SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY SUSTAIN THE RELIGIOUS CONCEPT
I contend that science, philosophy and electric evolution sustain the
religious concept.
The infinite and eternal power that animates the universe must be
psychical in its nature, and any attempt to reduce it to mechanical
force must end in absurdity. The only kind of monism which will stand
the test of an ultimate analysis, says John Fiske is monotheism. The
highest development of psychical life is the end for which the world
exists. To the materialist the ultimate power is material power, and
psychical life is nothing but fleeting colocations of natural elements
in the shape of nervous systems. The psychical nature of God and the
immortality of the soul harmonize infinitely better with cosmic
philosophy. Prof. John Fiske says: "Evolution brings before us with
vividness the conception of an ever-present God, not an absentee God who
once manufactured a cosmic machine capable of running itself. It makes
God our constant support and nature His revelation, and when all its
religious implications are set forth it will be seen to be the most
potent ally Christianity ever had in elevating mankind. The progress of
evolution now is to bring out the higher spiritual attributes and to set
the whole doctrine of evolution in harmony with religion. Then, the
assumption that underlies all religion must be true--that what we see of
the present life is not the whole thing; that there is a spiritual as
well as a material side of life; in short, a life eternal.
"In the whole history of evolution," he continues, "when we see an
internal adjustment reach out towards something, it is in order to adapt
itself to something that exists. And if the religious cravings of man
constitute an exception they are the only exception in the whole process
of evolution." This is an argument of stupendous and resistless weight.
This puts evolution in harmony with religious thought, and the great
religious drift of humanity in all ages, and removes the antagonism that
used to appear to exist between religion and science.
The French materialists of the eighteenth century virtually declared:
"We content ourselves with what we can prove by the methods of physical
science and we will reject all else." But think how chaotic nature was
to their minds compared to our present conception, and how different the
universe they saw to what we see to-day. And it is not to be wondered at
that there was antagonism between science and religion. Anaxagoras
maintained that the human race would never have become human if it were
not for the hand, and John Fiske says, "_man never would have attained
his present psychic powers but for religion_."
This is truth well stated, and the fact that man is the only creature
that has a hand, an articulate voice and an aesthetic nature that is
never satisfied, is strong proof that man is infinitely more than a mere
animal, or a transient animate machine. The higher intellectual powers
were dwarfed in the middle ages, when human life was made hideous by
famine, pestilence, perennial warfare and bloody superstitions, fear of
witchcraft and eternal torments, and men endured it because they had no
experience of anything better. But the change wrought in six centuries
is amazing, and shows that human genius and man's possibilities are
beyond our comprehension. The genius of Aristotle proved that the earth
is a globe, that of Copernicus showed that it was one of a system of
planets, and that of Newton undertook to explain the laws and dynamics
of this marvelous sun and world system.
Belief in God, and the immortality of the soul, and the compensations of
a future life tend to maintain social order and moral rectitude, by
enabling men to endure the trials and injustice of this world in the
hope of ample compensation in the hereafter. Man steps forth on this
revolving globe not of his own volition, but is sent here by some
mysterious power on some inscrutable mission to fulfill some divine
purpose. He comes as a spiritual wayfarer under sentence of death. Not
death to the spirit, but to the transient habiliments of earth-dust he
gathers round his invisible spiritual form. When he arrives and gathers
his reasoning powers to scan the narrow horizon of his life, he is beset
by perplexing problems of poverty, disease, sorrow, sin and death. The
"slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" often overwhelm him, and he
discovers at last that the law of life is the law of growth and
development; and all these struggles and trials are intended to evolve
character and purify and ennoble the soul. That this is the seed time
and nursery of existence preparatory to the harvest of eternal life when
he shall drop this overcoat of atoms and be transplanted to the
self-luminous bosom and unfading joys of the perfected and celestial
sun-worlds. Here he sees incompleteness, fragmentary careers, tragedies,
injustice, griefs and farewells, and he hungers for knowledge. His
quenchless spirit seeks to penetrate the mysteries of the universe, and
comprehend time and eternity, and in agony of soul he asks the age-old
question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" Then, if he turn not to
the pages of sacred writ for an answer, he will find written on the
living pages and animated forms of all nature the promise of another
life. He will find it in the returning verdure of spring, in the
unfading light of the eternal stars, in the ever-changing beauty of the
bending skies, in the mysterious impulse of the untaught birds of the
air who start on their vast migrations from the frozen seas of the north
to the summer-lands of the sunny south; in the tropic fish, who seek
their spawning nests in the clear, cool rivers of the north. The bear
and lion, the tiger and elephant, the bees and the insects of a summer
day, all have the longings of their natures satisfied. Why should man be
an exception? If the Creator of all keeps faith with all other
creatures, why not with man?
