Chapter VII · THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE. (continued 2)

These passages (and many more might be quoted) would appear to show that, according to the Scriptures, the angels take a very prominent part in the administration of the universe under the direction of the Son of God. They are his ministers, his messengers, who execute his decrees and perform his errands, whether of mercy or of justice. Therefore it is said of Christ, ‘Thou art the King of angels;’ and of himself in his glorified state, speaking to his disciples, Christ says (Matt. xxviii. 18): ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.’

Let us close these quotations by one from the Old Testament—2 Kings vi. 15-17: ‘And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host encompassed the city both with horses and chariots: and his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? And he answered, Fear not; for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man: and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.’

Finally, it is the belief of a large portion of the Christian Church that the Spirit of God dwells in and acts upon the souls of believers. This action represents the influence which reaches the soul of man from the unseen, enabling him to live for the unseen.

250. We have in our opening chapter quoted a very remarkable passage from Swedenborg upon the particular nature of God’s providence. Let us now hear what the Scriptures say upon the same subject. Christ tells us (Luke xii. 6): ‘Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.’ Again, St. Paul tells us (Rom. viii. 28): ‘And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.’ Also (Rom. viii. 38): ‘For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

251. We think it may be concluded from all these passages that the doctrine of a particular providence is taught in the Scriptures. Nevertheless it is one of the hardest things to understand how this doctrine can be made consistent with the working out of general laws which, so far as we can study them, appear to have no reference whatever to individuals. This was a difficulty intensely felt by the late John Stuart Mill. He says, in a work published after his death:—

‘For how stands the fact? That, next to the greatness of these cosmic forces, the quality which most forcibly strikes every one who does not avert his eyes from it is their perfect and absolute recklessness. They go straight to their end without regarding what or whom they crush on the road. Optimists, in their attempts to prove that “whatever is, is right,” are obliged to maintain, not that Nature ever turns one step from her path to avoid trampling us into destruction, but that it would be very unreasonable in us to expect that she should. Pope’s “Shall gravitation cease when you go by?” may be a just rebuke to any one who should be so silly as to expect common human morality from Nature. But if the question were between two men, instead of between a man and a natural phenomenon, that triumphant apostrophe would be thought a rare piece of impudence. A man who should persist in hurling stones or firing cannon when another man “goes by,” and, having killed him, should urge a similar plea in exculpation, would very deservedly be found guilty of murder. In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are Nature’s every-day performances.’

This objection to belief in the reality of the government of God has been clothed in very eloquent language in a sermon by the Rev. James Martineau:—‘The battle of existence’ (he tells us, putting himself for the moment into the position of Mill and his school) ‘rages through all time and in every field; and its rule is to give no quarter—to despatch the maimed, to overtake the halt, to trip up the blind, and drive the fugitive host over the precipice into the sea.’

In very beautiful language the poet Tennyson, after proposing the same riddle, replies to it thus:—

In another passage of equal beauty the same poet expresses his conviction

Professor Jevons, again, in his Principles of Science (vol. ii. p. 468) alludes in the following terms to this difficulty:—‘The hypothesis, that there is a Creator, at once all-powerful and all-benevolent, is surrounded, as it must seem to every candid investigator, with difficulties verging closely upon logical contradiction. The existence of the smallest amount of pain and evil would seem to show that He is either not perfectly benevolent, or not all-powerful. No one can have lived long without experiencing sorrowful events of which the significance is inexplicable. But if we cannot succeed in avoiding contradiction in our notions of elementary geometry, can we expect that the ultimate purposes of existence shall present themselves to us with perfect clearness? I can see nothing to forbid the notion that in a higher state of intelligence much that is now obscure may become clear. We perpetually find ourselves in the position of finite minds attempting infinite problems, and can we be sure that where we see contradiction an infinite intelligence might not discover perfect logical harmony?’

252. Before we leave this subject there is one consideration which ought not to be forgotten. It is evident that the development of the visible universe is of such a nature that we can understand it, and to a great extent explain it by means of laws and processes with which we are familiar: nay, the order of the universe is something which it is our very duty to investigate. But the result of our inquiry is, and can only be, the appretiation of general laws of action. The working out of these laws can have, from this point of view, no possible reference to individual interests. If gravity acted sometimes, and at other times refrained from acting, we could derive no certain information from our experience; we could not advance in art or science, and should infallibly be plunged into speedy confusion. Nevertheless, it is not impossible that the occurrences which take place through the action of gravity may, after all, be so arranged as to have reference to the real welfare of individuals, although this reference may not be apparent because we are not in a position to recognise it, and it is not intended that we should do so, at least in this life. The ability to do so would be a very dangerous gift, and would go far to upset the present economy. We know very little about the bearings of events on our own best interests, and nothing at all about their bearings on those of our neighbour. We may, however, believe with Jevons, that in a future state the adaptation between the two may become apparent to us, even if we do not ourselves become instruments in bringing this adaptation about.

253. The outcome of all these speculations would thus lead us to regard the Christian system as affording a full scope for development in all respects, whether of the universe or of the individual. Its law is pre-eminently that of liberty, and it has conducted us to the conclusion that the doctrine of the Trinity, or something analogous to it, forms, as it were, the avenue through which the universe itself leads us up to the conception of the infinite and eternal One.

