardian watchers. Then the gazer saw "The top of heaven full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets."

Now the student contemplates an abyss swarming with orbs each out weighing millions of our earth. Then they read their nativities in the planets and felt how great must be the state overwatched by such resplendent servitors. Now "They seek communion with the stars that they may know How petty is this ball on which they come and go."

Then the hugest view of the extent of the universal sphere was that an iron ma.s.s would require nine days and nights to plunge from its Olympian height to its Tartarean depth. Now we are told by the masters of science that there are stars so distant that it would take their light, travelling at a rate of nearly twelve million miles a minute, thirty million years to reach us. The telescope has multiplied the size of the creation by hundreds of millions, and the grandest conception of the stellar universe possible to the most capacious human mind probably bears no larger proportion to the fact than an orrery does to the solar system.

Our earth is a hundred million miles from the sun, whose diameter is so monstrous that a hundred such orbs strung in a straight line would occupy the whole distance. The sun, with all his attendant planets and moons, is sweeping around his own centre supposed by some to be Alcyone at the rate of four hundred thousand miles a day; and it will take him eighteen million years to complete one revolution. Our firmamental cl.u.s.ter contains, it has been calculated, in round numbers about twenty million stars. There are many thousands of such nebula visible, some of them capable of packing away in their awful bosoms hundreds of thousands of our galaxies. Measure off the abysmal s.p.a.ce into seven hundred thousand stages each a hundred million miles wide, and you reach the nearest fixed stars, for instance, the constellation of the Lyre. Multiply that inconceivable distance by hundreds of thousands, and still you will discern enormous sand banks of stars obscurely glittering on the farthest verge of telescopic vision.

And even all this is but a little corner of the whole.

Coleridge once said, "To some infinitely superior Being, the whole universe may be as one plain, the distance between planet and planet being only as the pores in a grain of sand, and the s.p.a.ces between system and system no greater than the intervals between one grain and the grain adjacent." One of the vastest thoughts yet conceived by any mortal mind is that of turning the universe from a mechanical to a chemical problem, as ill.u.s.trated by Prof.

Lovering.29 a.s.suming the acknowledged truths in physics, that the ultimate particles of matter never actually touch each other, and that water in evaporating expands into eighteen hundred times its previous volume, he demonstrates that the porosity of our solar system is no greater than that of steam. "The porosity of granite or gold may be equal to that of steam,

29 Cambridge Miscellany, 1842.

the greater density being a stronger energy in the central forces." And the conclusion is scientifically reached that "the vast interval between the sun and Herschel is an enormous pore, while the invisible distance that separates the most closely nestled atoms is a planetary s.p.a.ce, a stupendous gulf when compared with the little spheres between which it flows." Thus we may think of the entire universe as a living organism, like a ripening orange, its component atoms worlds, the sidereal movements its vital circulation.

