resorted to for filling up the voids in creation, and thereby perfecting
a scale which must have been originally not merely a scale of narrow
compass, but also of innumerable breaks and blanks, hiatuses and chasms?
Such, certainly, would be the reading of the enigma which a Soame Jenyns
or a Bolingbroke would suggest; but the geologist has learned from his
science, that the completion of a chain of at least contemporary being,
perfect in its gradations, cannot possibly have formed the design of
Providence. Almost ever since God united vitality to matter, the links in
this chain of animated nature, as if composed of a material too brittle
to bear their own weight when stretched across the geologic ages, have
been dropping one after out, from his hand, and sinking, fractured and
broken, into the rocks below. It is urged by Pope, that were “we to press
on superior powers,” and rise from our own assigned place to the place
immediately above all, we would, in consequence of the transposition,
“In the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroyed.
From nature’s chain whatever link we strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.”
The poet could scarce have anticipated that there was a science then
sleeping in its cradle, and dreaming the dreams of Whiston, Leibnitz, and
Burnet, which was one day to rise and demonstrate that both the tenth and
the ten thousandth link in the chain had been already broken and laid
by, with all the thousands of links between; and that man might laudably
“press on superior powers,” and attain to a “new nature,” without in the
least affecting the symmetry of creation by the void which his elevation
would necessarily create; that, in fine, voids and blanks in the scale
are exceedingly common things; and that, if men could, by rising into
angels, make one blank more, they might do so with perfect impunity.
Further, even were the graduated chain of Bolingbroke a reality, and not
what Johnson well designates it, an “absurd hypothesis,” and were what I
have termed the interpolation of links necessary to its completion, the
mere filling up of the original blanks and chasms would not necessarily
involve the fact of degradation, seeing that each blank could be
filled up, if I may go express myself, from its lower end. Each could
be as certainly occupied to the full by an elevation of lower forms,
as by a humiliation of the higher. We might receive the hypothesis of
Bolingbroke, and yet find the mysterious fact of degradation remain an
unsolved riddle in our hands.
But though I can assign neither _reason_ nor _cause_ for the fact, I
cannot avoid the conclusion, that it is associated with certain other
great facts in the moral government of the universe, by those threads of
analogical connection which run through the entire tissue of Creation and
Providence, and impart to it that character of unity which speaks of the
single producing Mind. The first idea of every religion on earth which
has arisen out of what may be termed the spiritual instincts of man’s
nature, is that of a Future State; the second idea is, that in this state
men shall exist in two separate classes,—the one in advance of their
present condition, the other far in the rear of it. It is on these two
great beliefs that conscience every where finds the fulcrum from which
it acts upon the conduct; and it is, we find, wholly inoperative as a
force without them. And in that one religion among men that, instead
of retiring, like the pale ghosts of the others, before the light of
civilization, brightens and expands in its beams, and in favor of whose
claim as a revelation from God the highest philosophy has declared,
we find these two master ideas occupying a still more prominent place
than in any of those merely indigenous religions that spring up in the
human mind of themselves. The special lesson which the Adorable Saviour,
during his ministry on earth, oftenest enforced, and to which all the
others bore reference, was the lesson of a final separation of mankind
into two great divisions,—a division of God-like men, of whose high
Standing and full-orbed happiness man, in the present scene of things,
can form no adequate conception; and a division of men finally lost, and
doomed to unutterable misery and hopeless degradation. There is not in
all Revelation a single doctrine which we find oftener or more clearly
enforced than that there shall continue to exist, throughout the endless
cycles of the future, a race of degraded men and of degraded angels.