"As something must have been eternal," says Prof. Wright, "it is easier
to suppose it was an intelligent, designing mind which was uncreated
from the beginning, and which has brought the universe into being with
all its uniformity of laws and complexity of adaptation than to suppose
that the eternal substance was matter out of which has come the orderly
universe as we know it, with its high grades of intelligence in animals
and man.
"The world, as the creation of a supreme intelligence, is partially
comprehensible to finite minds. But to suppose that the thought and
purpose and will of man are products of material forces is not only a
mystery, but an absurdity which cannot long be entertained by any sane
mind. The theory of evolution without a God can lay no claim to
scientific support. A theory of evolution, designed, controlled and
permeated by divine ideas, may be both scientific and in accord with the
highest dictates of religious truth."
As to the life hereafter, which the religious concept has always
proclaimed, it is a fact demonstrated by history that in all ages, among
all people, under all religious forms, the idea of immortality remains
fixed and imperishable in the human mind. Every human being in coming
into this world brings with him under a form more or less vague this
inward belief, desire and hope of immortality. This is God's handwriting
on the human soul. And the history of man, the reasoning conscience of
man, is God's Bible of life written in man's spiritual nature. And
whatever is rational, true and good is of God, and whatever is contrary
to the enlightened conscience of man is contrary to the divine purpose
of God.
Revelation proclaims God is a spirit and man is a spirit, and after
death man in his spiritual being shall live on forever. The latest
modern scientific thought fully and powerfully sustains the Bible. It
says in substance, in dealing with man we must deal with him as a
spiritual being; we must go into a realm that brings us within the
sphere of the electrical and magnetic relations of the elements, but on
a different plane. First, matter in the invisible world has the same
essential basis of formative power so potent in the more tangible
relations. Second, the invisible atoms there obey the same essential
principles that in a lower grade of activity give visible results.
Third, there must be a direct connection between the two conditions of
being--the visible and the spiritual--as to be axiomatic. Fourth, there
must be a secondary form of the invisible elements ere they assume the
visible relation, which is a chemical or electric necessity. In all life
this law is absolute. Fifth, in applying this principle to the process
of the evolution of man's form we have an explanation of how it must be
a natural product of evolutionary life, and that man must follow the
same law as the evolution of all spirit that pertains to planetary life.
Spirit holds visible things in form by its connection with the magnetic
life of the planet. It is the controlling power in shaping the form and
organism to correspond to changed conditions. The material form can only
exist by keeping itself in harmony with the laws of the elements in the
planet, and as long as the planet endures the electric form in man and
the electric or instinct form in animals within the radius of its
magnetic aurora must exist as a secondary satellite, or miniature
concrete expression of the forces in the planet. This principle may give
the electric form immortality, and, by reason of the eternal nature of
the elements composing it, place it beyond the possibility of
dissolution as long as the planetary relation of the elements exists.
