important dispatches. I could not have been long in bed, when I fell
into a slumber and began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like
stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of persons
were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered down stairs. There
the silence was broken by the same sobbing, but the mourners were
invisible. I went from room to room. No living person was in sight, but
the same mournful sounds met me as I passed along. I was puzzled and
alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find out
the cause of a state of things so mysterious, I kept on until I arrived
at the 'end room,' which I entered. There I met a sickening surprise.
Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral
vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards;
and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon this
corpse, whose face was covered; others weeping pitifully, 'Who is dead
at the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers. 'The President,'
was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin!' Then came a loud burst
of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream. I slept no more
that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely
annoyed by it ever since."
This occurred but a short time before the event it heralded, which
plunged the nation into grief. Had the President given heed to its
warning, and not been persuaded by his wife, who gave no credit to the
supernatural, the course of events would have been different. Had he
heeded the dream it would have been brought forward as evidence to prove
the worthlessness of such visions.
A LITTLE GIRL PREDICTS HER OWN DEATH.--Little Maud, three-year-old
daughter of George T. Ford, of Elmore, Mich., came to her mother one day
and said, "Maudie is not going to stay; she is going away off to be
buried up in the cold ground." About a week later, she said, "Let Maudie
go and ride with you to-day, for she will never go again." On the
morning of the day of her death, she came to her mother and said,
"Maudie don't feel well. Don't you feel sorry for Maudie? She is going
away off where you will never see her again." Her mother clasped her to
her bosom, wondering what she could mean, but was not long left in
doubt. The child grew seriously ill, and later in the day she said,
"Good-bye--lift me up--I hear the band playing--I am going now," and
passed away.
PRINCE LEOPOLD'S DREAM.--Another instance, important in consequence of
the noble station of the person to whom it relates, is given in the
_Fortnightly Review_, by W. H. Myers:
"The last time I saw Prince Leopold (being two days before he died), he
would talk to me about death, and said he would like a military funeral.
"Finally I asked, 'why do you talk in this morose manner?' As he was
about to answer, he was called away and said, 'I will tell you later.' I
never saw him to speak to again, but he finished his answer to me to a
lady, and said: 'Two nights now, Princess Alice has appeared to me in my
dreams, and says she is quite happy and wants me to come and join her;
that is what makes me so very thoughtful.'
"I take this to be a sign of his approaching removal to the world of
spirits, in which, as a member of a Spiritualistic family, he has been,
from his earliest youth, an implicit believer, thus illustrating the
truth of the observation, that, 'Signs are vouchsafed to the believing,
now, as of old.'"
ANOTHER CASE.--Miss Mary Paine, when on her way to visit some friends in
Gainesville, Ga., on passing the Mars Hill Graveyard, ordered her driver
to stop the team, which he did. Then she exacted a promise from him that
he would bring her back and bury her by the side of her sister Jane.
"For," said she, "I shall never come back alive. I shall die away from
home, and I want you to promise to bring me back for burial." To this
declaration she clung, nor would she be persuaded that, as she was in
good health she would have a pleasant visit and return home happy.
Before three weeks had passed she died of a congestive chill, at her
friend's house in Gainesville, and as she had requested, was brought
back to Mars Hill and buried by the side of her dear sister.
Dr. H----, who is of exceedingly skeptical organization, said that he
once had an experience which baffled his powers of explanation, and
caused him to doubt his materialistic views. He had been called to a
distant farm-house on an intensely dark and stormy night to visit a
patient. There was a stream with wide marshy borders, across which a
narrow causeway had been constructed, barely wide enough for carriages
to pass. As he drove onto one end of this narrow way, suddenly there
came the thought that he would meet a runaway team, and his horse and
carriage be overturned into the morass. At that time of night this was
wholly improbable; but the thought came to him instantly with all its
contingencies. "If I should meet a team, what shall I do?" he asked
himself. Then he thought there was one place wider than the rest, and he
answered, "I would reach that place and get as far out of the way as
possible." "Get there, then; get there," was the urgent impression. He
involuntarily hurried his horse, reached the place, and, driving to the
very edge, drew rein. He was in a tremor of nervous excitement, yet had
seen nor heard nothing to excite him more than the interior impression.
But he soon found his haste had not been in vain. He heard the rattle of
wheels and clatter of hoofs, as a runaway team struck the further end of
the causeway, and in a moment they swept past him. Had they met him
unprepared, he certainly would have met with a serious, if not fatal,
accident. This intelligence which saw the approaching team and the
great danger in which Dr. H. would be placed, was independent of his
mind, for it brought a knowledge that mind did not, nor could not know
until revealed by some foreign power. Whence came the premonition, the
thoughtful care? Not out of the air. It was from an intelligent,
individualized entity above and beyond physical existence; and all
theories which leave out this element fall short of covering the
multitudinous facts which unite and bind them together in a harmonious
whole.
SEEN AT HIS FUNERAL.--Dr. John E. Purdon, now of Valley Head, Ala., is
authority for the following narrative, which records the appearance of a
soldier soon after his death, and may be taken as evidence of the
sensitiveness on one side, and of the reality of the existence of the
appearance on the other:
"In the year 1872, while in charge of the convalescent hospital,
Sandown, Isle of Wight, I returned from a short visit to London,
bringing with me for change and rest Miss Florence Cook, who afterwards
became so celebrated a medium. On the evening of my return home, I took
a walk with Miss Cook along the cliffs towards Shanklin. During the walk
she drew my attention to a soldier who seemed to her to be behaving in a
curious way, turning round and staring at me, and omitting the usual
military salute which she had noticed the other men give as they passed
by. As I could see no one at the time my curiosity was excited, and when
she said the man had passed a stile just in front of us, I crossed over
and looked carefully about. No soldier was in sight; on one side was an
open field; on the other, perpendicular cliffs. I asked a country man at
work in the field if he had seen a soldier pass just before I appeared,
but he had not.
"On my return from town I found that a certain chronic patient who had
been a long time in the hospital, and on whom I had performed a minor
surgical operation some time before, had died of pulmonary consumption.
"Miss Cook and another young lady on a visit to my wife, never having
seen a military funeral, persuaded her to take them to a cross-road,
where they would see the troops pass without being seen themselves. As
we marched past, the coffin being carried on a gun-carriage, Miss Cook
said to my wife, 'Why is the little man in front dressed differently
from the other soldier?' My wife answered that she could not see any one
in front, nor could the other girl either. Miss Cook then said, 'Why
does he not wear a big hat like the others? He has on a small cap and is
holding his head down.' They then returned home, and the funeral party
passed on to the graveyard which was two miles from the hospital. Just
after the firing party had fallen in to march home, Hospital Sergeant
Malandine came up to me in the graveyard and said: 'Private Edwards
reports sick, sir, and asks permission to return by train.' I asked what
was the matter, and the sergeant answered that Edwards had had a great
fright from seeing the man we were burying looking down into his own
grave at the coffin before it was covered by the clay!"
APPEARANCE AFTER DEATH.--_Light_, a journal that exercises great
discretion in the facts it publishes, vouches for the following
appearance coincident with death, received from Mr. F. J. Teall:
"In the year 1884 my son Walter was serving in the Soudan, in the 3d
King's Royal Rifles. The last we heard from him was a letter informing
us that he expected to return to England about Christmas time. On
October 24th I returned home in the evening, and noticing my wife
looking very white, I said, 'What is the matter with you?' She said she
had seen Walter, and he had stooped down to kiss her, but, owing to her
starting, he was gone; so she did not receive the kiss. He was in his
regimentals, and she thought he had come on furlough, to take her by
surprise, knowing the back way; but when she saw he was gone and the
door not open, she became dreadfully frightened. My son Frederick and
daughters Selina and Nellie were in the room, but none of them saw
Walter; only Fred heard his mother scream, 'Oh!' and asked her what was
the matter.
"I thought, having heard many tales of this kind, that I would jot it
down, so I put the date on a slip of paper. After that we had a letter
from the lady nurse of the Ramleh Hospital, in Egypt, to say that the
poor boy had suffered a third relapse of enteric fever. They thought
that he would have pulled through, but he was taken. When we got the
letter it was a week after he died; but the date when the letter was
written corresponded with the day Walter appeared, which was on October
24th, 1884. My wife never got over the shock, but brooded over it, and
finally died April 29th, 1886, of mental derangement."
FOREWARNING.--Miss Lena Harman, as reported in the _Globe-Democrat_, is
authority for a most instructive narrative of ghastly interference in
the affairs of men, which forms another link in the chain of evidence
showing that there is a spirit-world interested in the events of this.
Miss Harman was a warm friend of Mrs. Lena Reich, who was foully
murdered by her husband in New York. She had not seen her for several
months prior to her death, but the last time she met her, Mrs. Reich
told her a pitiful story of her husband's abuse, and said she ought not
to have married him for she had been forewarned. She had been obliged to
have him bound over to keep the peace, and knew he would yet kill her.
The warning came before she was married, even before their engagement.
In her own words it happened this way. "Adolph had been courting me for
some time, and I knew that I loved him. One night, a terrible dark,
storming winter night, he told me that he loved me, and offered himself
to me. I acknowledged that I was not indifferent to him, but asked a few
days to think over the matter and consult my friends. Adolph did not
like this delay, and tried to reason me out of it, but I was firm and
carried my point. Well, we sat up very late that night together, no one
else but ourselves being in the room. When he finally left it was past
midnight, and the weather was very cold, so I fixed up the fire to make
me a cup of tea to quiet my nerves, and warm me up before going to bed.
I was a little sorry I had been so positive to Adolph about the time, as
I loved him and I thought I might as well say yes, any way, so that he
would have gone home so much happier.
"As I poured out my cup of tea I said aloud to myself, 'Yes, I love
Adolph.' Just then I heard a noise on the stairs, and, thinking some one
was going by my door, I turned off the gas, because I did not want any
one to know I was keeping such late hours. As the fire in the stove gave
out a ruddy light, and the half-darkness of the room seemed so peaceful,
and suited my mood of mind so well, I did not light the gas again, but
sat and sipped my tea in the darkness, saying little things to myself
aloud. Suddenly, however, I heard a slight noise behind me, and at the
same time I heard a church clock, strike the hour of one. Well, I looked
around without a thought of anything strange, and saw my Ernest, to whom
I had been previously engaged, and who died before the ceremony, almost
at the altar. He was dressed in the same clothes as when I saw him
last--his wedding suit--for we were going to our wedding when he died of
heart disease.
"I shrieked and tried to fly from my room, but he spoke: 'Do not move,
Lena; I will not harm you. I come because I love you, and because I pity
you. Lena, if you marry Adolph Reich you will lead the life of a dog. He
will be cruel and jealous, and unreasonable, and, worse than all, he
will murder you in the end. Yes, he will murder you! Stay! I see the
scene now! He grasps your hair; he holds a sharp carving knife in the
other hand; you reach out for the knife and seize it, when, with a
terrible oath, he draws the keen blade out of your grasp, and almost
severs your fingers in doing so! Oh! he has you down on the bed; he
draws the knife; you struggle and scream. He strikes the blade into your
neck!--your beautiful neck; you struggle more violently and escape. With
the blood spurting from your wound, you run from the room and fall in
the hall; and the villain escapes, carrying the knife with him! Oh,
terrible! terrible!' Then there was a silence; Ernest said no more for
some minutes, and I was too much horrified to speak; but again he said:
'Lena, I love you as much as I ever did, and it won't be long now before
you join me here, and we shall be happy again. Oh, do not marry Reich,
as you value your life and soul! Farewell! God keep you!' and he was
gone!"
