Part 33

Shall I be pardoned if I say that, in the experiments of an incipient and maltreated science, we have, perhaps, a glimpse of the manner in which the soul will act in the future spiritual body? for if those experiments be not all delusion,--and how can we reasonably infer that experiments so multiplied, so various, and in many cases, when not in the hands of itinerant jugglers, so fairly performed,--I say, how can we regard all these as mere trickery? and if not, they are best explained by supposing the soul to act independently of the bodily organs, and through the same medium which we have supposed to constitute the future spiritual body. In this view, mesmerism assumes a most interesting aspect, forming, as it were, a link between the present and the future world. The theory which I have advanced does not, indeed, fall to the ground, though mesmerism should be found a delusion; yet it is but justice to say, that it first came under my eye in that most classical, philosophical, and attractive work, Townsend's "Facts in Mesmerism." A similar view, however, was presented several years earlier, in a work by Isaac Taylor, no less ingenious and profound, the "Physical Theory of Another Life," a work, however, which makes not the slightest allusion to mesmerism. The author supposes such a state of things as I have imagined in another life to be in existence even now. "The sensation of light," says he, "is now believed to result from the vibrations, not the emanations, of an elastic fluid, or ether; but this same element may be capable of another species of vibrations; or the electric or the magnetic fluids may be susceptible of some such vibrations; or an element as universally diffused as light through the universe may be the medium of sonorous undulations, equally rapid and distinct, and serving to connect the most remote regions of the universe by the conveyance of sounds, just as the most remote are actually connected by the passage of light. Yet the sonorous vibrations of this supposed element may be far too delicate to awaken the ear of man, or, in fact, of a kind not perceptible by the human auditory nerve." "We refuse to allow that a conjecture of this sort is extravagant, or destitute of philosophical probability; on the contrary, consider it as borne out, in a positive sense, by the discoveries of modern science. Might we then rest for a moment upon an animating conception (aided by the actual analogy of light) such as this, viz., that the field of the visible universe is the theatre of a vast social economy, holding rational intercourse at great distances? Let us claim leave to indulge the belief, when we contemplate the starry heavens, that speech, inquiry and response, commands and petitions, debate and instruction, are passing to and fro; or shall the imagination catch the pealing anthems of praise, at stated seasons, arising from worshippers in all quarters, and flowing on with thundering power, like the noise of many waters, until it meet and shake the courts of the central heavens?"--_Physical Theory of Another Life_, p. 202, 3d Am. ed.

The second objection to the view which I have presented of the future destruction and renovation of the earth, as an abode of the righteous, may be thus stated: Heaven is an unchanging state; but a world which has been burned up and melted, even if we might suppose spiritual beings to dwell upon it, must undergo still further change. The radiation of its heat would form a crust over its surface; the waters, dissipated into vapor, would be recondensed; volcanic agency would ridge up the crust into mountains and valleys; and, in short, geological agencies would at length form such a surface, so far as rocks and soil are concerned, as we now tread upon. And even though organic beings should not be again placed upon it, those changes would proceed, till, perhaps, another and another great catastrophe by fire might pass over it; nor can we say where these mutations would end. Can we believe such a world to be heaven?

Here, again, as in the last objection, it appears to me, the main difficulty lies in our judging of the future spiritual body by that organism which we now inhabit. Heaven is, indeed, an unchanging state of happiness and holiness. But does it, therefore, follow that there can be no change in its material form and aspect? I have already shown that the spiritual body may be of such a composition that no change of temperature, of place or constitution, in surrounding bodies, can at all affect it. If the soul could be happy in one set of physical circumstances while in such a tenement, it might be happy in any other circumstances with which we are acquainted. But it does not follow that the happiness of the soul might not be increased by the changes of the material world around it. What is it on earth that affords the greatest amount of happiness derived from the external world? It is the immense variety of creation, produced chiefly by chemical and mechanical agencies. These changes afford us the most striking exhibitions of the wisdom, power, and benevolence of the Deity, within our knowledge; and why may not analogous, or still more wonderful changes, and greater variety, give still higher conceptions of the divine character to the inhabitants of heaven, and excite a purer and a stronger love? And to study that character will form, I doubt not, the grand employment of heaven. Who can tell what depths of knowledge may there be laid open into the internal constitution of matter, and its combinations, and especially its union with spirit! And what surer means of bringing out these developments than change, constant and everlasting change? For who can set limits to those mutations which an infinite God can produce upon the matter of this vast universe? It is easy to see that they may be literally infinite.