But with man it goes even further, for the spirit form, having the basic
principles of eternal existence in its spiritual composition and having
once entered upon organic life, has in itself immortality and the power
of self-sustenance from the elements in space and cannot become
disintegrated, for it has all the necessary material to keep it in
eternal existence as an organism, though the planet should revert to its
original status and vanish as a distinct form. This explanation of the
nature of spirit gives us a logical ground for the rational
consideration of the phenomenon that has been the basis of all the
superstitions embalmed in the sacred and curious literature of past
ages. That man and probably all types of life have a spiritual or
electric counterpart is not a scientific speculation or hypothesis
merely, but a logical sequence of the forms that enter into physical
organization.
Here in the secondary form, says the author of "Planetary Evolution," is
an explanation of the nature of spirit that follows the same principles
that construct the physical body and form the same material
environments. And the questions of a spiritual life, apart from this
principle of a secondary form, cannot be solved by any known formula of
a scientific character. On the other hand, the existence of a form
holding the powers of thought and action upon the plane of radiant
matter gives a satisfactory explanation of the transference of the
mental powers that belong to planetary life. The law of correlation and
conservation of force prevent their annihilation, and they must exist
somewhere. They are a spiritual entity, but should not be regarded as
having a supernatural origin.
"The spirit is an evolution of planetary life and cannot be destroyed,
and it is natural that its mental attachments to the planet should bring
it in contact with the mental development generated there. The spirit
would have the power of thought and consecutive reasoning as much after
its transition from mortal life as before, but it would lack the power
of expression through ordinary channels. It would, however, have the
power of inductive electric transfer of thought, and, coming in contact
with a spirit embodied, this power of induction would excite the
elements in the spirit embodied to equilibrium of mentality, which would
give rise to a similarity of thought in both." And here lies the
foundation of the doctrine of inspiration which is a process of mental
action whereby the mind in the body is raised to a perception and
expression of ideas beyond its own range of thought as generated by the
physical senses. The result is the upbuilding of the brain organ and the
uplifting of the mentality to the purely spiritual plane, and man has
thus, by the aid of the spiritual powers, made another stride forward in
the domain of spiritual evolution. And man is a spiritualized being with
brain organs adapted to the expression of ideas that respond to the
spiritual state of life.
It is sometimes assumed that a man cannot be a Christian and a man of
science; yet there have been many men of science, from Newton to Lord
Kelvin, who were devout Christians. It is also assumed in some quarters
that an educated man cannot believe in miracles, or answers to prayer,
or special providences. But this is not a fair assumption even from a
scientific standpoint. Science affirms the universality of energy and
law; Christian theology accepts this fundamental postulate of science
and says it is the result of universal spirit and will, or Infinite Mind
and volition, which is back of universal energy and law. Energy is
spirit and will at work; law is the mode of work. Energy and law are
derivative, spirit and will is the primary and ultimate force of the
universe.
But says the unbelieving scientist, "I accept energy and law as facts,
but do not see that spirit and will are facts." Christianity replies:
"You mean by 'see,' mental sight; for in the physical sense you can no
more see energy and law than you can see spirit and will, or mind and
volition.
"The fact is, science is a search for the invisible or
supersensible--for that which lies beyond sense and vision. You call it
energy and law, which we say is a result and not a cause, and point to
spirit and will, which is the primitive, ultimate, first cause of
universal energy and law.
"Would you feel it a just description of yourself if you were described
as nothing but a system of energy and law. Energy is action according to
law. But there is psychical energy as well as physical energy, or 'a
double faced' unity--psychical on one side and physical on the other.
Thought, feeling, volition are all species of energy subject to laws of
their own. And, what is most wonderful, while they are invisible and
intangible they control all physical energy in man and all animal
organisms, just as universal spirit and will or volition control all
energy and law in the physical universe. Then, is universal energy and
law psychical or physical? If it is intelligent and works according to
design and purpose with beneficent uniformity it must be psychical, and
all physical energy and law is but a manifestation of spiritual energy
and purpose."
Then says the scientist, "there may be intelligence without physical
organism, and man may be in constant contact with the spiritual world.
