SPIRIT.
IT is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, that it should
contain somewhat progressive. Uses that are exhausted or that may
be, and facts that end in the statement, cannot be all that is true of
this brave lodging wherein man is harbored, and wherein all his
faculties find appropriate and endless exercise. And all the uses of
nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of
man an infinite scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs and
outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause whence it had its origin.
It always speaks of Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a perpetual
effect. It is a great shadow pointing always to the sun behind us.
The aspect of nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands
with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest
man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most,
will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse, and, as it were,
distant phenomena of matter; but when we try to define and describe
himself, both language and thought desert us, and we are as helpless
as fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in
propositions, but when man has worshipped him intellectually, the
noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is
the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual,
and strives to lead back the individual to it.
When we consider Spirit, we see that the views already presented do
not include the whole circumference of man. We must add some
related thoughts.
Three problems are put by nature to the mind; What is matter?
Whence is it? and Whereto? The first of these questions only, the
ideal theory answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a
substance. Idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the
evidence of our own being, and the evidence of the world's being.
The one is perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind is
a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from
which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day.
Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles
than those of carpentry and chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the
existence of matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the spirit. It
leaves God out of me. It leaves me in the splendid labyrinth of my
perceptions, to wander without end. Then the heart resists it, because
it balks the affections in denying substantive being to men and
women. Nature is so pervaded with human life, that there is
something of humanity in all, and in every particular. But this theory
makes nature foreign to me, and does not account for that
consanguinity which we acknowledge to it.
Let it stand, then, in the present state of our knowledge, merely as a
useful introductory hypothesis, serving to apprize us of the eternal
distinction between the soul and the world.
But when, following the invisible steps of thought, we come to
inquire, Whence is matter? and Whereto? many truths arise to us out
of the recesses of consciousness. We learn that the highest is present
to the soul of man, that the dread universal essence, which is not
wisdom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each
entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by which they are;
that spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is
present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from without,
that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves:
therefore, that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not build up
nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree
puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old. As
a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of God; he is
nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need,
inexhaustible power. Who can set bounds to the possibilities of man?
Once inhale the upper air, being admitted to behold the absolute
natures of justice and truth, and we learn that man has access to the
entire mind of the Creator, is himself the creator in the finite. This
view, which admonishes me where the sources of wisdom and
power lie, and points to virtue as to
"The golden key
Which opes the palace of eternity,"
carries upon its face the highest certificate of truth, because it
animates me to create my own world through the purification of my
soul.
The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a
remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a projection of God in the
unconscious. But it differs from the body in one important respect. It
is not, like that, now subjected to the human will. Its serene order is
inviolable by us. It is, therefore, to us, the present expositor of the
divine mind. It is a fixed point whereby we may measure our
departure. As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house
is more evident. We are as much strangers in nature, as we are aliens
from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the
deer run away from us; the bear and tiger rend us. We do not know
the uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the apple, the potato
and the vine. Is not the landscape, every glimpse of which hath a
grandeur, a face of him? Yet this may show us what discord is
between man and nature, for you cannot freely admire a noble
landscape, if laborers are digging in the field hard by. The poet finds
something ridiculous in his delight, until he is out of the sight of
men.