Surely, when a man looks up from his familiar fields and household roof to such incommensurable objects as scientific imagination reveals in the sparkling sword handle of Perseus and the hazy girdle of Andromeda, overpowering humility will fill his breast, an unutterable solemnity will "fall on him as from the very presence chamber of the Highest." And will he not, when he contemplates the dust like shoals of stars, the s.h.i.+ning films of firmaments, that retreat and hover through all the boundless heights, the Nubecula nebula, looking like a bunch of ribbons disposed in a true love's knot, that most awful nebula whirled into the shape and bearing the name of the Dumb Bell, the Crab nebula, hanging over the infinitely remote s.p.a.ce, a sprawling terror, every point holding millions of worlds, thinking of these all transcendent wonders, and then remembering his own inexpressible littleness, how that the visible existence of his whole race does not occupy a single tick of the great Sidereal Clock, will he not sink under helpless misgivings, will he not utterly despair of immortal notice and support from the King of all this? In a word, how does the solemn greatness of man, the supposed eternal destiny of man, stand affected by the modern knowledge of the vastness of creation? Regarding the immensities receding over him in unfathomable abysses bursting with dust heaps of suns, must not man be dwarfed into unmitigated contempt, his life and character rendered absolutely insignificant, the utmost span of his fortunes seeming but as the hum and glitter of an ephemeron in a moment's suns.h.i.+ne? Doubtless many a one has at times felt the stupendous truths of astronomy thus palsying him with a crus.h.i.+ng sense of his own nothingness and burying him in fatalistic despair. Standing at night, alone, beneath the august dome studded from of old with its ever blazing lights, he gazes up and sees the innumerable armies of heaven marshalled forth above him in the order and silence of their primeval pomp. Peacefully and forever they s.h.i.+ne there. In nebula separated from nebula by trillions of leagues, plane beyond plane, they stretch and glitter to the feet of G.o.d. Falling on his knees, he clasps his hands in speechless adoration, but feels, with an intolerable ache of the heart, that in this infinitude such an one as he can be of no consequence whatever. He waits pa.s.sively for the resistless round of fate to bear him away, ah, whither? "Conscious that he dwells but as an atom of dust on the outskirts of a galaxy of inconceivable glory" moving through eternity in the arms of law, he becomes, in his own estimation, an insensible dot lost in the uncontainable wilderness of firmamental systems. But this conclusion of despair is a mistake as sophistical as it is injurious, as baseless in reality as it is natural in seeming. Its antidote and corrective are found in a more penetrative thought and juster understanding of the subject, which will preserve the greatness and the immortal destiny of man unharmed despite the frowning vast.i.tudes of creation. This will appear from fairly weighing the following considerations.

In the first place, the immensity of the material universe is an element entirely foreign to the problem of human fate. When seeking to solve the question of human destiny, we are to study the facts and prophecies of human nature, and to conclude accordingly. It is a perversion of reason to bring from far an induction of nebular magnitudes to crush with their brute weight the plain indications of the spirit of humanity. What though the number of telescopic worlds were raised to the ten thousandth power, and each orb were as large as all of them combined would now be? what difference would that make in the facts of human nature and destiny? It is from the experience going on in man's breast, and not from the firmaments rolling above his head, that his importance and his final cause are to be inferred. The human mind, heart, and conscience, thought, love, faith, and piety, remain the same in their intrinsic rank and capacities whether the universe be as small as it appeared to the eyes of Abraham or as large as it seems in the cosmical theory of Humboldt. Thus the spiritual position of man really remains precisely what it was before the telescope smote the veils of distance and bared the outer courts of being.

Secondly, if we do bring in the irrelevant realms of science to the examination of our princely pretensions, it is but fair to look in both directions. And then what we lose above we gain below. The revelations of the microscope balance those of the telescope. The animalcula magnify man as much as the nebulsa belittle him. We cannot help believing that He who frames and provides for those infinitesimal animals quadrillions of whom might inhabit a drop of water or a leaf and have ample room and verge enough, and whose vital and muscular organization is as complicated and perfect as that of an elephant, will much more take care of man, no matter how numerous the constellations are.

Let us see how far scientific vision can look beneath ourselves as the question is answered by a few well known facts. In each drop of human blood there are three million vitalized corpuscular disks. Considering all the drops made up in this way, man is a kosmos, his veins galaxies through whose circuits these red cl.u.s.tering planets perform their revolutions. How small the exhaling atoms of a grain of musk must be, since it will perfume every breath of air blowing through a hall for a quarter of a century, and then not be perceptibly diminished. An ounce of gold may be reduced into four hundred and thirty two billion parts, each microscopically visible.30 There is a deposit of slate in Bohemia covering forty square miles to the depth of eight feet, each cubic inch of which Ehrenberg found by microscopic measurement to contain forty one thousand million infusorial animals. Sir David Brewster says, "A cubic inch of the Bilin polieschiefer slate contains above one billion seven hundred and fifty thousand millions of distinct individuals of Galionella ferruginea."31 It is a fact that the size of one of these insects as compared with the bulk of a man is virtually as small as that of a man compared with the whole scheme of modern astronomy. Thus, if the problem of our immortal consequence is prejudicially vitiated by contemplating the immense extremity of vision, it is rectified by gazing on the opposite extremity. If man justly scrutinized, without comparisons, is fitted for and worthy of eternity,

30 Lardner, Hand Book of Natural Philosophy, book i. chap. v.31 More Worlds than One, ch. viii. note 3.

no foreign facts, however magnificent or minute, should alter our judgment from the premises.