But I am an organized being and cannot imagine how unorganized beings
could communicate with me even if they wished to do so. I cannot imagine
it as possible that I could know God, who is a spirit."
But Christianity answers, "suppose you are not matter only, but that you
are a spirit also, and a spiritual atom of that universal spirit which
controls the universe, then could not spirit communicate with spirit?
Thus, you say, all science is founded on energy and law, which
necessitates spiritual intelligence and will for its foundation, and
consciousness for its evidence. Thought, feeling volition are forms of
psychical energy. We are conscious that we think, feel, will; and as
consciousness is a mental or spiritual perception, man must be a
spiritual being. Then we are not far from Theism--for God is a spirit.
Besides energy and law we have consciousness and spirit, and no force
without will. Law is simply the mode in which will works. Law stands for
the regular and steadfast operation of will, as opposed to variable or
capricious action. The uniformity of nature is rooted in the
faithfulness of God, which sustains the steadfast operation of natural
law."
Then says the scientist, "there could be no miracles, or answers to
prayer, or special providences, for these imply interference with law,
which would mean inconsistency on God's part and confusion on ours."
But Christianity answers, "interference with law is of continual
occurrence. You cannot stand up or walk, or so much as raise your hand
without interfering with the law of gravitation or attraction. We can
modify or direct the action of forces without violating their laws.
Violation of God's laws on God's part would mean inconstancy. Direction
of his own energy to any point He wills--as in evolution, for
example--is no violation of law; neither are what are termed miracles,
special providences and answers to prayer violations of law, but
evolutions in accordance with law, as law stands for God's mode of
working in the control of the universe."
Then says the scientist, "I cannot reconcile the two ideas of 'infinity'
and 'personality.' Personality implies limitation; infinity asserts
absence of limitation, a being cannot be at once limited and unlimited."
"But why should we suppose personality to involve limitation?" says
Christian theology. "Even in man the essential idea of personality is
not limitation. Personality in philosophy and theology refers not to the
body but to consciousness and will. What difficulty is there in
believing that the Infinite God is infinitely conscious and volitional
and therefore personal."
There is a mighty force in the material metaphors of the Bible, but
these all stand for spiritual realities, and its fundamental postulate
is "God is a Spirit," and "God is Love." As man is a spiritual atom of
deity. God has spiritual contact and influence with his spiritual
children and they are "moved by the Spirit," and "born of the Spirit,"
as they accept and obey that spiritual influence which leads to
righteousness and truth. Religion cannot exist without spirituality and
the religious concept. God has so constituted the human soul. Without
religion the soul could not dream of heaven nor feel the sweet
whisperings of faith and hope. Neither could the heart thrill with
spiritual joy and truth. Without religion the heaven-bound spirit could
not soar to the altitudes of celestial bliss.
Without religion and ideality there would have been no gems of art or
literature, no beautiful pictures, no living statuary, no lofty temples
or inspiring thoughts. The grandeur of Shakespeare, the sublimity of
Milton, the poetry of Byron, Burns, Tennyson and Longfellow, the
romances of Scott, Dickens and Hawthorne, the noble architecture of
Michael Angelo, the statuary of Phideas, Praxatelles and Canova, and the
pictures of Raphael, Murello, and Reuben had never been known. Ideality
is the father of beauty and the inspiration of all genius, goodness and
nobility and the twin brother of religious hope and faith.
Without religion ideality would be a mockery and a dream, hope would be
a delusion and a snare, inspiration would wither, like Jonas' gourd, in
a night, and the mildew of selfish materialism would convert the verdure
of earth into deserts of despair.
