The Universe a Vast Electric Organism Part 12

All life is a poem of glory; Neither reason nor senses can grasp, Till we read every verse in the story, And the hand of the author we clasp.

Then sing on sweet souls as of olden, With visions of soul-land that shine, Till the harp of the earthly is golden From the hand of the Author Divine.

CHAPTER XI

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY SUSTAIN THE RELIGIOUS CONCEPT

I contend that science, philosophy and electric evolution sustain the religious concept.

The infinite and eternal power that animates the universe must be psychical in its nature, and any attempt to reduce it to mechanical force must end in absurdity. The only kind of monism which will stand the test of an ultimate a.n.a.lysis, says John Fiske is monotheism. The highest development of psychical life is the end for which the world exists. To the materialist the ultimate power is material power, and psychical life is nothing but fleeting colocations of natural elements in the shape of nervous systems. The psychical nature of G.o.d and the immortality of the soul harmonize infinitely better with cosmic philosophy. Prof. John Fiske says: "Evolution brings before us with vividness the conception of an ever-present G.o.d, not an absentee G.o.d who once manufactured a cosmic machine capable of running itself. It makes G.o.d our constant support and nature His revelation, and when all its religious implications are set forth it will be seen to be the most potent ally Christianity ever had in elevating mankind. The progress of evolution now is to bring out the higher spiritual attributes and to set the whole doctrine of evolution in harmony with religion. Then, the a.s.sumption that underlies all religion must be true--that what we see of the present life is not the whole thing; that there is a spiritual as well as a material side of life; in short, a life eternal.

"In the whole history of evolution," he continues, "when we see an internal adjustment reach out towards something, it is in order to adapt itself to something that exists. And if the religious cravings of man const.i.tute an exception they are the only exception in the whole process of evolution." This is an argument of stupendous and resistless weight.

This puts evolution in harmony with religious thought, and the great religious drift of humanity in all ages, and removes the antagonism that used to appear to exist between religion and science.

The French materialists of the eighteenth century virtually declared: "We content ourselves with what we can prove by the methods of physical science and we will reject all else." But think how chaotic nature was to their minds compared to our present conception, and how different the universe they saw to what we see to-day. And it is not to be wondered at that there was antagonism between science and religion. Anaxagoras maintained that the human race would never have become human if it were not for the hand, and John Fiske says, "_man never would have attained his present psychic powers but for religion_."

This is truth well stated, and the fact that man is the only creature that has a hand, an articulate voice and an aesthetic nature that is never satisfied, is strong proof that man is infinitely more than a mere animal, or a transient animate machine. The higher intellectual powers were dwarfed in the middle ages, when human life was made hideous by famine, pestilence, perennial warfare and b.l.o.o.d.y superst.i.tions, fear of witchcraft and eternal torments, and men endured it because they had no experience of anything better. But the change wrought in six centuries is amazing, and shows that human genius and man's possibilities are beyond our comprehension. The genius of Aristotle proved that the earth is a globe, that of Copernicus showed that it was one of a system of planets, and that of Newton undertook to explain the laws and dynamics of this marvelous sun and world system.