Thirdly, is it not evident that man's greatness keeps even pace along the scale of magnitude with the widening creation, since it is his mind that sees and comprehends how wondrous the dimensions of the universe are? The number of stars and the limits of s.p.a.ce are not more astounding than it is that he should be capable of knowing such things, enumerating and staking them off. When man has measured the distance and weighed the bulk of Sirius, it is more appropriate to kneel in amazement before the inscrutable mystery of his genius, the irrepressible soaring of his soul, than to sink in despair under the swinging of those lumps of dirt in their unapproachable spheres because they are so gigantic! The appearance of the creation to man is not vaster than his perception of it. They are exactly correlated by the very terms of the statement. As the astronomic world expands, the astronomer's mind dilates and must be as large as it in order to contain it in thought. What we lose in relative importance from the enlargement of the boundaries of the universe we gain from the new revelation of our capacities that is made through these transcendent achievements of our science. That we are favorites of the Creator and destined for immortal glories is therefore logically and morally just as credible after looking through Herschel's forty feet reflector and reading La Place's Mecanique Celeste as it would be were this planet, suspended in a hollow dome, the entirety of material being.

Furthermore, we can reason only from the data we have; and, doing that, we should conclude, from the intrinsic and incomparable superiority of spirit to matter, that man and his kindred scattered in families over all the orbs of s.p.a.ce were the especial objects of the infinite Author's care. They are fitted by their filial attributes to commune with Him in praise and love. They know the prodigious and marvellous works of mechanical nature; mechanical nature knows nothing. Man can return his Maker's blessing in voluntary obedience and thanks; matter is inanimate clay for the Potter's moulding. Turning from the gleaming wildernesses of star land to the intellect and heart, appreciating the infinite problems and hopes with which they deal and aspire, we feel the truth expressed by Wordsworth in his tremendous lines:

"I must, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil. Not chaos, darkest pit of Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scoop'd out By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our minds, into the mind of man."

Is not one n.o.ble thought of truth, one holy emotion of love, one divine impulse of devotion, better than a whole planet of mud, a whole solar system of gas and dust? Who would not rather be the soul that gauges the deeps, groups the laws, foretells the movements, of the universe, writing down in a brief mathematical formula a complete horoscope of the heavens as they will appear on any given night thousands of years hence, than to be all that array of swooping systems? To think the world is to be superior to the world. That which appreciates is akin to that which makes; and so we are the Creator's children, and these crowding nebula, packed with orbs as thick as the ocean beach with sands, are the many mansions of the House fitted up for His abode and ours. An only prince would be of more consideration than a palace, although its foundation pressed the shoulders of Serpentarius, its turret touched the brow of Orion, and its wings reached from the Great Bear to the Phoenix. So a mind is of more importance than the material creation, and the moral condition of a man is of greater moment than the aspect of stellar firmaments.

Another ill.u.s.tration of the truth we are considering is to be drawn from the idealist theory, to which so many of the ablest thinkers of the world have given their devoted adhesion, that matter is merely phenomenal, no substantial ent.i.ty, but a transient show preserved in appearance for some ulterior cause, and finally, at the withdrawal or suspension of G.o.d's volition, to return into annihilating invisibility as swiftly as a flash of lightning. The solid seeming firmaments are but an exertion of Divine force projected into vision to serve for a season as a theatre for the training of spirits. When that process is complete, in the twinkling of an eye the phantasmal exhibition of matter will disappear, leaving only the ideal realm of indestructible things, souls with their inward treasures remaining in their native sphere of the infinite, while the outward universe "Doth vanish like a ghost before the sun."