John Fiske well says, "Man never would have attained his present psychic
powers but for religion," and without religion ideality would never
have soared to her lofty heights or brought forth her beautiful
thoughts, her lofty conceptions, her sublime dreams of joy, or her noble
gems of art, poetry, sculpture, architecture and literature. Remove the
twin brothers--religion and ideality--from the earth, and its glory and
worth would shrivel like a withered flower. Its hopes and joys, its
dreams of peace and love, of paradise and heaven, would vanish into the
desolations of a boundless Sahara, heaped with the burning sands of
doubt and scorched by the withering blast of despair. The religious
concept is the pilot of the soul to the fair field of heaven, the
communion with the Father of the spirit, and ideality is its companion
and servant who carries its cloak and staff as they journey along the
pathways of earth and the highways of eternity. Science and philosophy,
ideality, love and hope and all the aspirations of the human soul
sustain the religious concept. It is a scientific postulate imbedded in
the nature of man and in the basic law of the universe. Ideality and
religion are the most powerful forces in uplifting humanity. The
sublimer the ideal the more potent and ennobling its influence on the
human soul. Though millions grasp not its sublimity and truth, those
receptive souls nearest the light will catch its divine illuminations
and reflect it to those below. And gradually those below will grasp its
beauty and truth and step up higher, and each in succession, step by
step, will advance to "a higher plane and a broader view," and this is
growth and progress toward perfection.
The ultimate aim and purpose of creation is ideal perfection. This
purpose is written in the fundamental law of evolution--progress from
the lower to the higher and the survival of the fittest. The higher, the
more sublime, the spiritual truth, though it be ages in advance of the
world's comprehension, yet its brightness and power will penetrate the
darkness, and scintillate from soul to soul, as the sun gleams from atom
to atom, until at last all humanity is illumined and exalted. When we go
down into the darkness and poisoned vapors of a dungeon we seek for a
ray of sunshine as we seek for life and light, and we are cheered by the
smallest sunbeam which enters through a crevice, for in its silvery
thread of light little atoms float like miniature stars, dispelling the
desolation. There at our feet, left to decay and perish, may be the seed
or bulb of an insignificant vine or flower, forgotten by the busy world
of conflicts without, where little men become great and great men become
little, not dreaming of the eternal law of life and hope that thrills in
every throbbing atom and electric germ in this life-evolving magnetic
universe.
But there in the darkness of that dungeon a struggle for life and hope
goes on as important to the life involved as that of building a throne
or destroying an empire. Never did a hero dare or a nation fight more
bravely to attain its aspirations than did that little seed or bulb
lying in the darkness. A slender beam of light gives it a hope of
escape, and, cold and chilled, its prayer for life has slowly evolved a
delicate pale vine which creeps toward the sunbeam.
Each day it has seen that beam of light fade and pass, and darkness and
mildew paralyze it into the stupor of unconsciousness. And again that
sunbeam awoke it to consciousness and life. At last it reached the
crevice whence came the light, and, lifting itself as a prisoner
escaping from death, it springs forth into the sunshine and opens its
blossoms of beauty and perfume to greet and gladden the world of light
and life.
Thus has humanity struggled for light, and toiled for hope and joy and
sunshine through a thousand ages of gloom and chilling mildew of
ignorance and darkness. And wherever a gleam of light and truth has
pierced the shadows of life's struggles and tragedies, like the tiniest
seed or fragile vine, the aspirations of his nature and his longing soul
have reached up toward it.
What the ray of light is to the flower seed in the dungeon, religion is
to man. Wherever man has crept, like the vine, in the darkness, towards
the light it was his religious spiritual nature and aspirations which
led him. Truth, which comes from the bosom of the eternal Good, streams
down into the darkness and lifts man's soul up into the light by the
same law that the flower and the vine seek the sunshine, and all true
science and philosophy sustain the religious concept.
