STUDY XIX. THE INVISIBLE. "We have a visionary gleam; We have now concluded that portion of our subject, the Divine Narrative of Creation, whose special study leads to the conviction that Religion embodied the highest thought of the time, and widens and deepens with our ever-growing experience. The explanations which were given of the universe are not childish guesses made by barbarous tribes, but are equally suitable for the infancy and the grandeur of human intellect. They reveal the universe as one splendid unity, as a glorious temple of the Almighty, and the present life as that wonderful stage of existence on which, by due exercise of our freedom, we are fitted for an exalted existence. The Dogmas of our Faith being experimentally verified, shine with a light that was never on sea or shore, the light of a new world for men of pure heart. The remaining Studies are intended to give completeness and thoroughness to the whole subject. It is asserted, that there exists a power of perceiving what is passing in the mind of another, or of thought to read thought, which may be voluntarily exalted; but acts generally by unconscious interpretation of indefinable indications. Heinrich Zschokke, we are informed, was able to describe many particulars of an individual's past life. Certainly it is not incredible that nerve force may exert itself from a distance, and bring the brain of one person into direct dynamical communication with that of another. There is, at times in some of us, a delicacy and acuteness of hearing that, when on the sea-shore or sitting in a meadow of stillness, the ripple of the waves in soft murmurs among the pebbles and the, to all other ears inaudible, insect music, and of grasses vibrating in responsive touch as they gracefully move, form sounds sonorous and grand as the thunder peal; or are full of sweetest harmony as had the melodies of heaven come from the upper fields. This cannot be put away as wholly a freak of the imagination; there are two parts in every sensation: what we get, and what we add to it. Some men have less feeling than others possess, but none are wholly without feeling as to the mystery of the universe, nor unvisited by thoughts of a life beyond the present, nor dead to the stirring impulses which excite belief that the sorrows of mankind will be remedied and their pleasures enlarged. "Even in the strictest of sciences-Mathematics-it can be easily shown that no really great advance, such as the inventions of Fluxions by Newton, and of the Differential Calculus by Leibnitz, can be made without the exercise of the imagination." 1 There seems to be in nature something like a galvanic circle, something that reveals itself in peculiar processes of thought-like that which suddenly solved the problem that for fifteen years had haunted Sir W. Rowan Hamilton. The sparks which fell being the fundamental equations between i, j, k. Such facts must not be regarded as fortuitously presented. There are many instances, thoroughly well attested, in which the death of a relative at a distance has been conveyed, with all the particulars, to persons during their sleep; and there are examples of some special information, buried in the bosom of the dead, being imparted in sleep to the living. "The singularity of the facts conveyed, and the impossibility of their coming through any ordinary channel, ought, on every principle of philosophical and of forensic evidence, to be admitted as furnishing proper proof of an invisible interference." 2 Can these things be scientifically measured, or must we confess that they escape both hand and eye? Swedenborg who, though dreamer, was yet a man of spiritual insight, states, "that the whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world collectively and in every part; for the natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual "Mental Physiology:" W. B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S. Physical Theory of Another Life," cap. xvii. : Isaac Taylor. Procession from the Unseen. 349 world, just as an effect does from the cause." Delitzsch says -"The creation realised in time is actually only the temporal realisation of that which was everlastingly present to the triune self-consciousness of God; and of the latter as of the former the same principle is true, that it is God in the totality of His nature from Whom and in Whom it has its ideal existence." It is the every-day experience of a devout man that only he who lives in the world as not of it, but as belonging to the invisible, leads a true life: The doctrines of the Conservation of energy, and Uniformity of Law, require that there be no sudden wrench, or absolute break anywhere; but actually the creation and existence of the visible universe from its first manifestation to the final overthrow, from the beginning in time to the end in time, are a series of breaks in continuity and uniformity. Science rightly pushes back to the furthest our knowledge of the Great First Cause; but cannot do away with the original production of the visible universe, which must be dealt with as any other phenomenon. Alike in the external and internal worlds, we are in the midst of changes, and can neither discover beginning nor end-so as