Once more. We have seen that the geological changes which our world has hitherto undergone have been an improvement of its condition, and that each successive economy has been a brighter exhibition of divine wisdom and benevolence: Shall this progress be arrested when the present economy closes? We know that the righteous will forever advance in holiness and happiness. Why may not a part of that increase depend upon their introduction into higher and higher economies through eternal ages? May not this be one of the modes in which new developments of the character of God will open upon them in the world of bliss?

The Scriptures represent the material aspect of the new heavens and the new earth, when first the righteous enter upon them, to be one of surpassing glory. But why may not other developments await them in the round of eternal ages, as their expanding faculties are able to understand and appreciate them?

The greater the variety of new scenes in the material world which shall be presented to the mind, such as an infinite Deity shall devise, the more intense the happiness of their contemplations; and who can set limits to the permutations which such a being can produce, even upon matter? I can form no conjecture as to the nature of those new developments; nor do I believe they could be understood in our present state. I feel as if those formed too low an estimate of the new heavens and the new earth, who imagine a repetition there of the most curious organic structures, the most splendid flowers and fruits, and the most enchanting landscapes of the present world: I fancy that scenes far more enchanting, and objects far more glorious, will meet the soul at its first entrance upon the new earth, even though to mortal vision it should present only an ocean of fire. I imagine a thousand new inlets into the soul--nay, I think of it as all eye, all ear, all sensation; now plunging deeper into the infinitesimal parts of matter than the microscope can carry us, and now soaring away, perhaps on the waves of the mysterious ether, far beyond the ken of the telescope. And if such is the first entrance into heaven, who can conjecture what new fields and new glories shall open before the mind, and fill it with ecstasy, as it flies onward without end! But I dare not indulge further in these hypothetical, yet fascinating thoughts; yet let us never forget, that in a very short time, far shorter than we imagine, all the scenes of futurity will be to us a thrilling reality. We shall then know in a moment how much of truth there is in these speculations. But if they all prove false, fully confident am I that the scenes which will open upon us will surpass our liveliest conceptions. The glass through which we now see darkly will be removed, and face to face shall we meet eternal glories. Then shall we learn that our present bodily organs, however admirably adapted to our condition here, were in fact clogs upon the soul, intended to fetter its free range, that we might the more richly enjoy the liberty of the sons of God, and expatiate in the spiritual body, _the building of God, the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens_.

Let us, then, live continually under the influence of the scenes that await us beyond the grave. They will thus become familiar to us and we shall appreciate their infinite superiority to the objects that so deeply interest us on earth. We shall be led to look forward even with strong desire, in spite of the repulsive aspect of death, to that state where the soul will be freed from her prison-house of flesh and blood, and can range in untiring freedom through the boundless fields of knowledge and happiness that are in prospect. Then shall we learn to despise the low aims and contracted views of the sensualist, the demagogue, and the worldling. High and noble thoughts and aspirations will lift our souls above the murky atmosphere of this world, and, while yet in the body, we shall begin to breathe the empyreal air of the new heavens, and to gather the fruits of the tree of life in the new earth, where righteousness only shall forever dwell.

LECTURE XII.

THE TELEGRAPHIC SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE.

In order to impress some important truth or transaction, men have sometimes represented surrounding inanimate objects as looking on and witnessing the scene, or listening to the words, and ready ever afterwards to open their mouth to testify to the facts, should man deny them. I know of no writings from which to derive so striking an illustration of these strong figurative representations as the sacred Scriptures.

Take, for a first example, the solemn covenant entered into between Jehovah and the Israelites, in the time of Joshua. To fix the transaction as firmly as possible in the minds of the fickle people, _he took a great stone and set it up there under an oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said unto all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us. For it hath heard all the words of the Lord which he spake unto us. It shall, therefore, be a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God._

In a second example, the prophet Habakkuk describes the insatiable wickedness of the Chaldeans; and addressing the nation as an individual, he says, _Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul. For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it._ Such abominations had aroused even the most insensible part of creation, the very timber and the stone, to life and indignation.

In a third example, the whole multitude of Jews had just spread their garments upon the ground for Christ to ride over, they meanwhile crying out, _Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest._ But some of the Pharisees said, _Master, rebuke thy disciples; and he answered and said unto them, If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out._ If man refused to do homage to the King of glory, when he came among them, the rocks, more sensible, would break forth in his praises.

