THOUGHT XVII.

SPIRITUAL INSIGHT.

"He that hath God's Word can hear His silence."

"Day following day with the starlit darkness between ;

Or, may be in a world where Dawn comes, ere one sunset has been ;
Day following day for ever!

For ever! though who shall tell in what seeming or where?
In what far-off secret space of God's limitless air?

It matters nothing at all what we are or where set,

If a spark of the Infinite Light can shine on us yet,
Life following Life for ever!"

The Ode of Life.

"It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” -I John iii. 2.

STEP by step, the moral, intellectual, and spiritual realms, with all the complex action of human life, are being added to the domain of inductive science. Our best thinkers endeavour to carry the exactitude of physical law into the mental world, and to use the elasticity of spiritual rule for wiser interpretation of the material universe. We, thereby, obtain more freedom and more accuracy; our knowledge is corrected and enlarged. concerning both sides of life. The thought which is in nature and in man, in all things and existences, is not a thought which we create but find in them; not an

intelligible system which our mind can make or unmake, but which we discern; it is a rationality independent of our reason, but to which our reason responds. All science starts with the assumption that nature is intelligible, that there is reason in things; and the progress of science is by discovery of relations, of a coherent system, in the world. The history of science is a history of intelligence tracing itself in nature. Our reason, irresistibly impelled to find the reasonable, discovers in the manifold and changeful phenomena of the world something above them, a permanent reality, an infinite unity; something which comprehends all finite things and thoughts because it is the Unity of Thought and Being. There are few atheists, because atheism is inevitable foolery: it takes up the self-contradicting absurdity of finding the reason of thought, and the intelligence of all rational religions, in the irrational-a blank nonentity.

Condorcet, quoted by Mill, “Logic,” ii. 400, says, “Le seul fondement de croyance dans les sciences naturelles est cette idée, que les lois générales, connues ou ignorées, qui reglent les phénomènes de l'univers, sont nécessaires et constantes; et par quelle raison ce principe seraitil moins vrai pour le développement des facultés intellectuelles et morales de l'homme, que pour les autres opérations de la nature?" This view of the world from both sides, or rather from within and without, shows the intimate linking of matter and mind. We cannot say, "Mind is matter and matter is mind," for no matter has life of itself, and it is far more certain that no matter thinks of itself. Mind, then, is a real existence; otherwise, it could not be subject to physical

laws; subject-so far as it must use the brain for a vehicle, and molecular tremors as messengers of quick transit to establish the rule of emotion and will. By insight and eyesight we discern that—

"There is only change for ever!

Shall I fear that I shall be changed and no more shall be I?

I who know not what 'tis that I am, to live or to die?

Nay, while God is, I too must be, else too weak were His hand,
The created is part of His Essence—how else could the Matter stand ?
There is no Death for ever!"

The Ode of Life.

Materialists and secularists who say, "You cannot live for both worlds, because you do not know both, you know but one "--are convicted of folly by the fact that the attempt to live a one-sided life is always a miserable failure, ending in moral death to the individual, and in extinction of the nation.

It is admitted that moral welfare is necessary to material well-being, that to preserve the "mens sana in corpore sano❞ mental energy must combine with physical activity. By this union of the mental and physical, of the inner vitality of intelligence and emotion with outer life and bodily powers, the two form one man—one realm. We cannot, as some refusers of Scripture do, allow miracles in one realm and deny them in the other. The laws of mind are not less real and true than are those of the body, marvels in those are as miraculous as marvels in these. Every miracle has two sides: subjective, i.e. in our consciousness; objective, i.e. external to our consciousness; the objective side may be natural or supernatural, i.e. worked by means of nature, or worked directly without intervention of means. On one side, the objective, reason investigates miracle as

a matter to be solved, if possible, by physical science, if not soluble, reason waits expectant and watchful; on the other, the subjective side, reason investigates morally, spiritually; and it is only when miraculous narratives are approved by reason that they become articles of faith. Our mind is not incapable of rising to the Infinite, nor does the Infinite suffer diminution by becoming relative to our thought. The Mind discerned in nature, and unveiling itself in miracle, is the very kind to realize itself in the thought and selfconsciousness of finite intelligence-in every page, paragraph, sentence, word, syllable, of intelligent existence. Our consciousness that we are finite, in that very thought transcends itself and finds a real relation between itself and the Infinite. Our self-conscious ego transcends all differences, both external and internal, and has its origin in that which is implicitly intelligent. This insight rather spiritualizes matter than materializes mind. It discerns that in the whole range of being nothing is absolutely foreign and hostile to thought: nothing which thought, actually or virtually, may not claim as its own. Thus, it is the prerogative of mind virtually to possess a kind of infinitude; to be ever discovering, in that which is external to it, the means of its own progressive development—a realization which is itself incapable of limitation. Day by day, in being ourselves, we become more than ourselves; escape further and further from the finitude of individual self, and approximate more and more to the unlimited and universal. The process is never a completed one: we are ever gaining a larger self, as the natural and spiritual limits are broken down, a further limit ever reappears.

We do not go out of nature and beyond reason to prove miracles, any more than we depart from physics in mentally considering material effects. No physical fact is absolutely unique; nor does our limited knowledge allow us fully to verify it; it is dependent upon ten thousand other facts which are absolutely unknown. No miracle stands apart by itself-unrelated, uncaused as to origin, or working, or effect-as if it sprang from nothing. Physical science, incompetent to explain fully any natural event, calls for faith in the unseen and unknown. In faith we accept physical axioms as universally true, though the universality is incapable of proof. Spiritual science rests its natural accuracy on physical axioms and the laws of reason; shows its miracles as performed by an adequate power, for worthy purpose, and in connection with a vast ameliorative plan; does not hide them within the pale of the Sanctuary, but carries them forth into the physical field for trial in the open conflict of faith against unfaith, of reason against unreason, of good against bad, of eternal life against eternal death. In this sense, and not superstitiously, Canon Cook ("Lectures on the Completeness and Adequacy of the Evidences of Christianity") says, "Miracles will be used as subsidiary and supplementary enabling you to give a reason for the faith that is in you, both for your own satisfaction and for the defence of Christian truth."

It is impossible to live without faith. The wisest of us whether we will or not, believe much more to be true than we can verify. Materialists, little in faith as to religion and miracles, are so laughably credulous as to secularism that they say, "The invariable operation