Part 4

“The body continually requires new materials and a continued action of external agencies. But the mind, when it has been once called into activity and has become stored with ideas, may remain active and may develop new relations and combinations among these, after the complete closure of the sensorial inlets by which new ideas can be excited ‘ab externo.’ Such, in fact, is what is continually going on in the state of dreaming.... The mind thus feeds upon the store of ideas which it has laid up during the activity of the sensory organs, and those impressions which it retains in its consciousness are working up into a never ending variety of combinations and successions of ideas, thus affording new sources of mental activity even to the very end of life.”—_Carpenter._

In death the spirit returns to God, who gave it, retaining, doubtless, all its store of ideas and all its own inherent activities, which will continue while eternity endures.

OUR RELATIONS TO THE ANCIENT LAW AND PROPHETS—WHAT ARE THEY?

The above questions can not be answered intelligently without a knowledge of the character of the law, and of its relations to humanity, as well as a knowledge of the relations of the ancient prophets. The law given at Sinai as a “covenant,” with all the laws contained in the “Book of the Law,” was political in character; that is to say, it pertained to a community or nation. Such law is _always_ political in its character. The ancient law pertained to the nation of the Jews. It was given to them as a community, and to no other people. Moses said, “And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of fire: Ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.” Deut. iv, 12, 13. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words; for after the _tenor_ of these words I have made a covenant _with thee_ and _with Israel_.... And he wrote upon the tables _the words of the covenant_, the ten commandments.” Exodus xxxiv, 27, 28. “The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord _made not_ this covenant with our fathers, but with us, who _are_ all of us here alive this day.” Deut. v, 2, 3. “Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep, therefore, and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day.” Deut. iv, 5, 8.

The law or covenant, as written upon the two tables of stone, is given in full in one place, and only one, in all the book of the law, and I will now transcribe it from the fifth chapter of Deut. Here it is: “I am the Lord, thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; thou shalt have none other gods before me; thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them or serve them, for I, the Lord, thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth _generation_ of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

“Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord, thy God, hath commanded thee. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord, thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work; thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, that thy man-servant and maid-servant may rest as well as thou; and remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord, thy God, brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm; THEREFORE, THE LORD, THY GOD, COMMANDED THEE TO KEEP THE SABBATH DAY.

“Honor thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

“Thou shalt not kill.

“Neither shalt thou commit adultery.

“Neither shalt thou steal.

“Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor.

“Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s house, his field, or his man-servant, or his maid-servant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbor’s.

“These words the Lord spake unto _all your assembly_ in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud and of the thick darkness, with a great voice; and he _added no more_. And _he wrote them in two tables of stone_, and delivered them unto me.”

This is the covenant as it was written upon the tables of stone. It is, by its facts, limited to the Jews, for they are the only people who were ever delivered from bondage in Egypt. The abrogation of this covenant is clearly presented in the following language, found in Zechariah, the eleventh chapter and tenth verse: “And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with _all the people_. And it was broken in that day; and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord. And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.” This language had its fulfillment in the sale which Judas Iscariot made of his Lord and the abrogation of the ancient covenant or law.

The prophets were not confined to the kingdom of Israel, or to any one kingdom, nor yet to any one dispensation.

They bore the word of the Lord to all the nations, as we learn from such language as this: “The burden of the word of the Lord to Ninevah, to Sidon, to Tyre, to Idumea, to Babylon, to Samaria, to Egypt,” and to many others. It is very remarkable that no such latitude or longitude of relationships belongs to the ancient law. It was confined to the Israelites.

The Heavenly Father spake not to the ancients by his Son, but by the prophets. And much of that which they spake pertained to our own dispensation and to our own religion.

