Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Nyssen says, "is neither in place nor in time... neither measured by ages, nor moving along with times;" yet, as Chrysostom states, “God is everywhere, I know; and that He is wholly everywhere, I know; but the how, I know not that He is without beginning, ungenerated and eternal, I know; but the how, I know not." These are among the hidden things. Overhead, the infinite height with greater and lesser lights, bright-rolling, silent-beaming, placed by the Hand of Majesty; as if the small strophe of every human life, having such embellishment, was joined with the occasional verse of other existence, into some grand anthem, like Psalm civ., in praise of Creation—embracing all things, small and great, ending with glorious praise of Supernal Power.

Plato, in his "Phædon" (Jowett's translation, vol. i. pp. 465, 466), relates a saying of Socrates concerning that most mysterious and hidden of things, the spirit of man-“You may bury me if you can catch me!" Then he added with a smile of thought and tenderness—“ Do not call this poor body Socrates. When I have drunk the poison, I shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed. I would not have you sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the interment, 'Thus we lay out Socrates,' or 'Thus we follow him to the grave, or bury him.' Be of good cheer; say that you are burning my body only.” Words of this kind are few. You cannot exact them from inferior men. Perennial spirit is only in thinking of the highest order, it reflects the light of God. Men of feeble faith seem conscious only of existence as an everlasting storm, which no one governs, wild, roaring, rushing torrent-wise, thundering down, then-swallowed

of oblivion. Not so swallowed up as to cease; for, though incapable either of fervent love to that which is good, or of ardent hatred against that which is evil, they still live on-dark now, darker hereafter; unless they turn to the light, and give themselves to God who gives all to them

"God's love hath to us wealth upheaped ;

Only by giving it is reaped.

The body withers, and the mind,

If pent in by selfish rind;

Give strength, give thought, give deeds, give pelf,

Give love, give tears, and give thyself;

Who gives not is not living.

The more we give

The more we live."

For true are the words in the epitaph—

"What I saved, I lost;

What I spent, I had;

What I gave, I have."

He who maintains that these things have no meaning; that every worm, toiling, spins in vain its own cocoon, everything is without knitted purport, and points to no reality; imagines that where his hand ceases to grope the world ends. He must be deaf to the Sacred Melody "from some blissful neighbourhood," well imagined by the poet Dryden as at the martyrdom of S. Catharine

"Ethereal music did her death prepare,

Like joyful sounds of spousals in the air;"

and be blind not to discern that, in the world, God presents Himself to reason for recognition. He can only attain to that poorest of all philosophy, the mechanical,

and doubts of man's immortal being. Doubts, though upon other than walls of the Babylonian palace, the fingers of a hand come forth with mystic symbols from a distant world. He says, "Nature whirls round in endless Maelstroms, creating and swallowing itself;" whereas, 'tis only the god Saturnus, the French Revolution, and rats, that swallow their own children. Then he says, "We cannot picture out and arrange in our diagram of worlds, nor include within our philosophy, the Personal Infinite." As if we knew it not; "Deus simul apparet et latet; apparet specie, natura latet" (S. Augustine). He talks doubtfully of God, a may be God, no God. Infinite toil will not enable any man to sweep away the mist, but by ascending a little he may look over it altogether. An earnest endeavour to do the will of God, to exemplify the character of Christ in his own conduct, raises to a higher level to a purer atmosphere-to knowledge of the doctrine (John vii. 17). Then, knowing himself to be God's patient, he will not prescribe to his Physician, feeling that he is God's child, he will not dictate to his Father.

Now, though by our own unaided searching we cannot perfectly find out God, He is knowable-" Deus verius cogitatur quam dicitur; et verius est quam cogitatur" (S. Augustine)-every person in the habit of mathematically reasoning on these subjects is aware that, by help of symbols, defined as unknown principles, we reason, to a certain extent, as correctly as were we actually masters of those principles. For example: A is the universe; P is the principle of order in the universe; N is a competent intelligence, with power of application and illustration, able to deduce any known

definite fact Q as the logical consequence flowing out of the principle P. The theorem can be varied, and P be taken as the principle of order transcending the universe, and so on. The theorem may be tested in this way P is the principle of order transcending A, the universe; then B is the beauty, C is the consciousness, D is the danger, and so on with any fact; then N is able to deduce this B, or C, or D, as a part of the principle P transcending A, the universe.

Pass to the minuteness and gradations of organisms. Organisms are marvellously complex, some-only the 80,000th or 120,000th of an inch in diameter; othersso small that we measure them in terms of the lengths of luminiferous waves; thus possibilities which seemed romantic enter the region of fact. There are minute beings which, though discoverable by science, are inconceivable by the mind. Take other gradations and intervals-The infinitesimal ripples of a vibrating plate turn sound into electricity, and electricity into sound; there is a continual becoming of things into that which they are not; and as to any dead or lifeless form of continuity, there seems no death—“nec morti esse locum" (Virgil, "Georg." iv. 226)—a voltaic discharge, even when apparently continuous, is a succession of intermediencies at exceedingly short intervals; yet the intervals, compared with actual smaller spaces and times, may be hugely vast. The fact becomes plainly visible when put in larger form-We see in the same day brutes on the summit of a mountain, and men at the foot; animals tapering down by innumerable gradations to the lowest organisms, and thence to inorganic elements. We also find an ascent from lower grades to higher states, until

« ZurückWeiter »