Belief in G.o.d, and the immortality of the soul, and the compensations of a future life tend to maintain social order and moral rect.i.tude, by enabling men to endure the trials and injustice of this world in the hope of ample compensation in the hereafter. Man steps forth on this revolving globe not of his own volition, but is sent here by some mysterious power on some inscrutable mission to fulfill some divine purpose. He comes as a spiritual wayfarer under sentence of death. Not death to the spirit, but to the transient habiliments of earth-dust he gathers round his invisible spiritual form. When he arrives and gathers his reasoning powers to scan the narrow horizon of his life, he is beset by perplexing problems of poverty, disease, sorrow, sin and death. The "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" often overwhelm him, and he discovers at last that the law of life is the law of growth and development; and all these struggles and trials are intended to evolve character and purify and enn.o.ble the soul. That this is the seed time and nursery of existence preparatory to the harvest of eternal life when he shall drop this overcoat of atoms and be transplanted to the self-luminous bosom and unfading joys of the perfected and celestial sun-worlds. Here he sees incompleteness, fragmentary careers, tragedies, injustice, griefs and farewells, and he hungers for knowledge. His quenchless spirit seeks to penetrate the mysteries of the universe, and comprehend time and eternity, and in agony of soul he asks the age-old question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" Then, if he turn not to the pages of sacred writ for an answer, he will find written on the living pages and animated forms of all nature the promise of another life. He will find it in the returning verdure of spring, in the unfading light of the eternal stars, in the ever-changing beauty of the bending skies, in the mysterious impulse of the untaught birds of the air who start on their vast migrations from the frozen seas of the north to the summer-lands of the sunny south; in the tropic fish, who seek their sp.a.w.ning nests in the clear, cool rivers of the north. The bear and lion, the tiger and elephant, the bees and the insects of a summer day, all have the longings of their natures satisfied. Why should man be an exception? If the Creator of all keeps faith with all other creatures, why not with man?

"As something must have been eternal," says Prof. Wright, "it is easier to suppose it was an intelligent, designing mind which was uncreated from the beginning, and which has brought the universe into being with all its uniformity of laws and complexity of adaptation than to suppose that the eternal substance was matter out of which has come the orderly universe as we know it, with its high grades of intelligence in animals and man.

"The world, as the creation of a supreme intelligence, is partially comprehensible to finite minds. But to suppose that the thought and purpose and will of man are products of material forces is not only a mystery, but an absurdity which cannot long be entertained by any sane mind. The theory of evolution without a G.o.d can lay no claim to scientific support. A theory of evolution, designed, controlled and permeated by divine ideas, may be both scientific and in accord with the highest dictates of religious truth."

As to the life hereafter, which the religious concept has always proclaimed, it is a fact demonstrated by history that in all ages, among all people, under all religious forms, the idea of immortality remains fixed and imperishable in the human mind. Every human being in coming into this world brings with him under a form more or less vague this inward belief, desire and hope of immortality. This is G.o.d's handwriting on the human soul. And the history of man, the reasoning conscience of man, is G.o.d's Bible of life written in man's spiritual nature. And whatever is rational, true and good is of G.o.d, and whatever is contrary to the enlightened conscience of man is contrary to the divine purpose of G.o.d.

Revelation proclaims G.o.d is a spirit and man is a spirit, and after death man in his spiritual being shall live on forever. The latest modern scientific thought fully and powerfully sustains the Bible. It says in substance, in dealing with man we must deal with him as a spiritual being; we must go into a realm that brings us within the sphere of the electrical and magnetic relations of the elements, but on a different plane. First, matter in the invisible world has the same essential basis of formative power so potent in the more tangible relations. Second, the invisible atoms there obey the same essential principles that in a lower grade of activity give visible results.

Third, there must be a direct connection between the two conditions of being--the visible and the spiritual--as to be axiomatic. Fourth, there must be a secondary form of the invisible elements ere they a.s.sume the visible relation, which is a chemical or electric necessity. In all life this law is absolute. Fifth, in applying this principle to the process of the evolution of man's form we have an explanation of how it must be a natural product of evolutionary life, and that man must follow the same law as the evolution of all spirit that pertains to planetary life.

Spirit holds visible things in form by its connection with the magnetic life of the planet. It is the controlling power in shaping the form and organism to correspond to changed conditions. The material form can only exist by keeping itself in harmony with the laws of the elements in the planet, and as long as the planet endures the electric form in man and the electric or instinct form in animals within the radius of its magnetic aurora must exist as a secondary satellite, or miniature concrete expression of the forces in the planet. This principle may give the electric form immortality, and, by reason of the eternal nature of the elements composing it, place it beyond the possibility of dissolution as long as the planetary relation of the elements exists.