The warning was fulfilled to the letter. After the infliction of the
terrible wound which caused her death; she had crawled out of her room,
and fell in the hall from the loss of blood. How many similar warnings
pass unheeded, and yet how greatly might the recipients be benefited by
heeding them!
Effects of Physical Influences on the Sensitive.
Individuals who are influenced to an unusual extent by their
surroundings, are regarded as nervous,--a name covering a multitude of
ills for which no other term is at command. A cat entering the room,
however stealthily, in some awakes the most disagreeable feelings.
Another is so sensitive to the electric state of the weather as to
presage the coming storm several hours or days in advance. Sunday is so
called because of its supposed connection with the phases of the moon.
The superstitious observation of the Signs arises from the dull
understanding or ignorance of this influence. That man is a magnet, and
has polarity corresponding to that of the earth, is a plausible
conjecture, which receives confirmation by the influence of the earth
currents on many forms of disease. Some patients are so exceedingly
sensitive that they can lie at ease in no other position than with their
heads to the north; and it has been argued that if such position is best
for the sensitive it is for all.
More especially is the influence of physical forces seen when death
occurs after a lingering disease, which, by reducing the bodily
strength, makes that of the spirit more susceptible.
"He's going out with the tide," is the common expression of all the
rough coastwise people. It may be called a superstition of sea-faring
races; but it is a fact that for some inscrutable reason the old, sick
and infirm more often die at the ebb-tide than when the tide is rising.
A poet beautifully expresses this belief:
"When the tide goes out he will pass away,
Pray for a soul's serene release!
That the weary spirit may rest in peace,
When the tide goes out."
A physician on the Connecticut coast, who had made special observations,
said: "for more than thirty years I have lived and observed among the
rough, hardy souls hereabout; and for more than fifty my father before
me gathered facts and wisdom from practice. I have stood by hundreds of
death-beds of fishermen and farmers, old and young, during the last
quarter of a century; but I can hardly recall a single instance of a
person dying of disease, who did not pass away while the tide was
ebbing. It is a fact that in critical cases I never feel concerned to
leave a patient for an hour or two when the tide is coming in; but when
it is receding, and particularly in the latter stages of the ebb, I stay
by, if I can, till the turn comes. You'll scarcely credit it, but the
daily record of the tides is the most important part of the almanac in
my practice. If a patient who is very low lives to see the current turn
from ebb to flow, I know the case is safe till the ebb sets in again."
"When the tide comes in death waits for dole,
When the tide ebbs it takes a soul."
Francis Gerry Fairchild says that during five years he noted the hour
and minute of ninety-three demises, and of these all but four (who died
of accidents) went out with the ebb of the tide. In his own words: "I
who have sat with my fingers on the wrist of many a feeble patient, and
noticed the pulse rise and strengthen, or sink and vanish, with the
turning of the tide, know that it is fact."
Of twenty-one cases of death registered on the sea coast of Long Island
at Orient, by Capt. D. B. Edwards, I find, by careful examination, that
with only one exception, the aged, or those who had been suffering from
long sickness, died at the ebb of the tide. Those cases were taken as
they came, and afford an average that may be depended upon.
Not that the coming and going of the ocean wave as it rolls round the
world has special influence. The cause is more profound, and blended
with the force of gravitation. Not only is the ocean agitated and piled
up beneath the moon; the deeper and more elastic aerial sea is more
strongly fluctuated, and the electric and magnetic conditions change
with certain periodicity. The maximum of positive force is attained at
high tide, constantly increasing as the tide comes in, and then recedes
to the zero of negativeness with its outgoing. With the flood of water,
and higher pressure of atmosphere, the forces of life are stimulated by
the increasing positiveness. When these stimulants withdraw, the tide
runs to the negative pole, and a soul ebbs from the mortal shore. Man is
sensitive to the influences of the sun and moon, and to the stars.
The influence of the moon in cases of lunacy has been observed from
ancient times, and a lunar month measures the cycle of changes in most
cases of madness.
During health these subtle changes are not felt, or too feebly to be
remarked. It is during sickness, when the physical energies are so
enfeebled that slight forces turn the balance for or against, that the
most palpable effects are produced. There are moon-tides and sun-tides
in the ocean and in the air. Sometimes these augment, at others depress
each other. The magnetic disturbances are much greater at times than
others; hence the subject is complicated; but when investigated it will
be shown that there is co-operation between vital force and the energies
of nature.
A spirit is a harp attuned to respond to the touch of myriad forces. It
is placed in the center of these multitudinous energies, coming in from
every direction. It is sensitive to the touch of the sun, the moon and
the planets, and to that of the farthest star that twinkles on the verge
of the Milky Way; not in the sense of astrology, but in as faithful a
manner. If the magnetic needle trembles because of a spot in the sun; if
the magnetic currents of the earth are disturbed by activity of the
solar disc, can we for a moment doubt but the more delicately ethereal
spiritual perception will feel such disturbances? The sweet influence of
the Pleiades has more than poetic meaning, and the cold light of the
moon brings on its beams the breath of love.
It is well known that many diseases are aggravated by the approach of
night, while others are most severe during the day. All nervous pains
become intensified at the approach of night--a fact admitted, but
referred by material science to the imagination, the fancy having free
reign during the silent hours of darkness. During the day, the half of
the earth illuminated is positive to the other unilluminated hemisphere.
Hence the sensations of evening are different from those of morning. We
have enjoyed the light and been positive during the day; when night
advances, we become passive in the enveloping darkness, and enter a
state twin sister to death, to arise in the morning again to meet the
positive day.
Sleep during the night is more restoring than during the day--a
distinction recognized by animals and plants. Night is no more terrible
than day, yet the mind, oppressed by the negative condition then imposed
on all things, peoples it with fancies. The hour of midnight is the
established season for ghostly appearances. He who boldly walks along
the churchyard path at noonday, would fain whistle to keep his courage
up at the hour of midnight. Even Hæckel, the great naturalist, confesses
that as the evening fell on him, while alone on the extreme point of
Ceylon, and the shadows deepened on the weird forest and lonely sea, an
"uncanny" feeling crept over him.
And the soul moves in the circle of the seasons; not only has human life
its Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter; in the long three score years
and ten, it swings through this circle with each succeeding procession
of seasons, and experiences the changing impressions they so rapidly
bring.
Unconscious Sensitiveness.
SILENCE AND RECEPTIVITY.--I sit down with the friend of my heart, and
neither speak a word; we visit in close communion of souls, in silence;
spoken words would be only jarring discord. The shallow mind is
supplied with a wind of words: like a dictionary he is all words, but
without a thought. The highest thought, the most profound feelings, are
beyond the sphere of speech.
The restless wind is ever sighing; the restless, unbalanced soul is ever
chattering its half-formed thoughts. The shallow brook splashes and
dashes over its bed with noisy tongue; the deep river flows onward
without a ripple on its broad surface to tell of its tremendous power.
If we would learn of nature we must retire to her solitudes and let no
one intrude. The dearest and nearest may draw with well meaning hands an
opaque vail between us and the sun. In the solitude of the forest, by
the shores of the sullen sea, and in the depths of star-lit night, we
rest as dwarfs, overpowered by the stupendous elements, yet the center
of all forces and phenomena. We are in the vortex of creative energies,
and if we silently question, the answers fall as soon as our minds are
receptive to them. In its adoration of the boundless, the soul mirrors
its own infinitude. The shoreless expanse of sea, with sky and wave
blending, lost in mist, in the never-reached horizon; the depths of
stars, beyond and beyond, in vistas leading out into absolute void,
beyond all created things--to such the soul acknowledges kinship, and in
them finds its satisfaction. The thoughts of the stars are untongued,
but they vibrate across the limitless ether, and are eloquent to the
receptive mind.
Immeasurably more needful of receptivity born of silence, is the contact
with the infinite realm of spirit. The ocean of being, invisible, is
before us. We may not dictate, nor with blatant cry make demands. We
shall be grateful for a grain of manna from the heavenly skies; we may
gather a full repast. As spiritual beings, into the warp and woof of
whose existence enter the strands of immortal life, we are capable of
comprehending the laws of this unseen, and heretofore unknown universe.
As suns are pulsating centers of light, spiritual beings are pulsating
centers of thought, and as light waves go out circling until lost on the
remotest coast line of the universe, so thought-waves go out from the
thinking mind, and are caught up by all minds receptive to them.
By the sea, the soul sees the inner world expressed by a series of
changing pictures. The ships sailing from harbor, with all their white
sails set, and bent to the breeze which wafts them into the gray mist
until lost to view, express the voyage of human beings. The white birds,
with flapping wings, are the purposeless spirits of the air. The stars,
what consolation they have given the wretched in long ages of suffering,
by their eternal placidity, their quietude from the feverish follies
which we know intuitively belong to a lower life.
The truly receptive mind is least alone when alone. Then it becomes the
headland against which beat the waves of thought from every thinking
being in the universe. Like the telegraph receiver, it picks out the
thoughts to which it is sensitive, and the others go on to those
receptive to them. It thus becomes apparent that there can be an
education superior to all others; the education of receptivity, or
sensitiveness to the thought atmosphere or psychic-ether. Not that this
can take the place of the ordinary training of the faculties, for their
training, rudely performed as it is, often leads to a high
sensitiveness; more often leads away from it. The poet is most sensitive
to poetic thought, and in this sense is a medium, not only for
individual poets, but, perhaps, unconsciously, for the inseparable
thoughts of all. The truly great statesman receives influx from the
United Congress of all past leaders. Through the sensitive preacher, all
preachers of the past find tongue. The man of science, if successful in
research, may be praised for skill and faithfulness, but beyond these
qualities are the impressions descending from all who think or ever have
thought on their special subjects. There is a sensitiveness of
organization, and not of culture, which makes of the possessor a
mouth-piece, an instrument, such as it is. There is a sensitiveness,
better here called receptivity, which comes of right culture, and is the
highest form of mediumship, though its possessor may be wholly
unconscious of his gift.
RECEPTIVITY AND GREATNESS.--Here and there are those who by organization
are sensitive and ready instruments to bless the world with the light of
higher spheres. There have been many in the past fifty years. Centuries
have gone by and not one of these barren--centuries during which man
remained stationary or retrograded into dense ignorance.
As mountain peaks catch the light of morning when all the valleys and
plains below are wrapped in darkness, so these sensitives arise into the
atmosphere of spirit, and bathe their foreheads in its glory.