Now, it is truly wonderful how thoroughly, in its general scope, the
revealed pieces on to the geologic record. We know, as geologists, that
the dynasty of the fish was succeeded by that of the reptile,—that
the dynasty of the reptile was succeeded by that of the mammiferous
quadruped,—and that the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped was
succeeded by that of man as man now exists,—a creature of mixed
character, and subject, in all conditions, to wide alternations of
enjoyment and suffering. We know, further—so far at least as we have
yet succeeded in deciphering the record,—that the several dynasties
were introduced, not in their lower, but in their higher forms;—that,
in short, in the imposing programme of creation it was arranged, as a
general rule, that in each of the great divisions of the procession
the magnates should walk first. We recognize yet further the fact of
degradation specially exemplified in the fish and the reptile. And then,
passing on to the revealed record, we learn that the dynasty of man in
the mixed state and character is not the final one, but that there is
to be yet another creation, or, more properly, _re_-creation, known
theologically as the Resurrection, which shall be connected in its
physical components, by bonds of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty
which now reigns, and be bound to it mentally by the chain of identity,
conscious and actual; but which, in all that constitutes superiority,
shall be as vastly its superior as the dynasty of responsible man is
superior to even the lowest of the preliminary dynasties. We are further
taught, that at the commencement of this last of the dynasties, there
will be a re-creation of not only elevated, but also of degraded
beings,—a re-creation of the _lost_. We are taught yet further, that
though the present dynasty be that of a lapsed race, which at their
first introduction were placed on higher ground than that on which they
now stand, and sank by their own act, it was yet part of the original
design, from the beginning of all things, that they should occupy
the existing platform; and that Redemption is thus no after-thought,
rendered necessary by the fall, but, on the contrary, part of a general
scheme, for which provision had been made from the beginning; so that
the Divine Man, through whom the work of restoration has been effected,
was in reality, in reference to the purposes of the Eternal, what he is
designated in the remarkable text, “_the Lamb slain from the foundations
of the world_.” Slain from the foundations of the world! Could the
assertors of the stony science ask for language more express? By piecing
the two records together,—that revealed in Scripture and that revealed
in the rocks,—records which, however widely geologists may mistake the
one, or commentators misunderstand the other, have emanated from the
same great Author—we learn that in slow and solemn majesty has period
succeeded period, each in succession ushering in a higher end yet higher
scene of existence,—that fish, reptiles, mammiferous quadrupeds, have
reigned in turn,—that responsible man, “made in the image of God,”
and with dominion over all creatures, ultimately entered into a world
ripened for his reception; but, further, that this passing scene, in
which he forms the prominent figure, is not the final one in the long
series, but merely the last of the _preliminary_ scenes; and that that
period to which the bygone ages, incalculable in amount, with all their
well-proportioned gradations of being, form the imposing vestibule, shall
have perfection for its occupant, and eternity for its duration. I know
not how it may appear to others; but for my own part, I cannot avoid
thinking that there would be a lack of proportion in the series of being,
were the period of perfect and glorified humanity abruptly connected,
without the introduction of an intermediate creation of _responsible_
imperfection, with that of the dying irresponsible brute. That scene of
things in which God became Man, and suffered, _seems_, as it no doubt
_is_, a necessary link in the chain.
I am aware that I stand on the confines of a mystery which man, since the
first introduction of sin into the world till now, has “vainly aspired to
comprehend.” But I have no new reading of the enigma to offer. I know not
why it is that moral evil exists in the universe of the All-Wise and the
All-Powerful; nor through what occult law of Deity it is that “perfection
should come through suffering.” The question, like that satellite, ever
attendant upon our planet, which presents both its sides to the sun, but
invariably the same side to the earth, hides one of its faces from man,
and turns it to but the Eye from which all light emanates. And it is in
that God-ward phase of the question that the mystery dwells. We can map
and measure every protuberance and hollow which roughens the nether disk
of the moon, as, during the shades of night, it looks down upon our path
to cheer and enlighten; but what can we know of the other? It would,
however, seem, that even in this field of mystery the extent of the
inexplicable and the unknown is capable of reduction, and that the human
understanding is vested in an ability of progressing towards the central
point of that dark field throughout all time, mayhap all eternity, as
the asymptote progresses upon its curve. Even though the essence of the
question should forever remain a mystery, it may yet in its reduced and
defined state, serve as a key for the laying of other mysteries open.
The philosophers are still as ignorant as ever respecting the intrinsic
nature of gravitation; but regarded simply as a force, how many enigmas
has it not served to unlock! And that moral gravitation towards evil,
manifested by the only two classes of responsible beings of which there
is aught known to man, and of which a degradation linked by mysterious
analogy with a class of facts singularly prominent in geologic history is
the result, occupies apparently a similar place, as a force, in the moral
dynamics of the universe, and seems suited to perform a similar part.
Inexplicable itself, it is yet a key to the solution of all the minor
inexplicabilities in the scheme of Providence.
In a matter of such extreme niceness and difficulty, shall I dare venture
on an illustrative example?