The same practical result may also be reached by a different path, may be attained by the road of physics as well as by that of transcendental metaphysics. For Newton has given in his Principia a geometrical demonstration of the infinite compressibility of matter. All the worlds, therefore, that cl.u.s.ter in yon swelling vault can be condensed into a single globe of the size of a walnut; and then, on that petty lump of apparent substance, the enfranchised soul might trample in an exultation of magnanimous scorn upon the whole universe of earths, and soar through its own unlimited dominion, Monarch of Immortality, the s.n.a.t.c.hed glory of shrunken firmaments flas.h.i.+ng from its deathless wings.

Finally, a proper comprehension of the idea of G.o.d will neutralize the skepticism and despondency sometimes stealthily nourished or crus.h.i.+ngly impressed by contemplations of the immensity of nature.

If one, from regarding the cold and relentless mechanism of the surrounding system, tremble for fear of there being no kind Overruler, let him gaze on the warm beauty that flushes the countenance of day, the mystic meditativeness that hangs on the pensive and starry brow of night, let him follow the commanding instincts of his own heart, and he will find himself clinging in irresistible faith and filial love to the thought of an infinite Father. If still the atheistic sentiment obtrudes upon him and oppresses him, let him observe how every spot of immensity whereon the eye of science has fallen is crowded with unnumbered amazing examples of design, love, beneficence, and he will perceive that the irrefragable lines of argument drawn through the boundless s.p.a.ces of creation light up the stupendous contour of G.o.d and show the expression of his features to be love. It seems as though any man acquainted with the truths and magnitudes of astronomy, who, after seeing the star strewn abysses, would look in his mirror and ask if the image reflected there is that of the greatest being in the universe, would need nothing further to convince him that a G.o.d, the Creator, Preserver, Sovereign, lives. And then, if, mistakenly judging from his own limitations, he thinks that the particular care of all the acc.u.mulated galaxies of worlds, every world perhaps teeming with countless millions of conscious creatures, would transcend the possibilities even of G.o.d, a moment's reflection will dissolve that sophistry in the truth that G.o.d is infinite, and that to his infinite attributes globule and globe are alike, the oversight of the whole and of each part a matter of instantaneous and equal ease. Still further: if this abstract truth be insufficient to support faith and bestow peace, what will he say to the visible fact that all the races of beings, and all the cl.u.s.ters of worlds, from the motes in a sunbeam to the orbs of the remotest firmament, are now taken care of by Divine Providence? G.o.d now keeps them all in being and order, unconfused by their multiplicity, unoppressed by their magnitude, and not for an instant forgetting or neglecting either the mightiest or the least. Morbidly suspicious, perversely incredulous, must be the mind that denies, since it is so now in this state, that it may be so as well in the other state and forever! Grasping the conception of one G.o.d, who creates, rules, and loves all, man may unpresumptuously feel himself to be a child of the Infinite and a safe heir of immortality. Looking within and without, and soaring in fancy amidst the blue and starry alt.i.tudes interspersed with blazing suns and nebulous oceans, he may cry, from a sober estimate of all the experimental and phenomenal facts within his reach,

"Even here I feel, Among these mighty things, that as I am I am akin to G.o.d; that I am part Of the use universal, and can grasp Some portion of that reason in the which The whole is ruled and founded; that I have A spirit n.o.bler in its cause and end, Lovelier in order, greater in its powers, Than all these bright and swift immensities."