The discoveries of modern science, however, show us that there is a literal sense in which the material creation receives an impression from all our words and actions that can never be effaced; and that nature, through all time, is ever ready to bear testimony of what we have said and done. Men fancy that the wave of oblivion passes over the greater part of their actions. But physical science shows us that those actions have been transfused into the very texture of the universe, so that no waters can wash them out, and no erosions, comminution, or metamorphoses, can obliterate them.

The principle which I advance in its naked form is this: _Our words, our actions, and even our thoughts, make an indelible impression on the universe._ Thrown into a poetic form, this principle converts creation

Into a vast sounding gallery; Into a vast picture gallery; And into a universal telegraph.

This proposition I shall endeavor to sustain by an appeal to well-established principles of science. Yet, since some of these principles are not the most common and familiar, and have not been applied, except in part, to this subject, I must be more technical in their explanation than I could wish, and more minute in the details.

The grand point, however, on which the whole subject turns, is the doctrine of reaction. By this is meant the mutual or reciprocal action of different things upon one another. Thus, if a body fall to the earth, the earth reacts upon it, and stops it, or throws it back. If sulphuric acid be poured upon limestone, a mutual action ensues; the acid acts on the stone, and the stone reacts upon the acid, and a new compound is produced. If light fall upon a solid body, the body reacts upon the light, which it sends back to the eye with an image of itself. These are examples of what is meant by reaction, or the reciprocal action of different substances upon one another. But it is not every kind of reaction that will prove a permanent impression to be made upon the universe by our conduct. Hence we must be more specific.

_In the first place, the principle is proved and illustrated by the doctrine of mechanical reaction._

From the principle, long since settled in mechanics, that action and reaction are equal, it will follow that every impression which man makes by his words, or his movements, upon the air, the waters, or the solid earth, will produce a series of changes in each of those elements which will never end. The word which is now going out of my mouth causes pulsations or waves in the air, and these, though invisible to human eyes, expand in every direction until they have passed around the whole globe, and produced a change in the whole atmosphere; nor will a single circumgyration complete the effect; but the sentence which I am now uttering shall alter the whole atmosphere through all future time. So that, as Professor Babbage remarks, to whom we are indebted for the first moral application of this mechanical principle, "the air is one vast library, on whose pages are forever written all that man has ever said, or woman whispered." Not a word has ever escaped from mortal lips, whether for the defence of virtue or the perversion of the truth, not a cry of agony has ever been uttered by the oppressed, not a mandate of cruelty by the oppressor, not a false and flattering word by the deceiver, but it is registered indelibly upon the atmosphere we breathe. And could man command the mathematics of superior minds, every particle of air thus set in motion could be traced through all its changes, with as much precision as the astronomer can point out the path of the heavenly bodies. No matter how many storms have raised the atmosphere into wild commotion, and whirled it into countless forms; no matter how many conflicting waves have mixed and crossed one another; the path of each pulsation is definite, and subject to the laws of mathematics. To follow it requires, indeed, a power of analysis superior to human; but we can conceive it to be far inferior to the divine.

The same thing is true of the waters. No wave has ever been raised on their bosom, no keel has ever ploughed their surface, which has not sent an influence and a change into every ocean, and modified every wave, that has rolled in upon the farthest shores. As the vessel crosses the deep, the parted waves close in, and every trace of disturbance soon disappears from human vision. Nevertheless, it is certain that every track thus furrowed in the waters has sent an influence through their entire mass, such as is calculable by distinct formulae; and it may be that glorified minds, by the principles of celestial mathematics, can as easily trace out the paths of the unnumbered vessels that have crossed the waters, as the astronomer can the paths of the planets or the comets.

The solid earth, too, is alike tenacious of every impression we make upon it; not a footprint of man or beast is marked upon its surface, that does not permanently change the whole globe. Every one of its countless atoms will retain and exhibit an infinitesimal, but a real, effect through all coming time. It is too minute, indeed, for the cognizance of the human senses. But in a higher sphere there may be inlets of perception acute enough to trace it through all its bearings, and thus render every atom of the globe a living witness to the actions of every living being.