Who should be more sensitive to the urgencies of a threatened state than
he who has the responsibilities of government? Whom would the departed
statesman, who, loving his country, seek to impress, if not the ones in
power, who could make such impressions available? But those in power may
not be impressible, and this is most unfortunate for the state. They
MAY be, and then it can be truthfully said that the forces of heaven
fight its battles.
Such an one was Lincoln. His receptive mind responded to the thought
waves of the psychic atmosphere, and he became the center of a
thought-vortex--the concentration of unnumbered intelligences--with the
holy spiritual fervor of the sage and prophet. Feeling himself called to
a mighty task, and consecrated to its accomplishment, his great and
earnest soul responded to the breath of inspiration. He was
misunderstood by men because he acted from motives they could not
comprehend, and which were uncomprehended by himself; but during the
years of darkness, anxiety and care, the cabinet on which he relied was
not the executive officers, but one formed of those Fathers of the
Republic, who, on the hour of its birth, gave its flag to the breezes of
heaven. He failed at times; disasters came, representing the periods
when the clouds obscured the clear light of inspiration. He disregarded
the impressions of impending danger, and disobedience sealed the record
of his labors with his blood!
Then in invention, the contrivances by which the elements are harnessed
and become willing servants, we take one man as an illustration. A poor
uneducated country lad, with a simple knowledge of telegraphy sufficient
to send messages over the wires, that is all--no college learning, no
one to assist, to direct, to advise. He soon entered a field where no
mortal could advise, where no mortal had been or knew aught to advise
him. He became sensitive, and the secret chambers of the lightning were
unlocked to him. What to other men who had devoted a life-time of study
was obscure and mysterious, became to him the ABC to higher readings.
He sent his voice across the continent, he recorded the sounds so that
the instrument would in all after years give us back the tones of those
we love; he prolonged the lightning's lurid flash into a continuous
blaze, and converted night into day; he made the current leap from the
wire to the passing train and over an intangible wire from ship to ship,
across leagues of sea.
TRUE INSPIRATION.--OLE BULL.--What is meant by the oft-repeated
assertion that great and exceptional persons are inspired? More
especially in music and poetry is the influx from some foreign source
distinctly marked. Ole Bull, the king of all violin players, was, by his
own confession, subject to an influence beyond himself. When a boy, he
was attempting, unaided, to translate into musical sounds the splendor
of his ideal, a "voice" encouraged him constantly with "Bravo!" which he
accepted as a sign that he was doing well. Unlike Socrates' "demon,"
instead of being always the same, it was that of many celebrated
musicians. On one occasion, the voice of Handel murmured in his ear
after a rendition of that composer's "Hallelujah Chorus," "Only shadow
music sung by shadows." "My soul asked, 'Where, then, is the substance,
Master?'" "In my world," the voice replied, "where alone all things are
real, and music is the speech."
PAGANINI.--Of Paganini it was said that he not only enchanted his
listeners, but played as one enchanted, losing consciousness, and
throughout his performances remained as one entranced. So real were
musical conceptions flashed on his mind, that they became objective, and
danced before him in wild expression of rhythmic motion.
How far the ecstasy of all true musicians may account for their
super-normal efforts, depends on the meaning accepted of ecstasy. It
really is a state of sensitiveness to harmonious sounds, which at its
best differs little from the most exalted form of clairvoyance, or,
perhaps better, clair-audience.
BLIND TOM.--All have heard of Blind Tom, an idiotic negro, uncouth,
untaught, yet who was able to play the most intricate music, in a manner
only attainable to others by years of study and practice. His
improvisations were the wonder and delight of the listeners, and were
dashed off with the fingers of what might truly have been regarded as an
automaton. By what method could his astonishing facility of execution,
delicacy of expression, and masterly touch be explained? He was never
taught a lesson in music, was incapable of forming a continuous train of
thought; yet no conservatory ever graduated a superior performer. We are
forced to accept one of two conclusions: either that he was of himself
superior to any one in musical ability, or that he derived this gift
from an outside source. The first, on the face of it, appears an
absurdity. He was no more the cause of the music he produced than was
the piano on which he played. Both were instruments, he standing between
the force and its effect.
HANDEL.--In the sphere of sacred music, perhaps Handel stands without a
peer. So far above the ordinary level is his sublime work, that he
receives not his full mead of praise; for we applaud most that which
echoes some part of ourselves, and with his strains we are bowed in
humility and awe. In twenty-three days he produced "The Messiah," a
work which, for vastness of conception and exquisite finish, is the
grandest and most perfect choral work the world has ever known. He
belonged to no school, has no imitators, for he is too far removed for
imitation to be attempted. Well has it been said that the power of such
souls baffles criticism. That they tower so far above the common level,
and possess such exceptional mental and moral powers, leads to the
supposition that they touch a thought-sphere not touched by those less
sensitively endowed.
BEECHER.--This great preacher, who left Plymouth pulpit vacant, a
vacancy which never can be filled, is a fine illustration of these
views.
The man and his inspiration were constantly struggling for mastery. He
would advance, on the tide of that inspiration, to the very brink of the
precipice of heterodoxy; his large heart and enthusiasm carrying him and
his hearers far beyond the limits of their narrow creeds, and then
recovering himself he would recoil, restate, explain and hedge against
the severity of the criticism provoked. But constantly he gained ground,
and carried his hearers with him. He never retreated quite as far as he
advanced, and in later years the inspiring power had educated the man to
its level, and he bravely and boldly stood by his words. For an entire
generation he stood in his pulpit, a divine oracle, every Sunday having
an audience of the entire country, and as an elevating, educating power,
was immeasurable. He broke the fetters from the slave; he broke the
fetters of superstition from millions, more bondsmen than the negro
slave. If you were to gather up all that he has written it would make a
library of itself, and yet there is little of all that he has written
or spoken that has permanent value, or will endure. Its value consisted
not in its enduring qualities; rather in its _being tentative_; steps
leading upward, and of no use after once being passed over. He did not,
he could not, preach the ultimate truth. The laity, as a conservative
force, restrained him. Like an eagle burdened with a great weight, he
carried his church and the world forward, and with every new wave of
inspiration the burden grew lighter, but he never was quite free.
The limitation of the individual always stands in the path of perfect
inspiration. He was forced to speak after the forms of the creeds and
beliefs which he inherited, and believed by those he would instruct.
Those beliefs were perishing, and his modifications did not quite grasp
the whole truth, and hence must disappear. But through him a mighty
influence was exerted; not such as may be likened to the avalanche which
plunges down the mountain, but like the breath of spring, melting the
snow and ice of winter, warming the indurated soil, and making possible
the bursting forth of flowers, the prophecies of autumn fruitage.
It is remarkable that few writers have given the world more than one
master-piece, and often a single short poem, out of a mass of
composition, is all that remains of permanent value. Gray's "Elegy" and
"Sweet Home" are examples. The genius which could write these wonderful
poems ought to have been able to write others equally perfect; yet only
once did the authors touch the pure fount of inspiration. Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe in such a moment wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic,"
which, unlike anything ever before written, and unlike anything else she
ever wrote, became the marching song of a nation along the pathway of
justice.
MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE wrote before and after the production of
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," works of some merit, but nothing that approached
the wonderful story that did more to arouse the nation to the wrongs of
slavery than all other influences combined. According to her own words,
she composed in a state in which she was overwhelmed with the subject
and forced to write as she did.
DICKENS entered the same state, and with such distinctness were his
characters brought before him, that he heard their voices, and his
dialogues were the work of a reporter rather than of a composer.
BUNYAN.--Perhaps no book ever exerted a greater influence than
"Pilgrim's Progress," written by one who in his youth was wild and
godless, a tramping tinker and rough soldier, uneducated and unversed in
literary invention. He possessed in a prominent degree the sensitive
temperament, as his portrait shows, and a fine mental endowment, however
uncultivated it might have been. So long as Bunyan was a part of the
jostling world, he was like other men. His sensitiveness could only be
made valuable by isolation, and that came to him in an unlooked for
manner by his incarceration in jail. There his spirit gained freedom. It
became susceptible to the thoughts of another sphere, and he wrote that
remarkable book, which has pleased and strengthened millions of
struggling souls. Afterwards, when liberated, he became one of the
fanatics among whom he was cast, and his writings and speech were of no
value, except as they faintly echoed what he had written in his
"Pilgrim." Once only had the conditions essential to sensitiveness been
his, and then it was forced upon him, and the result was one book of
value, and no more. The success of that book destroyed the conditions
for the reception of anything as pure, bringing around him the jarring
conflict of religious fanaticism.
TENNYSON.--The sensitive condition of Tennyson has been graphically
described by himself, in words which leave no misunderstanding. In a
letter written in 1874 to a friend, he says: "I have never had any
revelation through anesthetics, but a kind of waking trance (this for
want of a better term) I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood,
when I have been all alone. This has often come upon me through
repeating my own name to myself silently till, all at once, as it were,
out of the intensity of the consciousness of the individuality, the
individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless
being; and this is not a composed state, but the clearest of the
clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where Death
was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality, (if so
it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of
my feeble description. Have I not said the state was utterly beyond
words?"
Illustrations to an unlimited extent might be drawn from the lives of
authors, artists, inventors, statesmen and warriors, in confirmation of
the views expressed.
In fact, scarcely a single one of all the brilliant names that head the
list on the scroll of fame but might be taken as an example.
THE GREAT LEADERS in history, statesmanship, war, literature, the arts,
in science and in invention, few in number, appear like centers on whom
the thoughts of their time converge, and from whom they are radiated.
They are moved by forces beyond themselves, and plan wiser than they
know. Napoleon schemed for his own aggrandizement, but above him was a
power which directed his efforts. The art of war was an open book to
him, and his tactics, the fresh product of his teeming brain, were a
constant surprise and menace to his enemies. Until his mission was
accomplished he was invincible. When he transcended that, which was to
break down the absurd distinctions of feudalism, and make the serf a
man, and in arrogant pride looked on the nations as his prey, the
conditions of his receptivity were destroyed and his defeat assured.
These great minds have no ancestral lineage, they rarely transmit their
talent to their offspring. For a brief moment, that of their great
achievement, they gain the heights never before reached, and not again
to be reached by their posterity.
CONCENTRATION.--It has been said that great concentration of mind--the
ability to exclude all objects and subjects except the one under
consideration--is the prime factor of genius, and an adequate
explanation of its achievements. In other words, concentration is
another name for sensitiveness. What is concentration? Is it not a
mental state in which one idea, a group of ideas, dominate; and where is
the difference between this state and the hypnotic? Is it not a
condition of exceeding sensitiveness to ideas related to the dominating?
There really is slight distinguishing difference between the
concentration of writer, speaker, or inventor, and the mesmeric, or
hypnotic state of the sensitive. All the difference observable is from
the side on which the subject is approached.