to understand them. If we entertain the hypothesis that all nature once existed in a diffused form, we cannot conceive or know how this could be. If we speculate on the future, no limit can be assigned to the marvellous succession of phenomena which is ever unfolding. If we look inward, we cannot remember how consciousness began, nor can we examine the consciousness that at present exists, nor shall we know its end: the beginning, continuance, and termination are equally mysterious in their essential nature: under all things lies an impenetrable mystery. To ignore everything but what is visible, then to tell us that this visible is only a huge fire which burns itself out, and leaves nothing but ashes-the dead worthless body of the present living 1 "Bible Psychology," p. 63. thing is enough to startle everyone; and, surely, science must modify the doctrine of Continuance by acknowledging the kindling, as it owns the quenching of the fire; must allow that the visible is the realisation of the unseen; and, possibly, forms but an infinitesimal part of that whole which we call the universe. Put the fact in three shapes. I. Did the visible spring out of an order, or no order of things, with which it had no connection? II. Will it pass into an order or no order of things, wholly unconnected with it? III. Is it a transference from the invisible; which, passing from grade to grade of realisation, becomes transposed into some other order of things with which it is intimately connected? Now if the scientific affirmation is correct, that the requisites for existence connect every organ and organism with the past-we must hold, as the very root of our life and the foundation of all existence, that the scientific doctrine of continuity, if true, is proof of a transposition of the past into the present order of things; and of the present into some other order with which it is connected. The third proposition therefore is true; so when "The cloud capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, there will be a continuance, or state, into which the present visible existence is an avenue. Those who, in the name of science at one end, or, in the name of religion at the other, would wall up the path and affix a placard—“ No Road This Way," mistrust their own principles.1 The physical properties of matter have been well called"the alphabet which is put into our hands by God to enable us to read that great book the Universe." In that universe are three mysteries: the mystery of matter, the mystery of life, the mystery of God. The laws of matter seem simplest of the three; but, how great soever the circle of light surrounding them, the circumference of darkness grows more mysterious and tremendous matter, even as to what it is, and how it is, eludes and will for ever elude our grasp. Then, when we come to apply 1 "The Unseen Universe," p. 211. Iaeal and Physical Worlds. 351 the laws of matter to living things, we are forced to admit the existence of something lying beyond; a something, sui generis, working with and through those laws to an appointed end. Passing from life to a region even more mysterious-that of mind; we find something as much transcending life, as life transcends matter. It is of no use theoretically to drive life into the structural depths of the universe; of no avail to transfer mind into the thick darkness of the durational past; of no help to conceive of the Great Cause as only operating in the eternal aforetime; we do not get rid of Him, nor of them. A scientific conception of the universe must embrace the three mysteries-Matter, Life, God; and to enlighten the depths of our ignorance we must look for that high aid which none but God can give : we must believe in the Supernatural, and that the Highest Intellectual Power will at length dominate all inferior energies. That there actually is an ideal world which existed before the physical, and out of which the present world was formed, and which manifests itself in the varieties, eccentricities, and very order of apparent uniformity in the existing state of things, is plainly declared in Scripture. The declaration is supported by science. Whosoever knows of and believes in God, knows and believes that our life was pre-existent in the sight of God (Rom. iv. 17; Is. xxxvii. 26). Foreseen, then made actual in time, it became natural, or part of nature. God's Life, involved in the world, is distinguished from His eternal Life; faith and science pierce the phenomenal externality to the supersensuous and supernatural source, and thence realise the production of all things by purely spiritual power. The Great God, therefore, Whose eternal Omniscience contains not only that which is general, but that which is most special, not only foresaw all the possibilities arising out of the use of freedom by intelligent creatures; but looked through to the realisation of a greater plan than any that could have been accomplished without the co-operation of free intelligent creatures. Against this we have a few sophistries which sound like echoes of the old speech from under the Tree of Knowledge. "Everything in nature is natural, and not supernatural; or it would not be a part of nature." Then, if a bird flies into a |