So far as both the geologic and the Scriptural evidence extends, no
species or family of existences seems to have been introduced by creation
into the present scene of being since the appearance of man. In Scripture
the formation of the human race is described as the terminal act of a
series, “good” in all its previous stages, but which became “very good”
then; and geologists, judging from the modicum of evidence which they
have hitherto succeeded in collecting on the subject,—evidence still
meagre, but, so far as it goes, independent and distinct,—pronounce
“post-Adamic creations” at least “improbable.” The naturalist finds
certain animal and vegetable species restricted to certain circles,
and that in certain foci in these circles they attain to their fullest
development and their maximum number. And these foci he regards as the
original centres of creation, whence, in each instance in the process
of increase and multiplication, the plant or creature propagated itself
outwards in circular wavelets of life, that sank at each stage as they
widened till at length, at the circumference of the area, they wholly
ceased. Now we find it argued by Professor Edward Forbes that “since
man’s appearance, certain geological areas, both of land and water,
have been formed, presenting such physical conditions as to entitle us
to expect within their bounds one, or in some instances more than one,
centre of creation, or _point of maximum of a zoological or botanical
province_. But a critical examination renders evident,” the Professor
adds, “that instead of showing distinct foci of creation, they have
been in all instances peopled by colonization, _i. e._ by migration of
species from pre-existing, and in every case pre-Adamic, provinces. Among
the terrestrial areas the British isles may serve as an example; among
marine, the Baltic, Mediterranean, and Black Seas. The British islands
have been colonized from various centres of creation in (now) continental
Europe; the Baltic Sea from the Celtic region, although it runs itself
into the conditions of the Boreal one; and the Mediterranean, as it
now appears, from the fauna and flora of the more ancient Lusitanian
province.” Professor Forbes, it is stated further, in the report of his
paper to which I owe these details,—a paper read at the Royal Institution
in March last,—“exhibited, in support of the same view, a map, showing
the relation which the centres of creation of the air-breathing molluscs
in Europe bear to the geological history of the respective areas, and
proving that the whole snail population of its northern and central
extent (the portion of the Continent of newest and probably post-Adamic
origin) had been derived from foci of creation seated in pre-Adamic
lands. And these remarkable facts have induced the Professor,” it was
added, “to maintain the improbability of post-Adamic creations.”
With the introduction of man into the scene of existence, creation,
I repeat, seems to have ceased. What is it that now takes its place,
and performs its work? During the previous dynasties, all elevation
in the scale was an effect simply of creation. Nature lay dead in a
waste theatre of rock, vapor, and sea, in which the insensate laws,
chemical; mechanical, and electric, carried on their blind, unintelligent
processes: the _creative fiat_ went forth; and, amid waters that
straightway teemed with life in its lower forms, vegetable and animal,
the dynasty of the fish was introduced. Many ages passed, during which
there took place no further elevation: on the contrary, in not a few of
the newly introduced species of the reigning class there occurred for
the first time examples of an asymmetrical misplacement of parts, and,
in at least one family of fishes, instances of defect of parts: there
was the manifestation of a downward tendency towards the degradation of
monstrosity, when the elevatory fiat again went forth, and, _through
an act of creation_, the dynasty of the reptile began. Again many ages
passed by, marked, apparently, by the introduction of a warm-blooded
oviparous animal, the bird, and of a few marsupial quadrupeds, but in
which the prevailing class reigned undeposed, though at least unelevated.
Yet again, however, the elevatory fiat went forth, and _through an act
of creation_ the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped began. And after
the further lapse of ages, the elevatory fiat went forth yet once more
_in an act of creation_; and with the human, heaven-aspiring dynasty,
the moral government of God, in its connection with at least the world
which we inhabit, “took beginning.” And then creation ceased. Why?
Simply because God’s moral government _had_ begun,—because in necessary
conformity with the institution of that government, there was to be a
thorough identity maintained between the glorified and immortal beings
of the terminal dynasty, and the dying magnates of the dynasty which now
is; and because, in consequence of the maintenance of this identity as
an essential condition of this moral government, mere _acts of creation_
could no longer carry on the elevatory process. The work analogous in its
end and object to those _acts of creation_ which gave to our planet its
successive dynasties of higher and yet higher existences, is the work of
REDEMPTION. It is the elevatory process of the present time,—the only
possible provision for that final act of _re_-creation “to everlasting
life,” which shall usher in the terminal dynasty.