This concentration has been called attention to by some authors, who
would make genius itself dependent entirely on attention, which Buffon
speaks of as protracted patience. The mind that can take hold of the
thread of a subject, and hold fast to it in all its intricacies to the
end, is enabled to do so by superior attention. Concentration is more
expressive, and under whatever name, the same mental state is
designated. The profound student always falls into it when absorbed in
his work, and becomes "absent-minded," which is an expression commonly
used to explain one of the most inexplicable mental states. When under
control of the will, such concentration of mental power becomes
priceless to its possessor. It is similar to the hypnotic state, with
none of its disadvantages, and removed to a higher plane. The mind in
this highly sensitive condition is impressible to the thought waves in
the psychic-ether. On the other hand, when this concentration or
attention is not controllable by the will, the condition of the
unfortunate individual is most deplorable. He is lost in reverie, a
dreamy, misty state of mind which unfits him for the duties of practical
life. The difference is that between forgetfulness of duty, which has
been the butt of endless ridicule by the world and of burlesque on the
stage, and the reaches of thought attained by the philosopher, and the
divine songs of the poet. The first essential requisite of profound
thought is abstraction from the distractions of all matters except the
one in hand. Ability to thus concentrate the mind at pleasure may be
inherited or the product of education. In fact, correct education may be
said to consist mainly in the control of the attention, and the ability
to concentrate the mind on the one subject presented.
The higher education of the future will recognize and give prominence to
the cultivation of this hitherto ignored faculty.
It is one of the possibilities of the future to encourage the culture
of the sensitive faculty, and the results will be far more wonderful in
normal education than now arises from what seems abnormal, and the
product of chance.
Sensitiveness, as has been shown in the preceding pages, is possessed by
all in greater or less degree, and may be cultivated like any other
mental quality. As its laws and conditions are more thoroughly
understood and its inestimable value realized, it will become a part of
all substantial educational training.
THE EXTENSION OF THIS THEORY INTO THE LIFE BEYOND.--This theory, without
calling to its aid spiritual beings, marks out the laws by which such
beings may control the sensitive and become cognizant of the thoughts of
each other. Man being a spirit, limited by a physical body, through the
sensitive state, under certain conditions, he breaks away from his
limitations and feels the waves of thought created by others through the
psychic-ether.
When freed from the physical body the spirit must possess the same power
in larger degree and impress its thoughts on the sensitive in the same
manner. Sensitive beyond mortal conception in its most exalted state, it
is in connection with all spiritual intelligences, and a converging and
diverging center of telegraphic communication. As it advances in this
sensitiveness, distance becomes a less and less factor, until
eliminated, and a thought sent forth wings its way until it meets the
one for whom it was intended.
Thus, what has been made the toy of a leisure hour, the imperfect
attempts at thought-reading, mesmeric control of the will, and the
mystery of communion of minds sympathetic, are really the crude
manifestations of an undeveloped faculty, which, after the evolution
wrought by death, becomes the glory of spirit-existence.
Prayer in the Light of Sensitiveness and Thought Waves.
When President Garfield was lying tortured by the wound which caused his
death, the prayers of a whole nation arose as one united voice for his
recovery. From sixty thousand pulpits petitions to the throne of grace
ascended. There were days set apart for united appeal to God. He was
eminent in the church as in war and politics, and if prayer ever
received answer, it would seem that it should be in his case. Yet the
good man, the scholar, the statesman and theologian died, just as he
would have died had no petition been sent to the throne of grace. The
ocean ship, freighted with passengers, is broken through by an iceberg,
and slowly filling, settles down into the waves. Wildly the best and
purest men and women pray to God for help, but the ship is not thereby
sustained, or delayed a single moment in her final plunge into the
abysses of the sea.
On occasions of great public calamity, where drought blasts the harvest,
locusts devour the fields, or pestilence rages, days are set apart for
prayer. Every minister of the gospel and every layman daily prays with
utmost fervor. Yet the rain falls not, the locusts devour, and the
pestilence pursues its way without shadow of turning. Prayer in such
cases is as hopeless as it would be if the maker should stand on a
railroad track, and, when he saw a train approaching, pray to God to
stop it. It is a petition for the impossible.
In one way it yields results, often of an astonishing character. If the
makers are sincere, the attitude of prayer harmonizes and strengthens
their faculties, and enables them to bear with greater fortitude the
vicissitudes of time; to bear, but not avert, impending fate. How many
captives chained in dungeons have, in imitation of the apostle, prayed
fervently with perfect faith that their chains might fall off, and the
bars of their prison door be drawn aside, and met with no response. How
many zealous martyrs have been led to the stake, praying to Jesus for
deliverance which came not; and Jesus himself, in the hour of his mortal
agony, prayed to the Father, to be answered by silence, and to find
bitterness and mockery; a cross and a crown of thorns, where he had
expected a throne and the glittering scepter of the nations.
The once all-powerful belief in the ability of delegated men to control
events and elements by supplication to the Deity, which made the
"medicine men," the priests and jugglers, the tyrants of mankind, has
now, in civilized countries, dwindled into the intercessions for moral
help, and an occasional prayer for physical changes, as for rain in
times of drought, the staying of grasshoppers, or the approach of
disease.
It is difficult for the gospel minister to give up entirely the rôle of
the "medicine man," and cease to pray for the sick in the misty hope
that God will answer. It is almost as troublesome for the preacher to
let go his hold on the weather, and not follow the Indian's rattling
gourd, shaken at the sky, with prayer for the same object.
This is the degradation of prayer, and the preacher clasps hands with
the juggler. That this pretense is yet maintained, is made most
remarkably apparent in a work on prayer recently published. An incident
in the life of President Finney, of Oberlin College, copied from its
pages, will amply suffice to illustrate this anachronism, a belief of
savage man forced into the highest civilized thought.
There was drought in Oberlin, and the thin, hard clay soil of that
region suffered severely from a total failure for three months, of rain.
Clouds promised the desired moisture, but hovered over the lake, and
poured out their waters there. This they did day after day, raising the
hopes of the anxious, and then drifting away.
Finney, who was an enthusiast, was walking in the street one day, when a
friend met him and said: "I should like to know what you mean by
preaching that God is always wise and always good, when you see him
pouring out that great rain on the lake, where it can do no good, and
leaving us to suffer so terribly for want of the wasted water?"
Finney said: "His words cut me to the very heart; I turned and ran home
to my closet, fell on my knees, and told the Lord what had been said to
me, and besought him, for the honor of his great name, to confound this
caviler, and show forth the glory of his power, and the greatness of his
love. I pleaded with him that he had encouraged his people to pray for
rain, and now the time had come for him to show his power, and his
faithfulness as a hearer of prayer. Before I rose from my knees there
was a sound of a rushing mighty wind. I looked out, and lo, the heavens
were black; clouds were rolling up, and rain soon fell in torrents,
continuing for two full hours."
Those who are acquainted with the lake region know the peculiarity of
these storms, and will readily understand the rapidity of their coming.
They require no prayer to move them, and that the coincidence of the
rain and the prayer should be endorsed by leaders in theology, is a
strange instance of mental aberration, or, as Darwin would say, atavism.
The absurdity of the representation apparently escapes the notice of
those who accept it. The zealous Finney telling an Omnipotent God what
he ought to do to show his power and keep his promise for his own
interest and reputation, as though the rain was not withheld for some
good purpose well known by the Omnipotent! And then by his pleading,
this little President of a then obscure college, changed the will and
purpose of the Almighty, and brought the rain to a narrow section of
country, leaving regions beyond equally suffering without a drop of
moisture!
Such instances prove too much. They maintain the changefulness of God,
and the power of man to persuade Him to alter the course of the
elements. Mr. Finney heralds with ostentatious pride this case when the
clouds came at his call; he does not tell us of the prayers he and all
the praying people of that region had daily offered for weeks and months
for the same object, which brought no moisture!
Rain is sure to come at some time, and if the seasons of prayer be
continued long enough, the last one will surely be followed by rain.
This instance is introduced to illustrate the limitation of the power of
prayer. The insensible elements can not be influenced. The clouds and
the winds, the storm and the earthquake, will not come or go at our
bidding, or the invocation, even, of a saint.
Yet earnest prayer, within fixed limitations, may be and has been
answered, as is proven by innumerable witnesses. Not by a personal God
to whom the appeal is made, but by harmonizing the prayer-giver with
subtile spiritual forces, which work in ways not comprehended by a gross
view of the world. When we consider human and spiritual beings as laved
by an ocean of attenuated substance, elastic and receptive beyond
comprehension, and that each being is a vortex of vibrations, we
understand how from an intensely wrought mind vibrant thoughts go forth,
and although they strike an infinite number of individuals who are not
sensitive to them, they find others in mortal bodies or spiritual, as
harps like attuned set each other in vibration, and move those thus
receptive to answer their appeals. The power and strength given by
prayer arise from this harmonizing of their being by spiritual
aspiration, which lift the mind into the realm of superior spiritual
forces. It is then that the appeal to God goes forth in vibrations, to
be recognized by spirit friends, and by them conveyed to mortals who
have the ability to respond, or directly reach some responsive mind in
the mortal body.
The following narrative of Dr. Joseph Smith, of Warrington, England,
which is accredited by the journal of the Society for Psychological
Research, May, 1885, is a fine illustration of what is popularly known
as God's answer to prayer:
"I was sitting one evening reading when a voice came to me, saying:
"'Send a loaf to James Grady's.' I continued reading, and the voice
continued with greater emphasis, and this time it was accompanied with
an irresistible impulse to get up. I obeyed, and went into the village
and bought a loaf of bread, and seeing a lad at the shop door, I asked
him if he knew James Grady. He said he did, so I had him carry it, and
say that a gentleman sent it. Mrs. Grady was a member of my class, and I
went down next morning to see what came of it, when she told me that a
strange thing had happened to her last night. She said she wished to put
the children to bed, but they began to cry for want of food, and she had
nothing to give them. She then went to prayer, to ask God to give them
something, soon after which the lad came to the door with the loaf. I
calculated on inquiry that the prayer and the voice I heard exactly
coincided in point of time."
As a member of his class, a close connection existed between Dr. Smith
and Mrs. Grady, and he was thereby receptive to the eager appeal she
made, incited by her children's cry for bread.
The case of Henry Young Stilling has become a text in most orthodox
books on the subject of prayer. He was a physician at the court of the
Grand Duke of Baden, the intimate friend of Goethe, who, impressed with
his remarkable experiences, urged him to write an account of his life.
Stilling desired to study medicine at a university, and in an answer to
prayer to know which he should choose was directed to Strasburg. In
order to attend that school he required a thousand dollars, and he had
only forty-six; yet with this he started on his journey, freely relying
on heavenly aid. On reaching Frankfort, he had only a dollar left. He
made his case known by prayer. Walking on the street he met a merchant,
who, learning his purpose of attending the university, asked where the
money was to come from. Stilling replied that he had only one dollar,
but his Heavenly Father was rich and would provide for him. "Well, I am
one of your Father's stewards," said the merchant, and handed him
thirty-three dollars. Settled at Strasburg, his fee to the lectures
became due and must be paid by Thursday evening, or his name stricken
from the roll. He spent the day in prayer, and at five o'clock nothing
had come. His anxiety became unbearable, when a knock was heard at his
door, and his landlord entered and inquired how he liked the room, and
if he had money. "No, I have no money," cried Stilling in despair. "I
see how it is," replied the landlord; "God has sent me to help you," and
handed him forty dollars. Stilling threw himself on the floor and
thanked God, while the tears rained from his eyes. His whole life's
experience was of a like character. He prayed constantly to God, and at
the last moment his necessities were supplied.