But with man it goes even further, for the spirit form, having the basic principles of eternal existence in its spiritual composition and having once entered upon organic life, has in itself immortality and the power of self-sustenance from the elements in s.p.a.ce and cannot become disintegrated, for it has all the necessary material to keep it in eternal existence as an organism, though the planet should revert to its original status and vanish as a distinct form. This explanation of the nature of spirit gives us a logical ground for the rational consideration of the phenomenon that has been the basis of all the superst.i.tions embalmed in the sacred and curious literature of past ages. That man and probably all types of life have a spiritual or electric counterpart is not a scientific speculation or hypothesis merely, but a logical sequence of the forms that enter into physical organization.

Here in the secondary form, says the author of "Planetary Evolution," is an explanation of the nature of spirit that follows the same principles that construct the physical body and form the same material environments. And the questions of a spiritual life, apart from this principle of a secondary form, cannot be solved by any known formula of a scientific character. On the other hand, the existence of a form holding the powers of thought and action upon the plane of radiant matter gives a satisfactory explanation of the transference of the mental powers that belong to planetary life. The law of correlation and conservation of force prevent their annihilation, and they must exist somewhere. They are a spiritual ent.i.ty, but should not be regarded as having a supernatural origin.

"The spirit is an evolution of planetary life and cannot be destroyed, and it is natural that its mental attachments to the planet should bring it in contact with the mental development generated there. The spirit would have the power of thought and consecutive reasoning as much after its transition from mortal life as before, but it would lack the power of expression through ordinary channels. It would, however, have the power of inductive electric transfer of thought, and, coming in contact with a spirit embodied, this power of induction would excite the elements in the spirit embodied to equilibrium of mentality, which would give rise to a similarity of thought in both." And here lies the foundation of the doctrine of inspiration which is a process of mental action whereby the mind in the body is raised to a perception and expression of ideas beyond its own range of thought as generated by the physical senses. The result is the upbuilding of the brain organ and the uplifting of the mentality to the purely spiritual plane, and man has thus, by the aid of the spiritual powers, made another stride forward in the domain of spiritual evolution. And man is a spiritualized being with brain organs adapted to the expression of ideas that respond to the spiritual state of life.

It is sometimes a.s.sumed that a man cannot be a Christian and a man of science; yet there have been many men of science, from Newton to Lord Kelvin, who were devout Christians. It is also a.s.sumed in some quarters that an educated man cannot believe in miracles, or answers to prayer, or special providences. But this is not a fair a.s.sumption even from a scientific standpoint. Science affirms the universality of energy and law; Christian theology accepts this fundamental postulate of science and says it is the result of universal spirit and will, or Infinite Mind and volition, which is back of universal energy and law. Energy is spirit and will at work; law is the mode of work. Energy and law are derivative, spirit and will is the primary and ultimate force of the universe.

But says the unbelieving scientist, "I accept energy and law as facts, but do not see that spirit and will are facts." Christianity replies: "You mean by 'see,' mental sight; for in the physical sense you can no more see energy and law than you can see spirit and will, or mind and volition.

"The fact is, science is a search for the invisible or supersensible--for that which lies beyond sense and vision. You call it energy and law, which we say is a result and not a cause, and point to spirit and will, which is the primitive, ultimate, first cause of universal energy and law.

"Would you feel it a just description of yourself if you were described as nothing but a system of energy and law. Energy is action according to law. But there is psychical energy as well as physical energy, or 'a double faced' unity--psychical on one side and physical on the other.

Thought, feeling, volition are all species of energy subject to laws of their own. And, what is most wonderful, while they are invisible and intangible they control all physical energy in man and all animal organisms, just as universal spirit and will or volition control all energy and law in the physical universe. Then, is universal energy and law psychical or physical? If it is intelligent and works according to design and purpose with beneficent uniformity it must be psychical, and all physical energy and law is but a manifestation of spiritual energy and purpose."

Then says the scientist, "there may be intelligence without physical organism, and man may be in constant contact with the spiritual world.