I cannot avoid thinking that many of our theologians attach a too narrow
meaning to the remarkable reason “annexed to the Fourth Commandment” by
the Divine Lawgiver. “God rested on the seventh day,” says the text,
“from all his work which He had created and made; and God blessed the
seventh day, and sanctified it.” And such is the reason given in the
Decalogue why man should also rest on the seventh day. God rested on the
Sabbath, and sanctified it; and therefore man ought also to rest on the
Sabbath, and keep it holy. But I know not where we shall find grounds
for the belief that that Sabbath-day during which God rested was merely
commensurate in its duration with one of the Sabbaths of short-lived
man,—a brief period, measured by a single revolution of the earth on
its axis. We have not, as has been shown, a shadow of evidence that
He resumed his work of creation on the morrow: the geologist finds no
trace of post-Adamic creation,—the theologian can tell us of none. God’s
Sabbath of rest may still exist;—_the work of REDEMPTION may be the work
of his Sabbath day_. That elevatory process through successive acts of
creation which engaged Him during myriads of ages, was of an ordinary
week-day character; but in when the term of his moral government began,
the elevatory process proper to it assumed the Divine character of the
Sabbath. This special view appears to lend peculiar emphasis to the
reason embodied in the commandment. The collation of the passage with
the geologic record seems, as if by a species of re-translation, to make
it enunciate as its injunction, “Keep this day, not merely as a day of
memorial related to a past fact, but also as a day of coöperation with
God in the work of elevation in relation both to a present fact and
a future purpose. God keeps his Sabbath,” it says, “in order that He
may save; keep yours also, in order that ye may be saved.” It serves,
besides, to throw light on the prominence of the Sabbatical command,
in a digest of law of which no part or tittle can pass away until the
fulfilment of all things. During the present dynasty of probation and
trial, that special work of both God and man on which the character of
the future dynasty depends, is the Sabbath-day work of saving and being
saved.[41]
It is in this dynasty of the future that man’s moral and intellectual
faculties will receive their full development The expectation of any
very great advance in the present scene of things—great, at least, when
measured by man’s large capacity of conceiving of the good and fair—seems
to be, like all human hope when restricted to time, an expectation
doomed to disappointment. There are certain limits within which the race
improves;—civilization is better than the want of it, and the taught
superior to the untaught man. There is a change, too, effected in the
moral nature, through that Spirit which, by working belief in the heart,
brings its aspirations into harmony with the realities of the unseen
world, that, in at least its relation to the future state, cannot be
estimated too highly. But conception can travel very far beyond even its
best effects in their merely secular bearing; nay, it is peculiarly its
nature to show the men most truly the subjects of it, how miserably they
fall short of the high standard of conduct and feeling which it erects,
and to teach them, more emphatically than by words, that their degree
of happiness must of necessity be as low as their moral attainments are
humble. Further,—man, though he has been increasing in knowledge ever
since his appearance on earth, has not been improving in faculty;—a
shrewd fact, which they who expect most from the future of this world
would do well to consider. The ancient masters of mind were in no respect
inferior in calibre to their predecessors. We have not yet shot ahead
of the old Greeks in either the perception of the beautiful, or in the
ability of producing it; there has been no improvement in the inventive
faculty since the Iliad was written, some three thousand years ago; nor
has taste become more exquisite, or the perception of the harmony of
numbers more nice, since the age of the Æneid. Science is cumulative in
its character; and so its votaries in modern times stand on a higher
pedestal than their predecessors. But though nature produced a Newton
some two centuries ago, as she produced a Goliath of Gath at an earlier
period, the modern philosophers, as a class, do not exceed in actual
stature the worse informed ancients,—the Euclids, Archimedeses, and
Aristotles. We would be without excuse if, with the Bacon, Milton, and
Shakspeare of these latter ages of the world full before us, we recurred
to the obsolete belief that the human race is deteriorating; but then, on
the other hand, we have certain evidence, that since genius first began
unconsciously to register in its works its own bulk and proportions,
there has been no increase in the mass or improvement in the quality of
individual mind. As for the dream that there is to be some extraordinary
elevation of the general platform of the race achieved by means of
education, it is simply the hallucination of the age,—the world’s present
alchemical expedient for converting farthings into guineas, sheerly by
dint of scouring. Not but that education is good; it exercises, and,
in the ordinary mind, developes, faculty. But it will not anticipate
the terminal dynasty. Yet further,— man’s average capacity of happiness
seems to be as limited and as incapable of increase as his average reach
of intellect: it is a mediocre capacity at best; nor is it greater
by a shade now, in these days of power-looms and portable manures,
than in the times of the old patriarchs. So long, too, as the law of
increase continues, man must be subject to the law of death, with its
stern attendants, suffering and sorrow; for the two laws go necessarily
together; and so long as death reigns, human creatures, in even the best
of times, will continue to quit this scene of being without professing
much satisfaction at what they have found either in it or themselves. It
will no doubt be a less miserable world than it is now, when the good
come, as there is reason to hope they one day shall, to be a majority;
but it will be felt to be an inferior sort of world even then, and be
even fuller than now of wishes and longings for a better. Let it improve
as it may, it will be a scene of probation and trial till the end. And
so Faith, undeceived by the mirage of the midway desert, whatever form
or name, political or religious, the phantasmagoria may bear, must
continue to look beyond its unsolid and tremulous glitter,—its bare rocks
exaggerated by the vapor into air-drawn castles, and its stunted bushes
magnified into goodly trees,—and, fixing her gaze upon the re-creation
yet future,—the terminal dynasty yet unbegun,—she must be content to
enter upon her final rest—for she will not enter upon it earlier—“at
return”
“Of Him, the Woman’s Seed,
Last in the clouds, from heaven to be revealed
In glory of the Father, to dissolve
Satan with his perverted world, then raise
From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined,
New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date,
Founded in righteousness, and peace, and love,
To bring forth fruits,—joy and eternal bliss.”