Much, very much, of that which they gave lies in the very foundation of our religion. We should always distinguish, _carefully_, between the Law and the prophets, and between these two and the psalms, remembering, however, that prophesy belongs also to many of the psalms. The abrogated covenant, or law, that was done away, was written upon stones. It, with all the laws which were after its _tenor_, was supplanted by the law of Christ. It was added because of transgression _till Christ, _“the seed,” should come. When he came it expired by limitation, and through his authority the neighborly restrictions or limitations were taken off from moral precepts, which were re-enacted by him.

THE FUNERAL SERVICES OF THE NATIONAL LIBERAL LEAGUE.

The decent members of the Liberal League, who formed it to express their convictions, and who withdrew and formed a rival League when they found that the old organization had gone over to the defense of indecency, who gave to the League all the character it had, and who had great hopes at one time of destroying the influence of the preachers of the Gospel of Christ, and thereby ridding our country of that terrible pest called the Bible, have given up their name. Their “priests” have adopted the following arraignment of their old organization, a legitimate child of their own:

“Voted that, in the judgment of this Board, the name ‘National Liberal League’ has become so widely and injuriously associated in the public mind with attempts to repeal the postal laws prohibiting the circulation of obscene literature by mail, with the active propagandism of demoralizing and licentious social theories, and with the support of officials and other public representatives who are on good grounds believed to have been guilty of gross immoralities, that it has been thereby unfitted for use by any organization which desires the support of the friends of ‘natural morality.’ ”

Thus the child went into a far country and fed among swine, and, failing to come to itself and return to its father’s house, the old gentleman disinherited it, _once_ and forever. A younger son, however, is christened “Liberal Union,” and whether it will remain at home to take care of the old man in his dotage remains to be seen.

HUXLEY’S PARADOX.

“The whole analogy of natural operations furnish so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are called secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe, that, in view of the intimate relations of man and the rest of the living world, and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no reason for doubting that all are co-ordinate terms of nature’s great progression, from formless to formed, from the inorganic to the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will.” _Huxley’s Evidence of Man’s Place in Nature_, London, 1864, p. 107.

A writer in the _Spectator_ charged Professor Huxley with Atheism. The professor replies, in the number of that paper for February 10, 1866, thus: “I do not know that I care very much about popular odium, so there is no great merit in saying that if I really saw fit to deny the existence of a God I should certainly do so for the sake of my own intellectual freedom, and be the honest Atheist you are pleased to say I am. As it happens, however, I can not take this position with honesty, inasmuch as it is, and always has been, a favorite tenet that Atheism is as absurd, logically speaking, as Polytheism.” In the same sheet, he says: “The denying the possibility of miracles seems to me quite as unjustifiable as Atheism.” Is Huxley in conflict with Huxley?

THE TRIUMPHING REIGN OF LIGHT.

The next psychic cycle, it seems to me, will witness a synthesis of thought and faith, a recognition of the fact that it is impossible for reason to find solid ground that is not consecrated ground; that all philosophy and all science belong to religion; that all truth is a revelation of God; that the truths of written revelation, if not intelligible to reason, are nevertheless consonant with reason; and that divine agency, instead of standing removed from man by infinite intervals of time and space, is, indeed, the true name of those energies which work their myriad phenomena in the natural world around us. This consummation—at once the inspiration of a fervent religion and the prophecy of the loftiest science—is to be the noontide reign of wedded intellect and faith, whose morning rays already stream far above our horizon.—_Winchell._ Re. and Sci. p. 84.

“Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and dead, assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a certain way.”—_Atheist._

“But how does a germ come to live?”—_Deist._

“Life is organization with feeling.”—_Atheist._

“But that you have these two properties from the motion of” dead atoms, or matter alone, it is impossible to give any proof; and if it can not be proved, why affirm it? Why say aloud, “I know,” while you say to yourself, “I know not?”—_Voltaire._

When you venture to affirm that matter acts of itself by an eternal necessity, it must be demonstrated like a proposition in Euclid, otherwise you rest your system only on a perhaps. What a foundation for that which is most interesting to the human race!—_Voltaire._