But I am an organized being and cannot imagine how unorganized beings could communicate with me even if they wished to do so. I cannot imagine it as possible that I could know G.o.d, who is a spirit."

But Christianity answers, "suppose you are not matter only, but that you are a spirit also, and a spiritual atom of that universal spirit which controls the universe, then could not spirit communicate with spirit?

Thus, you say, all science is founded on energy and law, which necessitates spiritual intelligence and will for its foundation, and consciousness for its evidence. Thought, feeling volition are forms of psychical energy. We are conscious that we think, feel, will; and as consciousness is a mental or spiritual perception, man must be a spiritual being. Then we are not far from Theism--for G.o.d is a spirit.

Besides energy and law we have consciousness and spirit, and no force without will. Law is simply the mode in which will works. Law stands for the regular and steadfast operation of will, as opposed to variable or capricious action. The uniformity of nature is rooted in the faithfulness of G.o.d, which sustains the steadfast operation of natural law."

Then says the scientist, "there could be no miracles, or answers to prayer, or special providences, for these imply interference with law, which would mean inconsistency on G.o.d's part and confusion on ours."

But Christianity answers, "interference with law is of continual occurrence. You cannot stand up or walk, or so much as raise your hand without interfering with the law of gravitation or attraction. We can modify or direct the action of forces without violating their laws.

Violation of G.o.d's laws on G.o.d's part would mean inconstancy. Direction of his own energy to any point He wills--as in evolution, for example--is no violation of law; neither are what are termed miracles, special providences and answers to prayer violations of law, but evolutions in accordance with law, as law stands for G.o.d's mode of working in the control of the universe."

Then says the scientist, "I cannot reconcile the two ideas of 'infinity'

and 'personality.' Personality implies limitation; infinity a.s.serts absence of limitation, a being cannot be at once limited and unlimited."

"But why should we suppose personality to involve limitation?" says Christian theology. "Even in man the essential idea of personality is not limitation. Personality in philosophy and theology refers not to the body but to consciousness and will. What difficulty is there in believing that the Infinite G.o.d is infinitely conscious and volitional and therefore personal."

There is a mighty force in the material metaphors of the Bible, but these all stand for spiritual realities, and its fundamental postulate is "G.o.d is a Spirit," and "G.o.d is Love." As man is a spiritual atom of deity. G.o.d has spiritual contact and influence with his spiritual children and they are "moved by the Spirit," and "born of the Spirit,"

as they accept and obey that spiritual influence which leads to righteousness and truth. Religion cannot exist without spirituality and the religious concept. G.o.d has so const.i.tuted the human soul. Without religion the soul could not dream of heaven nor feel the sweet whisperings of faith and hope. Neither could the heart thrill with spiritual joy and truth. Without religion the heaven-bound spirit could not soar to the alt.i.tudes of celestial bliss.

Without religion and ideality there would have been no gems of art or literature, no beautiful pictures, no living statuary, no lofty temples or inspiring thoughts. The grandeur of Shakespeare, the sublimity of Milton, the poetry of Byron, Burns, Tennyson and Longfellow, the romances of Scott, d.i.c.kens and Hawthorne, the n.o.ble architecture of Michael Angelo, the statuary of Phideas, Praxatelles and Canova, and the pictures of Raphael, Murello, and Reuben had never been known. Ideality is the father of beauty and the inspiration of all genius, goodness and n.o.bility and the twin brother of religious hope and faith.

Without religion ideality would be a mockery and a dream, hope would be a delusion and a snare, inspiration would wither, like Jonas' gourd, in a night, and the mildew of selfish materialism would convert the verdure of earth into deserts of despair.