How difficult it is to suppose that God interested himself especially in
one of thousands of students, overlooking the others, equally poor and
needy, and as earnest in their efforts! How easy to suppose that an
angel friend, foreseeing the great capabilities of Stilling, interested
himself, and by influencing this or that mind smoothed the way, and
furnished the means he imperatively needed. It will be remarked that at
no time were his necessities exceeded. No one gave him lavishly, or more
than sufficed for his urgent needs.
Rev. H. Bushnell, in his "Nature and the Supernatural," refers to an
interesting incident he learned on his visit to California. The man had
hired his little house of one room, in a new trading town that was
planted last year, agreeing to give a rent of ten dollars a month. When
the pay day came he had nothing to meet the demand, nor could he see
whence the money was to come. Consulting with his wife, they agreed that
prayer, so often tried, was their only hope. They went according to
prayer, and found assurance that their want would be supplied.
When the morning came the money did not. The rent owner made his
appearance earlier than usual. As he entered the door their hearts began
to sink, whispering that now, for once, their prayer had failed. But
before the demand was made, a neighbor came and called out the untimely
visitor, engaging him in conversation a few minutes at the door.
Meanwhile, a stranger came in saying, "Doctor, I owe you ten dollars for
attending me in a fever, and here is the money." He could not remember
either the man or the service, but was willing to be convinced, and had
the money when the rent owner again entered. The same explanation
applies here as to the preceding.
The following indicates not an answer to the prayer, but a direct
communication. It is related by Dr. Wilson, of Philadelphia: "The packet
ship, 'Albion,' full of passengers from America, was wrecked on the
coast of Ireland, and the news was that all on board had perished. A
minister near Philadelphia, reading a list of the lost, found the name
of one of the members of his congregation, and went immediately to
inform the wife of the sad fact. She had been earnestly praying during
the voyage of her husband, and had received assurance of his safety amid
great danger. Hence, to the astonishment of her pastor, after he had
informed her of the shipwreck, and showed her the list of names of those
who were lost, she told him that it was a mistake, that her husband had
been in extreme peril, but was not dead. When the next tidings were
received it proved that her husband was among the passengers, and had
been in great peril, but that he had escaped, and was the only one
saved."
There could be no connection between the wife's prayer and safety of
her husband, but the state of mind induced by prayer allowed her to
receive the message of his safety.
The celebrated artist, Washington Allston, refined and sensitive to a
fault, had at first to struggle with great difficulties, and endure the
pinchings of poverty. At one time he was reduced to the want of even a
loaf of bread for himself and wife. In despair he locked himself in his
studio and earnestly prayed for assistance. While thus engaged, there
was a knock at the door, and opening it a stranger appeared, who
inquired if the artist still possessed the beautiful painting, "The
Angel Uriel." Mr. Allston drew it from a corner, and brushed off the
dust. The stranger said he had greatly admired it when it was on
exhibition, and inquired the price. The artist replied that as no one
seemed to appreciate it he had ceased to offer it. "Will four hundred
pounds purchase?" said the stranger. "I never dared ask one-half of
that." "Then it is mine," exclaimed the visitor, who explained that he
was the Marquis of Stafford, leaving the artist overwhelmed with
gratitude.
Where the answer to prayer follows so directly the appeal, we may
suppose that the intensity of thought may affect directly the individual
who responds. Thus, when Allston was so despairing, his thoughts would
go widely forth, and the Marquis of Stafford having seen the painting,
and desiring it, might have the thought of it awakened, and be thereby
drawn at the special time to the artist's studio. Of course the case is
also open to the direct intervention of angelic messengers, for all this
class of facts intimately blend, and are controlled by the same general
laws, and it is difficult to determine to which of the two causes they
should be referred. The door that admits angelic beings makes the
influence of thought waves also possible.
The cure of Melancthon by the prayers of Luther is well known to the
student of the Reformation. The former had been given over to die, when
Luther rushed to the death-bed of his loved friend with tears and
exclamations of agony. Melancthon was aroused and said: "O Luther, is
this you? Why do you not let me depart in peace?" "We can't spare you
yet, Philip," was Luther's answer. Then he bowed down for a long hour in
prayer, until he felt he had been answered. Then he took Melancthon's
hand, who said: "Dear Luther, why do you not let me depart in peace?"
"No, no, Philip, we can not spare you from the field of labor;" and
added, "Philip, take this soup, or I will excommunicate you." Melancthon
took the soup, began to revive, and lived many years to assist the
sturdy reformer with his facile pen. Luther went home and told his wife,
in joyous triumph, that "God gave me my brother, Melancthon, in direct
answer to prayer."
Now, such a cure would be called faith cure, or magnetic healing. The
state of feeling induced by long and fervent prayer was the source of
magnetic power, and therein, and not through the direct intervention of
God, was the prayer answered.
Bishop Bowman gives the following account of the unexpected recovery of
Bishop Simpson, when he was supposed to be dying:
"I remember once, when there was a conference at Mount Vernon, Ohio, at
which I was present, Bishop James was presiding one afternoon, and after
reading a despatch saying that Bishop Simpson was dying in Pittsburg,
asked that the conference unite in prayer, that his life might be saved.
We knelt, and Taylor, the great street preacher, led. After the first
few sentences, in which I joined with my whole heart, my mind seemed to
be at ease, and I did not pay much attention to the rest of the prayer
only to notice its beauty. When we arose from our knees, I turned to a
brother and said, 'Bishop Simpson will not die; I feel it.' He assured
me that he had received the same impression. The word was passed around,
and over thirty ministers present said they had the same feelings. I
took my book and made a note of the hour and circumstance. Several
months afterwards, I met Bishop Simpson, and asked him what he did to
recover his health. He did not know; but the physician had said it was a
miracle. He said, that one afternoon, when at the point of death, the
doctor left him, saying that he should be left alone (by the doctor) for
half an hour. At the end of that time, the doctor returned, and noticed
a great change. He was startled, and asked the family what had been
done, and they replied, nothing at all. That half hour, I find, by
making allowance for difference of localities, was just the time we were
praying for him at Mount Vernon. From that time on he steadily improved,
and has lived to bless the Church and humanity."
Bishop Bowman adds:
"On the God who has so often answered my prayers, I will still rely,
scientific men and philosophers to the contrary notwithstanding." The
"scientific man" would reply that he had no desire to dispute the fact
as stated, but, instead of a personal God who had struck down Bishop
Simpson with disease, changing his purpose because supplicated by the
ministerial conference, the intense fervency of thought of that
conference united in prayer had gone forth in a magnetic beam, and given
the suffering patient the strength of a new life. If there was divine
agency, it stood back of the laws of spiritual forces, in which case,
prayer was only a means of preparation, unitizing, harmonizing and
directing.
He was affected just the same as he would have been had he been in the
conference hall, for distance, as has been repeatedly shown, is an
unimportant element in the exercise of these psychic forces.
There are several charitable institutions which their founders claim to
have been entirely supported by means of donations made in answer to
prayer. As these are often brought forward in evidence of the direct
answer to prayer, they become of interest to the student of this
subject.
The Bristol Orphan Home is typical of its class. George Müller, its
founder, began with no wealth, aside from his sublime faith in his
appeals for divine aid. In his Thirty-sixth Annual Report, he says that
in 1875 his faith was put to trial most severely. He commenced the year
with $20,000 in his treasury, which in three months was reduced
one-half, or only enough to meet expenses for a single month. The
treasury had never been as low, and the number of orphans had doubled.
He fervently prayed, as the situation became more alarming, and at the
end of the month so many donations flowed in he had $48,000.
In the forty-one years this institution has been conducted, during which
no appeal for charity has been made directly, except through prayer,
$3,325,000 has been received. As the results of its use, 46,400 persons
have been taught in schools wholly sustained, and tens of thousands in
schools assisted; 96,000 Bibles, 247,000 Testaments, and 180,000 smaller
portions of the Scriptures circulated; above 53,500,000 tracts and books
in various languages distributed; of late years 170 missionaries
annually assisted; 4,677 orphans cared for; five large edifices built,
at a cost or $575,000, able to accommodate 2,050 orphans.
Such an institution may have no organized soliciting board on the
earthly side, but of necessity must have on the spiritual side. It is a
potent center of attraction to those who have means, and are looking
about for some worthy object. The leaders, with self-abnegation, devote
their lives to the unselfish work, and the angel messengers, with equal
devotion, act as solicitors to those they are able to approach.
We may also regard as a potent factor, earnest prayer going out on waves
of thought, and directly affecting susceptible minds, calling their
attention to the great charity, and influencing them to sustain it.
This explanation of the effect of prayer, and of the causes contributing
to its answering, while removing it from the realm of miracle, makes the
subject one of absorbing interest. The Divine Spirit never directly
answers, but there are laws and conditions through which the earnest
spirit is granted the assistance it desires. It is a mistake to refer
the answer directly to God, as it would be to say he supports the world
in space by his extended arm. The Protestant churches hold as sacrilege
the appeal to any being but God. The Catholics are more wise, and offer
their prayers to their patron saints, by which comforting love and
assuring affection are awakened by direct contact.
Christian Science, Mind Cure, Faith Cure--their Psychic Relations.
Out of the recently received views of spirit, derived by psychic
investigations, have grown a number of systems, drawing nice
distinctions between their claims, and, in some instances, expanding to
the estate of psychic science, attempting not only to correlate the
facts of spirit, but to found on them a system of morals. It is because
of this that Christian science, theology, mind cure, faith cure,
metaphysics, etc., have a place in the discussions entertained in this
volume. Nearly all of these begin as methods of healing. Their first
office is to restore health. Such has been the application of almost all
new discoveries, which reveal and are half shrouded in mystery.
Electricity and magnetism met this fate, and mesmerism was at first
thought to be a curative agent for all diseases.
It is a singular fact that all religious systems, from that of the
lowest savage, whose god is represented by a stick or a tuft of
feathers, to the purest form of Christianity, depend on miraculous
healing for their evidence of genuineness. It is true the weight of such
evidence is constantly lessened with the advance of culture, yet it
still remains in force, and by many believers is received as conclusive
and final.
Charlatanism seized mesmerism, as it has everything new, and brought its
healing potencies into disgrace by its ignorance and pretensions. The
germ of truth was then, and from time to time has reappeared under
startling names, and in some instances so changed as to appear
superficially, as something entirely new. Those who scorn mesmerism
received the new claimants, the only change being in name.
I propose to briefly examine some of these, and, if possible, find the
rock of truth on which they rest.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.--First, as having attracted most attention, is
Christian Science. It claims to be a system for curing the sick,
preserving health, and a perfect moral guide in the conduct of life.