Perhaps the force of these arguments may be better condensed and expressed by help of an individual ill.u.s.tration. While the pen is forming these words, the announcement of the death of Dr. Kane saddens the world. Alas that the gallant heart no longer beats, the story of whose n.o.ble generosity and indomitable prowess has just thrilled the dull nations of men of meaner mould! Who even though standing before a telescope under the full architecture of the heavens can believe that that maiden soul of heroism and devotion is now but an extinguished spark, that the love, honor, intelligence, self sacrificing consecration which enswathed him as with a saintly halo have all gone out? Turning from that pale form, stretched on the couch of death in fatal Cuba, through the receding gulfs of s.p.a.ce where incomputable systems of worlds are wheeling on their eternal courses, and then looking back again from the noiseless glitter and awful bulk of the creation, do you despair of the immortal consequence of the poor sufferer whose fleshly moorings to existence are successively loosening at every gasp? Ah, remember that Matter and the Soul are not alone! Far above that clay bound, struggling soul, and far above those measureless, firmamental ma.s.ses, is G.o.d, the Maker of them both, and the Lover of his child. Glancing in His omniscience down upon that human death couch, around which affectionate prayers are floating from every part of the earth, and from whose pallid occupant confiding sighs are rising to His ear, He sees the unutterable mysteries of yearning thought, emotion, and power, which are the hidden being of man, and which so ally the filial spirit to the parent Divinity. As beneath His gaze the faithful soul of Elisha Kane slowly extricating itself from its overwrought tabernacle, and also extricating itself from the holy network of heart strings which sixty millions of men speaking one speech have flung around him, if haply so they might retain him to earth to take their love and waiting honors rises into the invisible, seeking to return, bearing its virgin purity with it, to the bosom of G.o.d, will He overlook it, or carelessly spurn it into night, because the banks of stars are piled up so thick and high that they absorb His regards? My soul, come not thou into the counsels of them that think so! It should not be believed though astronomy were a thousand times astronomy. But it shall rather be thought that, ere now, the brave American has discovered the Mariner whom he sought, though sailing on far other seas, where there is no destroying winter and no need of rescue.

In a.s.sociation with the measureless s.p.a.ces and countless worlds brought to light by astronomic science naturally arises the question whether the other worlds are, like our earth, peopled with responsible intelligences. In ancient times the stars were not generally thought to be worlds, but to be persons, genii or G.o.ds. At the dawn of creation "the morning stars sang together;"

that is, "the sons of G.o.d shouted for joy." The stars were the living army of "Jehovah of hosts." At the time when the theological dogmas now prevalent were first conceived, the greatness and glory of the universe were supposed to centre on this globe. The fortunes of man wellnigh absorbed, it was imagined, the interest of angels and of G.o.d. The whole creation was esteemed a temporary theatre for the enactment of the sublime drama of the fall and redemption of man. The entire heavens with all their host were thought to revolve in satellite dependence around this stationary and regal planet. For G.o.d to hold long, anxious, repeated councils to devise means to save us, was not deemed out of keeping with the relative dignity of the earth and the human race. But at length the progress of discovery put a different aspect on the physical conditions of the problem. The philosopher began to survey man's habitation and history, and to estimate man's comparative rank and destiny, not from the stand point of a solitary planet dating back only a few thousand years, but in the light of millions of centuries of duration and from a position among millions of crowded firmaments whence our sun appears as a dim and motionless star. This new vision of science required a new construction of theology. The petty and monstrous notions of the ignorant superst.i.tion of the early age needed rectification. In the minds of the wise and devout few this was effected; but with the great majority the two sets of ideas existed side by side in unreconciled confusion and contradiction, as they even continue to do unto this day.

When it came to be believed that the universe teemed with suns, moons, and planets, composed of material substances, subject to day and night, and various other laws and changes, like our own abode, it was natural to infer that these innumerable worlds were also inhabited by rational creatures akin to ourselves and capable of wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d. Numerous considerations, possessing more or less weight, were brought forward to confirm such a conclusion.

The most striking presentation ever made of the argument, perhaps, is that in Oersted's essay on the "Universe as a Single Intellectual Realm." It became the popular faith, and is undoubtedly more so now than ever before. Towards the end of the seventeenth century a work was published in explicit support of this faith by Fontenelle. It was ent.i.tled "Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds," and had marked success, running through many editions. A few years later, Huygens wrote a book, called "Cosmotheoros," in maintenance of the same thesis. The more this doctrine obtained root and life in the convictions of men, the more strongly its irreconcilableness with the ordinary theology must have made itself felt by fearless and competent thinkers.