John Fiske well says, "Man never would have attained his present psychic powers but for religion," and without religion ideality would never have soared to her lofty heights or brought forth her beautiful thoughts, her lofty conceptions, her sublime dreams of joy, or her n.o.ble gems of art, poetry, sculpture, architecture and literature. Remove the twin brothers--religion and ideality--from the earth, and its glory and worth would shrivel like a withered flower. Its hopes and joys, its dreams of peace and love, of paradise and heaven, would vanish into the desolations of a boundless Sahara, heaped with the burning sands of doubt and scorched by the withering blast of despair. The religious concept is the pilot of the soul to the fair field of heaven, the communion with the Father of the spirit, and ideality is its companion and servant who carries its cloak and staff as they journey along the pathways of earth and the highways of eternity. Science and philosophy, ideality, love and hope and all the aspirations of the human soul sustain the religious concept. It is a scientific postulate imbedded in the nature of man and in the basic law of the universe. Ideality and religion are the most powerful forces in uplifting humanity. The sublimer the ideal the more potent and enn.o.bling its influence on the human soul. Though millions grasp not its sublimity and truth, those receptive souls nearest the light will catch its divine illuminations and reflect it to those below. And gradually those below will grasp its beauty and truth and step up higher, and each in succession, step by step, will advance to "a higher plane and a broader view," and this is growth and progress toward perfection.

The ultimate aim and purpose of creation is ideal perfection. This purpose is written in the fundamental law of evolution--progress from the lower to the higher and the survival of the fittest. The higher, the more sublime, the spiritual truth, though it be ages in advance of the world's comprehension, yet its brightness and power will penetrate the darkness, and scintillate from soul to soul, as the sun gleams from atom to atom, until at last all humanity is illumined and exalted. When we go down into the darkness and poisoned vapors of a dungeon we seek for a ray of sunshine as we seek for life and light, and we are cheered by the smallest sunbeam which enters through a crevice, for in its silvery thread of light little atoms float like miniature stars, dispelling the desolation. There at our feet, left to decay and perish, may be the seed or bulb of an insignificant vine or flower, forgotten by the busy world of conflicts without, where little men become great and great men become little, not dreaming of the eternal law of life and hope that thrills in every throbbing atom and electric germ in this life-evolving magnetic universe.

But there in the darkness of that dungeon a struggle for life and hope goes on as important to the life involved as that of building a throne or destroying an empire. Never did a hero dare or a nation fight more bravely to attain its aspirations than did that little seed or bulb lying in the darkness. A slender beam of light gives it a hope of escape, and, cold and chilled, its prayer for life has slowly evolved a delicate pale vine which creeps toward the sunbeam.

Each day it has seen that beam of light fade and pa.s.s, and darkness and mildew paralyze it into the stupor of unconsciousness. And again that sunbeam awoke it to consciousness and life. At last it reached the crevice whence came the light, and, lifting itself as a prisoner escaping from death, it springs forth into the sunshine and opens its blossoms of beauty and perfume to greet and gladden the world of light and life.

Thus has humanity struggled for light, and toiled for hope and joy and sunshine through a thousand ages of gloom and chilling mildew of ignorance and darkness. And wherever a gleam of light and truth has pierced the shadows of life's struggles and tragedies, like the tiniest seed or fragile vine, the aspirations of his nature and his longing soul have reached up toward it.

What the ray of light is to the flower seed in the dungeon, religion is to man. Wherever man has crept, like the vine, in the darkness, towards the light it was his religious spiritual nature and aspirations which led him. Truth, which comes from the bosom of the eternal Good, streams down into the darkness and lifts man's soul up into the light by the same law that the flower and the vine seek the sunshine, and all true science and philosophy sustain the religious concept.