Healing the sick is only an accidental means of testing the genuineness
of the devotee's belief. Healing is the first step on the lowest plane.
It makes the proud claim of being the Science of Spirit, and as spirit
is causation, Christian Science is the Science of Sciences. It aims to
be a complete system of religion and morality, and demands the highest,
most unselfish, devoted lives. It demands universal love, unfaltering
charity; neither to think or act evil; the suppression of scorn and
hate; a belief that all is good, for all is God, who is absolutely good.
It widely differs from the "faith cure," and mind cure, as it introduces
and demands the highest excellence in the conduct of life, while the
faith cure calls for simple faith in the means employed, or in the power
of God.
Christian Science shows the source of its inspiration when it declares
healing to be a test of faith and character.
THEOSOPHY resembles Christian Science, extending over the broadest field
of morality, intellectuality, and spirit, eschewing healing as a test.
The teachings of both, by appropriating all that is valuable in other
doctrines, are similar. Theosophy, however, states one fundamental
doctrine on which its superstructure rests. This is the pre-existence of
the soul or spirit, and its repeated incarnations on earth. As this
doctrine has been criticised elsewhere, the arguments against it need
not be here introduced. As guides in the conduct of life they have
nothing true which they can claim as new, and their distinctive features
remain to be demonstrated, or are revived speculations and dreams of the
world's dawn, when nature was a riddle and life a mystery.
THE FAITH CURE rests on the declarations of the Bible, that faith will
remove mountains, and redeem the lost. When Christ or his disciples laid
hands on the sick to heal, the first and paramount question was: Have
they faith? There is curative power in faith. It is half gained to have
the sick confident that they will recover; and the belief that they will
be sustained by certain means often has more influence than the means.
THE MENTAL CURE asserts the superiority of the mind over the body, as a
scientific fact, without appeal to God or faith. In vital essence, in
making the body the servant of the mind, all these systems are
identical. Christian Metaphysics and Christian Science, a difference of
name, and mental cure, mind cure, etc., have the same basis. Each has
enclosed a narrow field, and writes its name over the entrance.
Christian Science, by making the greatest display, has become most
conspicuous. Many of its propositions call forth no dissent, others are
on their face too absurd to require contradiction.
The same line of argument will apply to all these systems, and they need
not be taken separately.
INFLUENCE OF THE MIND OVER THE BODY.--The mind has a very great
influence over the body, as has been remarked by those who have
investigated the subject since the time of Hippocrates. The strongest
mind sometimes is found in a weak body.
Lord Brougham, with a frail physique, performed the most Herculean
mental tasks. It is said that he once worked one hundred and forty-four
hours, or six consecutive days, and then slept all Saturday night,
Sunday, and Sunday night, and was waked Monday morning by his valet to
resume his labors.
The power of mind over the body is illustrated by the annals of
explorers in the frigid zone, and in the deadly regions of the tropics.
The leaders of such expeditions, with all the burden and responsibilities
of their position, bear up better than their men, and rarely succumb
to adversities to which the latter yield. The hardships met by Dr. Kane
and Lieut. Greely are fresh in the mind; and the invincible Stanley,
braving the savage foes and deadly malaria of the Black Continent, is
another example. Such leaders, encouraged by the honors success will
yield, and dreading the shame of defeat more than death, persevere
against all opposing forces, while their men, with less at stake either
to win or lose, sink, apathetically, before reaching the goal. In such
cases, the will sustains the body, and shows its independence of the
material forces which affect it.
In no instance is the control of mind over the sensations, affecting it
through the body, shown with greater force than in the terrible ordeals
of martyrdom. The weak and delicate woman, as well as the strong man,
was bound on the rack, or subjected to the unspeakable horrors of the
thumbscrew, burning pincers, or the smouldering fagots, and yet so far
from uttering moans or sighs, smiled on their tormentors, or sang
hozannas amid the flames. Their minds had risen to such exaltation that
physical pain was unfelt, in fact, was a relief to the mental tension.
There is no pathological phenomena more freely attested than the sudden
vitiation of the secretions by intense mental disturbances. A mother
subjected to intense fright, or fear, will have her milk become
poisonous to her babe. Dr. A. Combe mentions an instance where a mother
left her child to assist the father in combat with a drunken soldier.
After the fight was over she nursed the babe, which was strong and
healthy. After a few minutes it ceased nursing, and sank dead in its
mother's arms. The milk had become a virulent poison.
A lady with a violent temper was warned by her physician against
indulging it while nursing her babe, and she had obeyed until the child
was several months old, strong and healthy. At that time she became
enraged at some trivial circumstance, and soon afterwards she nursed her
babe, which became ill, and within an hour was dead. The changes wrought
in the saliva by anger are well known. The bite of an enraged man is as
much to be dreaded as that of a mad dog. Blood poisoning is almost a
sure consequence of inoculation with the saliva of an angry man or
brute.
Hydrophobia itself is probably a spontaneous production in canines
subjected to starvation and ill-usage.
Great joy or grief produces secretions in the blood, which make it
poisonous. The prostration by grief is only equaled by that of violent
disease. The blood and all secretions therefrom become so affected that
a long time is required to eliminate the morbific matter from the
system. If this is not accomplished, lingering illness or death is the
final result. This is distinct from sudden death, on the disclosure of
some startling news, of grief or joy. The heart in these instances
suddenly fails at the nervous shock. Successful labor is always
invigorating, while unsuccessful is depressing. It was observed in the
early mining days of California that a stranger passing the claims could
readily discover those that paid and those that did not, by the manners
of the men who were working them. If unsuccessful, they were depressed,
ill with fevers and idle. If successful they were at work early and
late, cheerful, well, and energetic.
Every pursuit that ennobles and elevates the mind, tranquilizes the
system, enhances the general health, and prolongs life.
Such is the wonderful sway the mind holds over the body. On the other
hand, we find the body exciting a powerful influence on the mind; so
intense and complete that leading physiologists believe that the latter
is a result of, and entirely dependent on, the former, and having no
existence independent thereof.
The microscope has poured a flood of light on disease. In most cases, as
with these epidemics and contagions, a specific germ is introduced into
the blood and multiplies, feeding on the vital fluid. If taken into the
system of a saint it will, by multiplication, produce the disease, just
as certainly as in the system of the vilest malefactor. There would be
more reasonable grounds for hoping to drive a hungry tiger away by mind
cure, than the myriads of microbes that swarm in a drop of the fever
patient's blood, or the microbes in the lungs of a consumptive.
Then is the system of mental cure a sham? No! It claims too much. When
millions of bacilli swarm in the lungs, or the micrococcus brings on
fever, shall we say we are well, that the mind, as a part of God, can
not be sick, and as the body is fathered by the mind it can not be? We
may say this, but the inexorable logic of facts refute our opinions. We
might as well attempt to stay the spring of the tiger by an effort of
will.
But there is a consideration back of this. By the accumulation of an
endless series of taints of body and of mind, by false ideas and views
of life, the power of mind over the body can not be compared with what
it would be in a perfect state of right living. This is a consideration
of greatest value, for it shows us, not what the past has been, but what
the future may be.
The limits of the power of the mind over the body are not known, but
with knowledge it ever enlarges its boundaries. The class of diseases
which may be regarded as essentially corporal, as the previously
mentioned contagions produced by microbes, the effects of ptomaines, and
the mineral and vegetable poisons, has its limits contracted by mental
influences. Individuals in the most terrible contagions, although in
contact with the sick and dying, physicians, nurses or companions, are
often exempt. Their systems do not furnish the necessary conditions for
growth of the disease germs. Such individuals are fearless; and it is
said that their indifference to danger is their shield of protection;
yet it is often the case that when they become exhausted by excessive
care, they fall victims. This conclusion, however, may be safely drawn,
that there are conditions of body or mind, or of both, invulnerable to
disease. What these conditions are we may not now know, but it is
possible to know.
In these cases of purely physical disease, the body reacts on the mind,
and the giving way of the will is the first indication of the approach
of the malady. It is folly to talk of the will overcoming a disease that
has insidiously sapped its foundation. This is not saying that were the
wrong conditions of living righted, and the taints of heredity
eliminated, the power of the will would not be able to maintain the body
against all succeeding influences. But to reach that perfect state will
require many generations of rightly directed culture.
If grief, anger, or excessive joy are able to vitiate secretions, and
cause sickness and death, a happy frame of mind, intellectual exertion
and moral excellence tend to the perfect health of these secretions.
Health is a condition to be gained and kept by careful observance of its
laws, and these laws are of the physical as well as mental being.
Whatever truth there is in these newly named theories of healing, is
identically the same as that claimed by the mesmerists and magnetists.
The process, the cause and effect, are the same under the name of
Christian Science as that of mesmerism. In the large class of diseases
called nervous, the soothing influence of another mind is of unmeasured
benefit. Even the hope aroused that some mind is exciting its will to
relieve, is beneficial. The strengthened will and imagination are
wonderfully healing agencies. While the influence of the mind over the
body is admitted without contradiction so long as the former is
connected with the latter, the limitations of the physical world must be
felt. There is a sickness of the mind, and of the body, and over the
latter the mind has not full control. Yet with a race freed from
hereditary taint, having for generations obeyed the laws of health until
its conditions are fixed by heredity, it may not be said what the power
of the mind may be.
If the mother can stamp her unborn child with the monstrosity she
fancies in her fright; if she can impart the insane thirst for
stimulants and the fiendish hate and cruelty of savages, might she not
by glorified conditions, exalted motives, and the over-shadowing
consciousness that her mind is divine, the creator of an immortal being,
endow the child with angelic qualities and make it a divine being? The
children of many generations of such mothers, what exalted spiritual and
intellectual attainment would be their inheritance!
Nor should the mother alone be held responsible, as has been the custom.
Divine motherhood is linked with divine fatherhood, the opposite
element, but of equal value. The germinal impulse carries with it all
that has entered into the lives of remotest parental ancestors, and the
recipient mother acts upon it, and is reacted on, until her entire
being, physical and spiritual, is modified. However grand the ideal
excellence of the future, it is not realized in the present, and may not
be for ages to come. The present race of men are born with the sins of
all the past stamped into their constitutions. It is folly to teach that
there is no sickness except in the mind; idle to teach faith can cure
disease, the seeds of which were planted unnumbered generations ago, and
grown rankly from parent to child. Purity, true nobility of life,
spiritual culture, devotion to right, and obedience to the laws of
health may be accepted and the ideal attempted, but not fully realized
now.
Meanwhile, old methods must not be wholly discarded. Old remedies can
not be safely cast aside. The lame must have their staff and crutch
until strong enough to walk alone.
CONCLUSION.--The Ideal may be sketched in our fond fancy, and the
attempt to realize it began by living a higher, nobler, purer life. Know
we what this means? It means more than simple living. There is
everything beyond that. What this means will be best comprehended by
referring to the preceding pages, where it is taught that there is a
thought-atmosphere, from which sensitive minds receive a glorious flood
of inspiration. Magnetism, Mesmerism, Hypnotism, or the states of
healing by Faith or Christian Science are but the temporary approaches
to that one condition of sensitiveness. In that condition great changes
may be affected in the vital forces promotive of the normal functions of
the various organs, as fear, grief, remorse, etc., may disturb their
healthy action, and induce pathological changes in them.