Could a quadrillion firmaments loaded with stars, each inhabited by its own race of free intelligences, all be burned up and destroyed in the Day of Judgment provoked on this petty grain of dust by the sin of Adam? 32 Were the stars mere sparks and spangles stuck in heaven for us to see by, it would be no shock to our reason to suppose that they might be extinguished with our extinction; but, grasping the truths of astronomy as they now lie in the brain of a master in science, we can no longer think of G.o.d expelling our race from the joys of being and then quenching the splendors of his hall "as an innkeeper blows out the lights when the dance is at an end." G.o.d rules and over rules all, and serenely works out his irresistible ends, incapable of wrath or defeat. Would it be more incongruous for Him to be angry with an ant hill and come down to trample it, than to be so with the earth and appear in vindictive fire to annihilate it?

From time to time, in the interests of the antiquated ideas, doubts have been raised as to the validity of the doctrine of stellar worlds stocked with intellectual families.33 Hegel, either imbued with that Gnostic contempt and hatred for matter which described the earth as "a dirt ball for the extrication of light spirits," or from an obscure impulse of pantheistic thought, sullies the stars with every demeaning phrase, even stigmatizing them as "pimples of light." Michelet, a disciple of Hegel, followed his example, and, in a work published in 1840, strove vigorously to aggrandize the earth and man at the expense of the accepted teachings of astronomy.34 With argument and ridicule, wit and reason, he endeavored to make it out that the stars are no better than gleaming patches of vapor. We are the exclusive autocrats of all immensity. Whewell has followed up this species of thought with quite remarkable adroitness, force, and brilliance.35 Whether his motive in this undertaking is purely scientific and artistic, or whether he is impelled by a fancied religious animus, having been bitten by some theological fear which has given him the astrophobia, does not clearly appear.

32 As specimens of the large number of treatises which have been published a.s.serting the destruction of the whole creation in the Day of Judgment, the following may be consulted. Osiander, De Consummatione Saculi Dissertationum Pentus. Lund, De Excidio Universi Totali et Substantiali. Frisch, Die Welt im Feuer, oder das wahre Vergehen und Ende der Welt durch den letzen Sundenbrand.

For a century past the opinion has been gaining favor that the great catastrophe will be confined to our earth, and that even this is not to be annihilated, but to be transformed, purged, and beautified by the crisis. See, e. g., Brumhey, Ueber die endliche Umwandlung der Erde durch Feuer.

33 Kurtz, Bibel and Astronomie. Simonton's Eng. trans., ch. vi.

sect. 14: Incarnation of G.o.d.

34 Vorlesungen uber die ewige Personlichkeit des Geistes. 35 Of a Plurality of Worlds: An Essay.

Brewster has replied to Whewell's disturbing essay in a volume which more commands our sympathies and carries our reason, but is less sustained in force and less close in logic.36 Powell has still more recently published a very valuable treatise on the subject;37 and with this work the discussion rests thus far, leaving, as we believe, the popular faith in an astronomic universe of inhabited worlds unshaken, however fatal the legitimate implications of that faith may be to other doctrines simultaneously held.38 It is curious to observe the s.h.i.+fting positions taken up by skepticism in science, now, with powerful recoil from the narrow bigotries of theology, eagerly embracing the sublimest dreams of astronomic speculation, and now inclining to the faith that the remoter stars are but brilliant globules trickling from the poles of some terrible battery in the G.o.dless heights of s.p.a.ce. But if there be any thing sure in science at all, it is that the material creation is inconceivably vast, including innumerable systems, and all governed by invariable laws. But let us return from this episode.

The foregoing sixfold argument, preserving us from the remorseless grasp of annihilation, leaves to us unchanged the problem of the relations which shall be sustained by the disembodied soul to time and s.p.a.ce, the question as to the locality of the spirit world, the scene of our future life. Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, Valhalla with its mead brimmed horns, Blessed Isles, Elysium, supernal Olympus, firmamental Heaven, paradisal Eden, definite sites of celestial Worlds for departed souls, the Chaldee's golden orbs, the Sanscrit Meru, the Indian Hunting Ground, the Moslem's love bowers, and wine rivers, and gem palaces thronged with dark eyed houris, these notions, and all similar ones, of material residences for spirits, located and bounded, we must dismiss as dreams and cheats of the childish world's unripe fancy. There is no evidence for any thing of that coa.r.s.e, crude sort. The fict.i.tious theological Heaven is a deposit of imagination on the azure ground of infinity, like a bird's nest on Himalaya. What, then, shall we say? Why, in the first place, that, while there are reasons enough and room enough for an undisheartened faith in the grand fact of human immortality, it is beyond our present powers to establish any detailed conclusions in regard to its locality or its scenery.