Life seems of little value when men of every nation are armed to the
teeth to slay each other like madmen, as the best way in which they can
show their gratitude to nature for the useless gift of life. But they
are not so anxious for war and bloodshed as their preparations would
indicate. And the World's Peace Conference at The Hague, and recent
arbitration of national questions, mark a new era in the world's
history, and indicate a disarmament of the nations in a few decades. The
fear of death is useless and absurd. As Flammarion has said, there are
only two sides to the question. When we go to sleep at night there is
always the possibility that we may never awaken. Yet this thought does
not prevent us from falling asleep. In one case, suppose death to end
all; it is but an unfinished sleep to last forever. In the other case,
should the soul survive the body, we shall reawaken in another world to
resume the activities of life. In this case the awakening must be rather
delightful, as every form of life and every creature finds its happiness
in the exercise of its natural energies and faculties. The deep study of
this important question and the disgust at the indifference of men to
this great problem of human destiny impelled a great student of science
to attempt suicide. Because he saw everywhere people absorbed in their
material interests, accumulating wealth, consecrating their lives to
Mammon, folly and passion and neglecting their nobler natures, it made
him doubt their fitness for an eternal existence, and he determined to
know the truth at once by plunging into the invisible unknown.
Prof. Albert H. Walker, in a recent lecture--May, 1903--makes a new
distinction in philosophy and religion, when he says: "Two systems of
philosophy will divide the attention and adherence of the people of the
twentieth century. One is the old system of Epicurus which long preceded
the rise of Christianity and which underlies the Declaration of
Independence; and the other is the philosophy of Christian science."
His definition of religion and Atheism is something modern and unique.
He says: "I define religion as belief in a God who cares; and Atheism
as lack of belief in a God who cares. These two definitions, if
correct, divide all men into two classes, and, according to this
classification, most of the men in the United States are Atheists." He
seems to think all men believe in a God, but a majority believe in a God
who does not care, and that is Atheism. An Atheist has always been
defined as one who believes there is no God; now they may believe in a
God who does not care. This is not a very bad distinction and may be the
true one in the future. For modern knowledge and culture forbids any
thinking man from denying the existence of a God, and this may compel
modern Atheism to modify its creed and accept a don't-care God.
He thinks this century may find an answer to the immortality of the
soul, and "it may be in the affirmative through actual communication
with departed souls; or in the negative by scientific demonstration that
the spirit or soul of man is only a name for the electrical and chemical
actions and reactions which occur in the body." He also says: "The
twentieth century may show whether there is a great master hand that
sweeps over the whole of this deep harp of life, or whether men are but
pipes through whom the breath of 'Pan doth blow a momentary music.'"
Religion has nothing to fear from the future; materialism is vanquished
and now Atheism must change its creed.
Canon Farrar says: "Let us think noble thoughts of God and break through
the brain-spun meshes of impotent negations. God is not vortices of
atoms, or streams of tendencies, or earth fermentations. Heaven is not a
vacuous eternity, or a future of ceaseless psalmody."
The Greek had his Elysian Fields, his daffodil meadows where the
Eidola, the shadowy images of the dead, moved in a world of shadows; and
his islands of the blest, where Achilles and Tydides unlaced the helmet
from their flowing hair. The Scandinavian dreamed of his green sylvan
paradise hereafter, amid the barren wastes. The Indian saw God in
lightning, heard him in the thunder's roar, and viewed beyond the
cloud-capped hills his hunters' paradise. And in the perennial hereafter
in the all-life-giving sun there are green fields, daffodil meadows,
golden light, rainbows that never fade, glorified cities, white-robed
innocence, the crown and the palm branch, the throne of serene majesty,
the golden harp and the song of rejoicing, and all-abounding happiness,
innocent, thrilling, intense and unending.
The rare and radiant physical beauties of heaven we cannot describe, but
it is a place where no guilty step enters the gates of pearl, in the
city of God; no polluting presence flings shadows on the golden streets
of the New Jerusalem. It is the dwelling place of angels and just men
made perfect, and spirits of saints in celestial glory. There is no
darkness, envy, hatred or slander, no gold mixed with dross. No bleared
and blighted crowds, degraded out of the semblance of humanity, crawl,
like singed moths, around the flaring house of multiplied temptations.
Where boyhood shall not so live as to make its own manhood miserable;
where manhood shall not so live as to make old age dishonorable and
death ghastly. The apples of Sodom cannot grow on the same soil with the
Tree of Life.