Death will come to all physical forms sooner or later, for it is as
necessary to the fulfillment of our destiny as to the transformation of
the caterpillar to the butterfly; but disease and all the sufferings,
losses, and disappointments in its train, may be, and will be,
eliminated, when mortal life is so ordered that it will constantly walk
in the shadow of spiritual forces.
Then sickness will be regarded as a mark of ignorance, if not a crime.
What the Immortal State Must Be.
THE LEAD OF THE ARGUMENT.--In pursuing the study of the subjects
presented in the preceding pages, the student often catches a glimpse of
an intelligent force existing after the death of the physical being.
This came through the facts presented by hypnotism, somnambulism,
trance, clairvoyance, thought-transference, dreams, and the appearance
of the deceased to near friends at a distance, at the time of, or soon
after, the hour of dissolution.
The continuance of existence beyond the grave has been made to depend on
belief in certain dogmas, or at least the condition of that life has
been made thus dependent by the religious systems of the world. Now that
science encroaches on the realm of faith, and these dogmas are
questioned, and immortality which seemingly rests on and is supported by
them, becomes doubtful; yet, if it be a fact that man has a spirit,
which is immortal, this is the most over-shadowing fact in the universe;
one of profoundest interest and most consonant with the desires of the
human heart. Around it gather our fondest hopes and brightest dreams; by
it the seeming disparity and injustice of this life are compensated; the
tearful eye is dried; the broken heart finds balm, and the burdens of
time and place cast aside, and the possibilities of the aspiring spirit
may be realized. It is an unfailing staff in the hands of those who
mourn the loved and lost, offering the only adequate consolation in the
cruel hour when we stand by the couch of death, feeling that, beyond,
darkness gathers thick and broods over a sea of eternal silence, from
which only echo responds to our call of the name of the departed. Then
it is that hope lifts our hearts from despair, and a positive assurance
of the continuity of life is worth all else in the world.
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY HAS BEEN MADE A CURSE.--This belief, so full
of delight and rainbowed with anticipations, has been made, from the
dawn of man's religious nature, the means of inflicting unspeakable
tortures, both of mind and body. Selfishness thrust the priest between
man and the invisible world of spirit, and made immortality the
instrument wherewith it could rule with diabolical despotism over
mankind. Even when the rain-maker shook his rattling calabash at the
sky, and beseeched the moisture-giving clouds to send down rain, the
priestly order had fast hold on the superstitious savage; and in all the
transformations of history, surging with the coming and going of
countless generations and the ebb and flow of empires, never for a
moment has this grip been loosened. The power of the temporal ruler has
been second to that of the class who held the keys of life beyond the
grave. What if the king could cast into a dungeon, condemn to the cross
or the flames? That were pain for a moment, or, at most, for the few
years of this life; and of what insignificance these short years, or the
most terrible tortures human ingenuity could invent, to the infinite
tortures extending through an eternal existence? Pharaoh might command
Egypt to-day, but, to-night, his spirit would be summoned before the
tribunal of the Dead; and those austere priestly judges would decide
whether he be cast to the crocodiles of the Nile to become extinct, or
again, clad in his mummified body, resurrected and purified, a companion
of the gods.
What a position for an ignorant man! Immortality is the Promethean
curse, enabling the vultures to inflict never-ending torments. The
sweetest boon is oblivion, and that is denied. The sun may fade from the
heavens and the stars cease to shine; but the spirit can not escape its
doom, and will not have experienced even then the first pangs of its
sufferings. Is it strange that men went wild with this dreadful belief?
Ignorant men, who feared the unseen, intangible spirits of the air more
than the accumulated tortures that human ruler might inflict, saw in the
priests who claimed the power to control this intangible world, who held
the keys of the Great Unseen, the only hope of escape. How well that
order has seized its vantage, and, fanning the flames of superstition,
stifled reason and led poor Humanity over the quaking bog-lands and
reeking marshes of myth-theology!
This life is nothing compared with that which is to come. Its most
innocent pleasures are sins; for the body itself is sinful, and by sin
man came into the world. Pressed down beneath the weight of universal
disaster, the doctrine of Jesus was the wail of despair. Take no heed of
the morrow. Live only for to-day. Give all to the poor. Resist not the
tyrant wrong. This life is a vale of tears, and the eye that weeps most
shall be the brightest in glory in the life which is to come. O Jesus,
on thy cross, what infinite misery has come from this misconception of
thy teachings! Men, believing that their immortal spirits were chained
to sinful bodies, rushed in herds to the mountain cave or lonely desert,
and, by fasting and thirst, by hair-cloth garments wearing through the
flesh to the bone, by flagellation and daily crucifixion, sought to
expiate the sins of the body, and enter the next life purified.
Believing in an immortal life, they sought to force their belief on
others, and proselyte by sword and torture. Dogmatism grew rankly
luxuriant in this hot-bed of ignorance and superstition. Humanity was
bound to the wheel; and ingenuity exhausted its skill in demoniacal
inventions whereby severer pangs might be evoked, that through physical
suffering the spirit might gain purification. Poor humanity might well
exclaim, "Blessed be oblivion to this curse of Immortality!"
Not to lead a happy and perfect life, but to avoid the pangs of hell, to
escape the consequences of original sin, was the object to which all
energies were directed. And there was obligation to propagate this
belief until received by all the world. Out of this doctrine came
centuries of persecution, such as the heathen world never dreamed of. If
your relative or friend accepted what you regarded erroneous dogmas,
which would send him to eternal torment would it not be plain duty for
you to use every means to persuade and convince him, even if necessary,
by force? For should you, in last extremity, destroy his body, what
fleeting consequence, if you saved thereby his soul!
The savage, having killed his enemy, trembles at the thought that the
spirit has escaped, and may work untold mischief. He sits down at the
cannibal feast, that, by eating the body, he may absorb the spirit, and
thus be doubly avenged, by blotting out his foe, by making his body and
spirit a part of himself.
Noble and spotless lives have grown out of Christianity, as out of other
systems of religion, as beautiful lilies grow out of the slime; but they
grew in defiance of its teachings, which make this life of no value
compared with the next. As all religions rest on the foundation of
belief in a future life, so all the religious wars which have cursed
mankind are referable to it; all persecutions; all the unutterable
sufferings, physical and spiritual, which have made the centuries one
long night of agony. It has blotted the star of hope from the heavens,
and filled the vaulted darkness with the bitter wails of despair.
Humanity rolling onward in a vast river, to plunge over the crags of
death into a bottomless pit of eternal agony, and the best that
Christianity has offered, or can offer, is eternal psalm-singing to
golden harps. "Saving souls" has been the theme of the Christian world
for nearly two thousand years, and various have been the means employed.
Dungeon, rack, the flames, social ostracism--how shall I find space to
catalogue the endless names of methods which curdle the blood at bare
mention! The cannibal, feasting on his foe, is engaged in the honorable
effort of saving a soul, and the priestly torturer is doing the same.
The Brunos were chained amid the fagots' flame, to save their souls and
the souls of others led astray by their doctrines. Go down into the
dimly lighted tribunal hall, where God's vicegerents sit in judgment.
Before them stands one gone astray in belief. There is no argument of
words. On the table is a little thimble with a screw at one side. The
heretic places his fingers therein, and the judges turn the screws down
into the tender nails. The compressed lips grow white, the veins knot on
the temples, beaded sweat gathers on the brow, as slowly down pierces
the relentless steel, until at last, human endurance yields, and the
trembling lips gasp, "Dear Christ, I believe!" Then turn back the
screws, ring the bells, and rejoice with great joy; for a soul is saved!
From that hall, go down a flight of stone steps to another in the bowels
of the earth, where the walls are reeking with mold, and the lamp
darkens in the foul vapor. Tread with care on the slippery floors, for
the slime of years has gathered; and now we have reached a great stone,
which we can turn back like a trap-door, and reach an opening. Lower
your lamp, feebly burning in the fetid atmosphere. There are walls of
stone, there is stone for a floor. It is like a jug without an outlet,
except at the top. At the bottom is something moving, living! Hush! It
moans and has speech! An iron ring wears the bleeding ankle to the bone,
to the ring is a chain, and the other end of the chain is fastened to
the floor. What monstrous crime has this man committed that he should
thus suffer? Nothing, except he has thought for himself--is lost; and
his judges are making the desperate attempt to save his soul!
Saving souls, not the life here, but that which is to come, has been the
blight and curse of mankind. The doctrine of "one world at a time," and
the present supreme, is a reaction against this essentially vicious
dogma. Neither extreme may be true; for the truth is the "golden mean,"
which makes the future life a continuity of this, carrying forward all
its ideals to full realization, and making the spiritual realm held in
abeyance to as fixed and unchangeable laws as the material world.
By knowledge, man has been led out of the fogs to the highlands of free
thought, and aroused from the nightmare of theology, which for ages held
him in thraldom. Those were the ages when God and Christ were inwrought
into the Constitution of the State, and the Holy Bible was the
foundation of the law. Those were the ages of St. Bartholomew
massacres, of autos-da-fé, of the rack and the fagot. Those were the
ages when the day was darkened by the smoke of burning cities, and the
fair fields gleamed white with the bones of the slain. Those were the
ages when the whole Christian world engaged itself in saving souls!
A Jesus may suffer on the cross; not only one, but ten thousand may die,
admirable in self-sacrifice and examples of firm adhesion to their sense
of duty; but, for saving souls, their sacrifice is lost; for they suffer
for a misconception of the plan of the world. Man has never been lost,
and can not be lost, and hence can not be saved by the blood of one or
ten thousand sacrifices.
If the future life is a continuity of this, then the perfection of
religion is the making of this life perfect. Not by crucifixion of the
body, not by suffering or disappointment, but by complete and harmonious
culture, can this be accomplished.
THE NEW METHOD.--To solve the problem of immortality by the methods of
Science, to bring it up from the marshlands of conjecture to the region
of absolute knowledge, belongs to the present age and generation. It is
a task they can and must accomplish. It has for so many ages been the
fertile field of superstition, that it seems impossible to disentangle
it from its unsatisfactory wrappings. The investigation must commence
with the physical man as the basis of the spiritual, as through and by
means of the body he is related to the physical world. He is the
superlative being; the last, greatest and yet incomplete effort of
creative energy. All departments of science gather around him as a
center, and to have perfect knowledge of him is to comprehend the
universe.