But surely, in the second place, we should say that it becomes us, when reflecting on the scenes to be opened to us at death, to rise to a more ideal and sublime view than any of those tangible figments which were the products of untrained sensual imagination and gross materialistic theory. When the fleshly prison walls of the mind fall, its first inheritance is a stupendous freedom. The narrow limits that caged it here are gone, and it lives in an ethereal sphere with no impeding bounds. Leaving its natal threshold of earth and the lazar house of time, its home is immensity, and its lease is eternity. Even in our present state, to a true

36 More Worlds than One the Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian.

37 Essay on the Unity or Plurality of Worlds. See, furthermore, in Westminster Review, July, 1858, Recent Astronomy and the Nebular Hypothesis.

38 Volger, Erde and Ewigkeit. (Natural History of the Earth as a Periodical Process of Development in Opposition to the Unnatural Geology of Revolutions and Catastrophes.) Treise, Dag Endlose der grossen und der kleinen materiellen Welt.

thinker there is no ascent or descent or terminating wall in s.p.a.ce, but equal motion illimitably in all directions; and no absolute standard of duration, only a relative and variable one from the insect of an hour, to man, to an archangel, to that incomprehensible Being whose shortest moments are too vast to be noted by the awful nebula of the Hour Gla.s.s, although its rus.h.i.+ng sands are systems of worlds. The soul emerges from earthly bondage emanc.i.p.ated into eternity, while "The ages sweep around him with their wings, Like anger'd eagles cheated of their prey."

We have now sufficient premonitions and examples of this wondrous enlargement to base a rational belief on. What hems us in when we think, feel, and imagine? And what is the heaven that shall dawn for us beyond the veil of death's domain but the realm of Thought, the sphere of the spirit's unhampered powers? There are often vouchsafed to us here hours of outsoaring emotion and conception which make the enclosures in which the astronomer loiters seem narrow. "His skies are shoal, and imagination, like a thirsty traveller, pants to be through their desert. The roving mind impatiently bursts the fetters of astronomical orbits, like cobwebs in a corner of its universe, and launches itself to where distance fails to follow, and law, such as science has discovered, grows weak and weary." There are moods of spiritual expansion and infinite longing that ill.u.s.trate the train of thought so well expressed in the following lines:

"Even as the dupe in tales Arabian Dipp'd but his brow beneath the beaker's brim, And in that instant all the life of man From youth to age roll'd its slow years on him, And, while the foot stood motionless, the soul Swept with deliberate wing from pole to pole; So when the man the Grave's still portal pa.s.ses, Closed on the substances or cheats of earth, The Immaterial, for the things earth gla.s.ses, Shapes a new vision from the matter's dearth: Before the soul that sees not with our eyes The undefined Immeasurable lies." 39

Then we realize that the spiritual world does not form some now unseen and distant region of the visible creation, but that the astronomic universe is a speck lying in the invisible bosom of the spiritual world. "s.p.a.ce is an attribute of G.o.d in which all matter is laid, and other attributes he may have which are the home of mind and soul." We suppose the difference between the present embodied and the future disembodied state to be so vast that the conditions of the latter cannot be intelligibly ill.u.s.trated by the a.n.a.logies of the former. It is not to be expected that the human soul will ever be absolutely independent of time and s.p.a.ce, literally transcending them, but only relatively so as compared with its earthly predicament.

39 Bulwer, King Arthur, book xi.

For, as an able thinker and writer a philosopher of the Swedenborgian school, too has said, "The conception of a mind absolutely sundered from all connection with s.p.a.ce is a mere pretence which words necessarily repudiate."