In other stars and countless worlds there may be work for us to do.
What radiant ministrations, what infinite activities, what never-ending
progress, what immeasurable happiness, what living ecstasies of unknown
raptures may surround us in the beauty and loveliness of the land of the
leal, in the life supernal?
Heaven is not a reward but a continuity, not a change but a development.
It means a place of love and goodness where we are one with God and
playfellows with the angels. Present science would change God into a
struggle of careless forces or a complexity of impersonal laws. Let us
reject the Chinese idea; they believe in God, but worship the devil,
because they think the devil's rule predominates.
Let us discard the pagan _deification of annihilation_, and the modern
agnostic's plea for _suicide_, and the Greek poet's pessimistic
postulate: "It were best never to have been born, and next best to
depart as soon as possible." Let us grieve at the dark shadows flung by
theologians athwart God's light upon those who believe that human
reason, conscience, and experience, as well as Scripture, are the books
of God. Phrases which belong to metaphor, to imagery, to poetry, to
emotion should not be formulated into dogmas, or crystallized into
creed.
Discard the tyrannous realism of ambiguous metaphors, the asserted
infallibility of isolated words. Canon Farrar says: "Erase from our
Bible the erroneous disputed renderings of the three words, 'damnation,
hell and everlasting.' Not one of these three expressions ought to stand
any longer in our English Bible."
He says further: "There has never been a human being yet since time
began, however beautiful, gifted, bright with genius, or radiant with
fascination, who has sinned with impunity." Evil and punishment, as
Plato said, walk this world with their heads tied together, and the
rivet that links their iron link is of adamant. It needs no lightning
stroke, or divine interposition, no miraculous message to avenge God's
violated laws. They avenge themselves. The hell fire of the Bible was a
spiritual fire which does not burn the flesh, but purifies the spirit.
Not a material fire, but self-kindled fire, an internal fever--in fact,
remorse for remembered sins--a figurative representation of a moral
process by which restoration shall be effected.
When earthly life vanishes and we see in the visions of the soul an
endless life and being in countless worlds of destiny, death has no
terrors. The thought of the pale, cold body enwrapt in its winding
sheet, coffined and alone in the narrow grave, its last sad dwelling
place, with the grass growing above, where the lonely cricket chirps
through the silent night, does not disturb the calm and reasoning soul.
A few years hence and we shall all cross the dark river to the shadowy
unknown shore and learn the mysteries that lie beyond. But where is that
wondrous shore, and where will all of the now living inhabitants of
earth be a century hence? Not floating in the marvelous belt of
atmosphere which surrounds the earth. Nor on a changeful planet like our
earth. Not floating in the frigid ether of space, but, if my hypothesis
is correct, they will be celestial residents in the self-luminous,
all-life-giving sun.
The only rational scientific theory that satisfies my mind is to regard
the suns as self-luminous, perfected worlds, the visible abode of deity,
and the future home of the soul. This hypothesis accords with every
recently established fact in science, nature and revelation. It fits
man's hopes and aspirations, his aesthetic nature, his psychic powers
and religious concept which have followed him through all the
vicissitudes of his history.
The question often arises: As justice reigns in the moral world, as
equilibrium reigns in the physical world, and the destiny of the soul is
the result of its aptitudes and its aspirations, are only those souls
alone that truly live and unfold their faculties and aspire to knowledge
and truth destined to a conscious immortality? Many souls pass their
lives here in mental sleep, intellectual stupor, and spiritual
paralysis. Will they receive the gift of eternal life? Many great
scientists think they will not. And all who neglect their mental and
moral development seal their own fate and will have no future existence.
This is a distressing view held and championed by some of the able minds
of modern times. But I do not agree with them, for I believe every soul
is a spiritual atom of deity and, however ignorant and depraved, may
become wise and good, and enjoy the beatitudes of an immortal existence.