In the earliest ages; in the very childhood of the race, the momentous
question was asked: What am I? The solution was felt to be fraught with
momentous consequences not only in this life but the interminable future
which was vaguely shadowed in the mind of savage man. The answers given
became the foundations of the great religious systems of the world. The
conjecture of untutored minds was received as the true system of
causation, and growing hoary with age arrogated to itself infallible
authority, and required implicit faith, and the exercise of reason,
only, in making palatable the requirements of that faith. Conceived in
an age when nature was an unknown realm, when science opened her
mysteries to the understanding, and one by one, dogmas claiming
infallibility were shown to be false, there of necessity was antagonism
and conflict. I do not propose to enlarge on the theological aspect of
this subject more than incidentally. That treatment has grown "stale,
flat and unprofitable," for every drop of vital juice it contained has
been extracted long ago. The interminable sects, wrangling over the
dogmatic solution of this vital question of man's origin and destiny,
arriving at nothing determinate, wrangling with each other and
themselves, are not incentives to beguile the earnest truth-seeker to
follow their paths. If metaphysical theology contained the germ of a
truthful solution, satisfaction would have resulted ages ago, and the
mind, reposing contented with the answer, would have employed its
energies in other directions. Instead, there is restlessness, turmoil,
conflict and indecision, and never has been an answer so broad and deep
in Catholicity of truth as to meet the demand. If science fails also,
it can not retrieve its failure by assumed infallibility. Its teachings
are ever tentative and prophecies of final triumph, as the grandest
study of mankind is man, the crowning work of science is the solution of
this vexed question.
PHYSICAL MAN.--First, as most tangible and obvious in this
investigation, is the physical man, the body, the temple of the psyche.
The student, even when imbued with the doctrine of materialism, arises
from the study of the physical machine with wonder and surprise akin to
awe, declaring man to be fearfully and wonderfully made.
It is not surprising that we die, but that we live. The rupture of a
nerve fiber, the obstruction of a valve, the momentary cessation of
breath, the introduction of a mote at some vital point, brings this most
complex structure to eternal rest. By what constant oversight, by what
persistency of reparation is it preserved from ruin!
This physical man is an animal, amenable to the laws of animal growth.
His body is the type of which theirs are imperfect copies. From two or
three mineral substances his bones are crystalized, and articulated as
the bones of all vertebrate animals, and over them the muscles are
extended. From the _amphioxus_, too low in the scale of being to be
called a fish; a being without organs, without a brain; little more than
an elongated sack of gelatinous substance, through which a white line
marks the position of the spinal cord and the future spinal axis; there
is a slow and steady evolution to the perfected skeleton of man. His
osseous structure is the type of all. The fin of the fish, the huge
paddle of the whale, the cruel paw of the tiger, the hoof of the horse,
the wing of the bird, and the wonderfully flexible hand of man, so
exquisite in adaptations to be taken as an unqualified evidence of
design, are all fashioned out of the same elementary bones, after one
model. The change of form to meet the wants of their possessors, results
from the relative enlargement or atrophy of one or more of these
elements. When the fleshy envelope is stripped away, it is astonishing
how alike these apparently divergent forms really are. In the whale the
flesh unites the huge bones of the fingers and produces a broad,
oar-like fin; in the tiger the nails become retractile talons; in the
bird some of the fingers are atrophied, while others are elongated to
support the feathers which are to offer resistance to the air in flight;
in the horse the bones of the fingers are consolidated, and the united
nails appear in the hoof.
If there exists such perfect similarity in the bony structure of man to
the animal world, the muscular system for which it furnishes support
offers the same likeness. Trace any muscle in the human body from its
origin to its termination, mark the points where it seizes the bones,
the function it performs, and then dissect the most obscure or
disreputable member of the vertebrate kingdom, and you will find the
same muscle performing the same function. The talons of the tiger are
extended and flexed by muscles, similar to those which give flexibility
to the human hand, and the same elements are traceable in the ponderous
paddle of the whale.
More vital than the bony framework, or the muscles to which it gives
support, is the nervous system, seemingly not only the central source of
vital power, but the means of union and sympathetic relation of every
cell and fiber of the entire body.
The brain has been aptly compared to a central telegraphic office, and
the nerves to the extended wires, which hold in communication and
direct relation all the organs, and from which the functions of each are
directed.
The nervous system is the bridge which spans the chasm between matter
and spirit, and the battle between Materialism and Spiritualism must be
fought not only with brain, but in the province of brain. However we may
regard the spiritual being as an independent entity, when we study this
subject from the physical side, we are compelled to accept the intricate
blending of the influence of the brain on the expression of that being,
during its connection therewith. The issue directly stated is this: Does
the brain yield mind as a result of organic changes in its cells and
fibers, or is mind a manifestation through and by means of the brain of
something beyond and superior?
It is admitted by profound thinkers that the brain and its functions is
an unfathomed mystery, and that investigators must be content with what
may be called secondary causes and effects. Phosphorus and sulphur may
be essential for the activity of brain tissue, yet it is absurd to claim
that a super-abundance of these elements wrote an Iliad, or solved the
problem of gravitation. It is not phosphorus, or carbon, or nitrogen,
however vigorously oxidized, which pulsates in the emotions of
friendship or love; that feels and thinks and knows; that recollects the
past, anticipates the future, and reaches out in infinite aspirations
for perfection.
The actions of thought on the brain, the effort compelling the body to
serve the bidding of the spirit, may consume this element and many
others, as the movement of an engine consumes the coal and wastes the
steam; but the coal and the steam are only the means whereby mind
impresses itself on matter.
The physicist studies the brain as one wholly unacquainted with an
engine would study that machine, and mistaking it for a living being,
might be supposed to do. He would observe its motion, and, weighing the
coal consumed and the products of combustion, would say that they
appeared in steam, which after propelling the piston was waste. The
design of the engine, the effect of these combinations and this waste,
this observer would claim to be the guiding intelligence. And he would
further argue that so much coal in the grate, so much water in the
boiler and there appears an equivalent of intelligence, and the waste
may be predetermined by chemical formulæ.
Until the threshold of the functional activity of the brain and the
nervous system have been passed, conclusions should be modestly
expressed.
If it be claimed that man is a natural being, originated and sustained
by natural laws, that he came without miracle, then do we unite the
margins of the human and animal kingdoms, and are satisfied with placing
man at the head of the animal world? An interminable and unbroken series
of beings extends in a gradual gradation downwards, until the organs by
which the phenomena of life are manifested are lost one by one, the
senses disappear, until we arrive at what has been aptly termed
"protoplasm," not an organized form, but simply _organizable_ matter, or
matter from which organic forms can be produced.
If, in reviewing this chain of beings, slowly arising by constant
evolution, we closely examine several of its consecutive links, we shall
find that while each ascending link is apparently complete, yet it is
only the germ out of which the next is evolved in superior forms. Each
link is prophecy of future superiority. The fulfillment of one age can
be traced until man appears as the last term in the physical series.
They who teach this doctrine of evolution, which is to life what the law
of gravitation is to worlds, also teach that united with the doctrine of
"conservation of force," the hope of immortality becomes a dream.
What a sham they make of creation! What a turmoil for no result!
Infinite ages of progress and evolution, during which elemental matter,
by force of inherent laws, sought to individualize itself and incarnate
its forces in living beings; ages of struggle upwards from low to high,
from sensitive to sentient, from sentient to intellectual, from zoöphyte
to man! And now, having accomplished this, and given man exquisite
susceptibility of thought, of love, of affection; making him the last
factor in the series, he is doomed to perish! What is gained by this
travail of the ages? Would it not have been as well had the series
stopped with the huge saurians of the primeval slime, or the mastodon
and mammoth of the pre-historic times, as with the man. As each factor
in the series prophecies future forms, so does man read in the same
light, prophecy-forms beyond. They can not be in the line of greater
physical perfection, for in the days of Greece and Rome, man was as
perfect physically, as is seen by their sculptures, as to-day. Ages ago,
this exceeding beauty was attained. It cannot be in the evolution of a
being superior to man, for as in each lower animal imperfect organs or
structures, or partially employed functions, are improvable and
perfected by succeeding forms, in man the archetype is complete, and no
partially developed organ indicates the possibility of future change.
Progress having arrived at its limits with the body, changes its
direction, and appears in the advancement of mind. Death closes the
career of individuality, and we live only in thoughts--our selfhood is
absorbed in the ocean of being. Mankind perfects as a whole, and the
sighed-for millenium is coming bye-and-bye.
Of what avail is it to us if future generations are wise and noble, if
we pass into nonentity? Of what avail to them to be wise and noble, if
life is only the fleeting hour? Not yet can we believe Nature to be such
a sham--such a cruel failure. The spirit rebels against the supposition
of its mortality. The body is its habiliment. Shall the coat be claimed
to be the entire man? Shall the garments ignore the wearer?
This is the animal side of man. Physically composed of the same
elements, and having passed through these innumerable changes, he is an
epitome of the universe. As man was foreshadowed in remotest ages as the
crowning type in the series of organic life, so man foreshadows superior
excellence. Springing out of his physical perfectibility, arises a new
world of spiritual wants and aspirations, unanswered and unanswerable in
mortal life.
MAN A DUAL BEING.--While Theology, Brahminical, Buddhistical or
Christian, teaches that man is an incarnate spirit, independent of the
physical body, created by miracle, supported by a succession of
miracles, and saved by a miracle from eternal death, material science,
as at present taught by its leading exponents, wholly ignores his
spiritual life, and declares him to be a physical being only. It is not
my purpose to reconcile these conflicting views. Truths never require
reconciliation. They never conflict; and if the results of two different
methods of investigation are at variance, one or the other is in error,
or both, perchance, and the only reconciliation is the elimination of
that error. The egotisms of theology and the pride of science array
their votaries in opposition, while the truth remains unquestioned in
the unexplored middle ground. Man is neither a spirit nor a body; he is
the intimate union of both. In and through his physical being, the
spiritual nature is evolved from the forces of the elements and is
expressed. There is somewhat more enduring than the resultants of
chemical unions, action and reactions in his physical body. Beneath this
organic construction is that which remains, to which it is the
scaffolding which assists, while it conceals the development of the real
edifice.
Paul, the most profound thinker of all the founders of Christianity,
very forcibly and clearly expresses this duality when he makes the
distinction between "the celestial body" and the "terrestrial." In
mortal life these are united, and death is simply their separation. His
disciples have grossly misunderstood and mistaught his explanation. The
terrestrial body cannot inherit eternal life, which is the birthright of
the celestial. Death is the severance of the cord which unites these
bodies in the seemingly indivisible web of earth-life. The terrestrial
returns to the elements from which it came; the celestial remains
individualized. It is unusual for writers on science at the present day
to quote the Bible in support of their theories; but no author before
Paul's time or since has given a more complete philosophy of life, and a
key wherewith to unlock the secrets of the grave.
DEFINITIONS.--The comparison of terms has led to the strangest processes
of reasoning, and the classifications in which some writers delight,
have served as a means of intellectual gymnastics, rather than data for
clear reasoning. In the threefold division of body, soul and spirit, by
using the two last terms, at times as meaning something essentially
distinct, and at others, as synonymous with intelligence, and each
other; and again making soul and body the same, a most admirable means
for the jugglery of disputation is furnished, which has not been left
unused, and by which the discussion of this subject has been befogged.
There is the physical body, and the spirit to which the manifestations
of mind belong. The term soul has no meaning, except as synonymous with
body or spirit, and hence is discarded in this discussion.