In view of these facts, we cannot regard the glowing language of Babbage an exaggeration, when he says, "The soul of the negro, whose fettered body, surviving the living charnel-house of his infected prison, was thrown into the sea to lighten the ship, that his Christian master might escape the limited justice at length assigned by civilized man to crimes whose profit had long gilded their atrocity, will need, at the last great day of human accounts, no living witness of his earthly agony: when man and all his race shall have disappeared from the face of our planet, ask every particle of air still floating over the unpeopled earth, and it will record the cruel mandate of the tyrant. Interrogate every wave which breaks unimpeded on ten thousand desolate shores, and it will give evidence of the last gurgle of the waters which closed over the head of his dying victim. Confront the murderer with every corporeal atom of his immolated slave, and in its still quivering movements he will read the prophet's denunciation of the prophet king."

The distinguished mathematical professor from whom I have just quoted limits the effects of this mathematical reaction to this globe and its atmosphere. But if, as the philosophers now generally admit, there is a subtile and extremely elastic medium pervading all space, why must they not extend to other worlds, yea, to the whole universe? Without an accurate acquaintance with the facts, indeed, it will seem a mere extravagant imagination to say that our most trivial word or action sends a thrill throughout the whole material universe; but I see not why sober and legitimate science does not conduct us to this conclusion. Nay, still further, it teaches us that the vibrations and changes which our words and actions produce upon the universe shall never cease their action and reaction till materialism be no more.

We venture, then, to push this thought of the ingenious mathematician into another sphere, which he did not enter. The majority, probably, of the ablest expounders of the Bible have maintained, as previously shown, that the apostle Peter most unequivocally teaches us that the new heavens, or atmosphere, and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, are merely our present earth and atmosphere, melted and burnt by the fires of the last day, and fitted up anew,--a second and a lovelier paradise,--to be the everlasting abode of holiness and happiness. Indeed, to attempt to fix any other meaning upon Peter's language makes of it a most absurd jumble of literal and figurative expressions, and produces an inversion of chronological events. But, admitting the literal meaning of the apostle to be the true one, then those reactions, produced by our words and conduct upon the present world, shall not be destroyed by the fires of the last day, but reappear in the new economy, and modify the pulsations of the new heavens and the new earth through all eternity.

But even though heaven should be in some other part of the universe, and not this earth refitted, yet, if it be a material residence, why, on the principles already explained, should it not be reached and affected by those vibrations which the laws of mathematics assure us are now spreading from each individual, as a centre, through the whole universe? The conflagration of the earth will alter its chemical constitution, and convert matter into new forms; but the mechanical character of the atoms will not be destroyed; and when they emerge from the final catastrophe, in new and brighter forms, they may still bear and exhibit the impress of every word and every action which they now receive.

Such representations as these, I am aware, will, upon first thought, seem to most minds little better than the dreams of fancy, although founded upon the laws of mathematics. For how soon does every trace disappear from the earth of the most terrible convulsions and the mightiest human efforts! The shout of countless multitudes, the thunder and the crash of battle, and even the volcano's bellowing, are soon succeeded by unbroken silence; and we cannot discover a trace of any of those countless scenes of noise and convulsion that have been acted upon the world's busy stage. How practically absurd, then, to imagine that any influence goes out from the feeble efforts of individuals, that can be recognized, either now or hereafter, on the wide field of the universe!

Such objections as these, however, are based upon the impression, of which it is hard to divest ourselves, that our present means of distinguishing the effects of physical forces are as perfect as we can hope for in eternity. And yet, who will doubt that, when our present gross bodies shall be laid aside, the soul, looking forth from a spiritual body, with quickened powers and unobstructed vision, shall penetrate a new world in the infinitesimal parts of creation? What absurdity in the supposition that then the minutest movement among the atoms, which can now be discovered only by the mathematics of quantities infinitely small, may then stand out as distinctly to our inspection as do now the features of the landscape? What absurdity in the supposition that, even now, there are finite minds in the universe who possess this quickened power of perception, and, though in distant worlds, do actually know what is passing here by the vibrations which our words and actions produce upon elastic matter?

Thus far I have spoken of the influence of our words and actions only upon the material universe, although the principle with which I started includes thoughts also. But are not actions merely the external manifestation of thoughts and purposes? and, therefore, is not thought the efficient agency that impresses the universe? I shall also attempt to show that there are other modes in which the intellect may do this, aside from ordinary words and actions.

But I proceed to the second proof of the general principle. _And I derive it from what may be called optical reactions; that is, the reaction of light and the substances on which it impinges._ These exert such an influence upon it, that, when it is thrown back from them, and enters the organs of vision, or even a transparent lens, with a screen behind it, it produces an image of those objects; in other words, what we call vision.