Life seems of little value when men of every nation are armed to the teeth to slay each other like madmen, as the best way in which they can show their grat.i.tude to nature for the useless gift of life. But they are not so anxious for war and bloodshed as their preparations would indicate. And the World's Peace Conference at The Hague, and recent arbitration of national questions, mark a new era in the world's history, and indicate a disarmament of the nations in a few decades. The fear of death is useless and absurd. As Flammarion has said, there are only two sides to the question. When we go to sleep at night there is always the possibility that we may never awaken. Yet this thought does not prevent us from falling asleep. In one case, suppose death to end all; it is but an unfinished sleep to last forever. In the other case, should the soul survive the body, we shall reawaken in another world to resume the activities of life. In this case the awakening must be rather delightful, as every form of life and every creature finds its happiness in the exercise of its natural energies and faculties. The deep study of this important question and the disgust at the indifference of men to this great problem of human destiny impelled a great student of science to attempt suicide. Because he saw everywhere people absorbed in their material interests, acc.u.mulating wealth, consecrating their lives to Mammon, folly and pa.s.sion and neglecting their n.o.bler natures, it made him doubt their fitness for an eternal existence, and he determined to know the truth at once by plunging into the invisible unknown.

Prof. Albert H. Walker, in a recent lecture--May, 1903--makes a new distinction in philosophy and religion, when he says: "Two systems of philosophy will divide the attention and adherence of the people of the twentieth century. One is the old system of Epicurus which long preceded the rise of Christianity and which underlies the Declaration of Independence; and the other is the philosophy of Christian science."

His definition of religion and Atheism is something modern and unique.

He says: "I define religion as belief in a G.o.d who cares; and Atheism as lack of belief in a G.o.d who cares. These two definitions, if correct, divide all men into two cla.s.ses, and, according to this cla.s.sification, most of the men in the United States are Atheists." He seems to think all men believe in a G.o.d, but a majority believe in a G.o.d who does not care, and that is Atheism. An Atheist has always been defined as one who believes there is no G.o.d; now they may believe in a G.o.d who does not care. This is not a very bad distinction and may be the true one in the future. For modern knowledge and culture forbids any thinking man from denying the existence of a G.o.d, and this may compel modern Atheism to modify its creed and accept a don't-care G.o.d.

He thinks this century may find an answer to the immortality of the soul, and "it may be in the affirmative through actual communication with departed souls; or in the negative by scientific demonstration that the spirit or soul of man is only a name for the electrical and chemical actions and reactions which occur in the body." He also says: "The twentieth century may show whether there is a great master hand that sweeps over the whole of this deep harp of life, or whether men are but pipes through whom the breath of 'Pan doth blow a momentary music.'"

Religion has nothing to fear from the future; materialism is vanquished and now Atheism must change its creed.

Canon Farrar says: "Let us think n.o.ble thoughts of G.o.d and break through the brain-spun meshes of impotent negations. G.o.d is not vortices of atoms, or streams of tendencies, or earth fermentations. Heaven is not a vacuous eternity, or a future of ceaseless psalmody."

The Greek had his Elysian Fields, his daffodil meadows where the Eidola, the shadowy images of the dead, moved in a world of shadows; and his islands of the blest, where Achilles and Tydides unlaced the helmet from their flowing hair. The Scandinavian dreamed of his green sylvan paradise hereafter, amid the barren wastes. The Indian saw G.o.d in lightning, heard him in the thunder's roar, and viewed beyond the cloud-capped hills his hunters' paradise. And in the perennial hereafter in the all-life-giving sun there are green fields, daffodil meadows, golden light, rainbows that never fade, glorified cities, white-robed innocence, the crown and the palm branch, the throne of serene majesty, the golden harp and the song of rejoicing, and all-abounding happiness, innocent, thrilling, intense and unending.

The rare and radiant physical beauties of heaven we cannot describe, but it is a place where no guilty step enters the gates of pearl, in the city of G.o.d; no polluting presence flings shadows on the golden streets of the New Jerusalem. It is the dwelling place of angels and just men made perfect, and spirits of saints in celestial glory. There is no darkness, envy, hatred or slander, no gold mixed with dross. No bleared and blighted crowds, degraded out of the semblance of humanity, crawl, like singed moths, around the flaring house of multiplied temptations.

Where boyhood shall not so live as to make its own manhood miserable; where manhood shall not so live as to make old age dishonorable and death ghastly. The apples of Sodom cannot grow on the same soil with the Tree of Life.