Nevertheless, not a few of our readers may be disinclined to entertain any precise conception of the Divine nature. Neither atheists nor theists, they simply dismiss the Deity as being quite above their comprehension, and all doctrines founded upon definite conceptions of the Deity, as superstructures without foundation.

Now, the results regarding a future state at which we have arrived are, as we think, and as we have said in our introduction, capable of being very nearly, if not altogether, detached from all conceptions regarding the Divine essence.

We have merely to take the universe as it is, and, adopting the principle of Continuity, insist upon an endless chain of events, all fully conditioned, however far we go either backwards or forwards. This process leads us at once to the conception of an invisible universe, and to see that immortality is possible without a break of continuity.

We have, however, no physical proof in favour of it, unless we allow that Christ rose from the dead. But it will be admitted that, if Christ rose from the dead, a future state becomes more than possible; it becomes probable; and we do not see that this conclusion is, in itself, greatly modified by differences in our mode of regarding the exact nature of Christ.

Again, the production of the visible universe in time leads us, by the principle of Continuity, to the conception of a fully conditioned intelligent universe, existing prior to the production of the visible. And furthermore, we are induced by our argument (Art. 218) to regard the production of the visible universe as the work of an intelligent agency residing in the invisible. If, then, such an agency could produce the visible universe, it could certainly accomplish the resurrection of Christ, without any break of continuity, so far as the whole universe is concerned.

254. The joys of the Christian Heaven are celebrated in Hymns which are frequently very beautiful, even if they do not mount to the sublimity of the ancient Hebrew ode. One of the finest of these is the free translation by Pope of the Latin (not originally Christian) ode standing at the commencement of this volume. It runs thus:—

Many specimens might be given if our object were to collect together the Christian Hymns relating to Heaven. Sometimes, too, we have beautiful descriptions not in verse, and Bunyan’s account of the reception of Christian and Hopeful at the Celestial City will at once occur to the reader as not inferior in the claims of true poetry to anything that we have in verse.

255. Now, if we analyse such hymns of joy, we find in them two prominent chords, one or other of which is always struck. The first expresses the Christian’s sense of relief from sorrow and death, and the second his joy in the anticipated presence of Christ—his intense desire to behold the King in his beauty.

These chords are struck together by St. John, when he says (Rev. xxi. 3, 4), ‘And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’ In other respects the descriptions of the Christian heaven are no doubt figurative. They are intended for Christians of all ages of the world, and have hardly any reference to the material conditions of life in a future state. These could not be apprehended by believers 1800 years ago, inasmuch as we can hardly be said to grasp them now. Nevertheless there is one direction in which we do think we are able to obtain a glimpse into the conditions of this future life.

256. One of the most prominent characteristics of even the well-directed human mind is its insatiable curiosity. How intensely anxious we all are to realise the conditions of the life of our forefathers in the ruder and earlier times; how interested in every scrap of intelligence which reaches us from the dead old world! How interested too in any light thrown upon the civilisation which preceded these old times! What would not any man give for half an hour with Socrates or Plato? what would he not give, be he Christian or unbeliever, to have pictured out vividly and truly before him some episode in the life of Christ? In a tedious, toilsome, tantalising, roundabout way we do indeed get some passing glimpses into these ancient historical ages.

The earth is not unlike the human brain, in that it contains in itself certain memories of the past: and, just as we rummage out and hunt up in our brains old memories, so do the historian and the antiquary search about in the earth for that memory which it retains of those distant but glorious ages. But the universe, no less than the individual, has another memory besides the material one, and we have endeavoured (Art. 196) to convince our readers that nothing is really lost, the past being always present in the universe. If this be the case, it may readily be conceived that this universal memory may by some process of exaltation and intensification, or as it were by some relay battery of the universe, be occasionally quickened into such a life that the individual in the future and glorified state may be enabled (through the power of the Lord) to realise scenes that happened in the far distant past. For if so much can be accomplished with a thing so little plastic as the material memory of the earth, what may not be done with that infinitely more plastic form of existence which we term the world to come?

257. Again, if in this present world we have great difficulty in realising our own past, we have even greater difficulty in realising what is at this very moment taking place in remote parts of the present visible universe. Astronomers and Physicists agree that life is possible in the planet Mars, and it is quite likely that intelligent beings analogous to ourselves exist at the present moment on the surface of that planet, but we shall never in this life know for certain anything about them. There is an insurmountable barrier to physical inquiry as great as if Mars belonged to the unseen universe, instead of being, what he is in reality, our next-door neighbour in the present.

Now, may not this barrier be removed in the future state? This has been a favourite topic with scientific theologians, and we believe that all who have speculated on the conditions of a future life have unanimously agreed that we shall have much greater freedom of motion in the world to come. There can be no doubt that our relations to time and space will then be greatly altered and enlarged. Men shall run to and fro in the universe, and knowledge shall be increased.

258. But yet the picture is not altogether one of intellectual brightness and beauty. It wears also a moral aspect, and upon this almost exclusively the Christian records dwell. We are told in these records that nothing is forgotten. Christ tells us (St. Luke viii. 17), ‘Nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither anything hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.’ And again St. John tells us (Rev. xx. 12), ‘I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God: and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.’ This thought has been developed by the Rev. Alexander Macleod, D.D., in a work entitled Our own Lives the Books of Judgment. This author points out that in many cases it may not be even necessary to appeal to the universe for the record which is therein written, for this is sufficiently stamped upon the body itself, and he then draws a vivid and lurid picture of the sensual man in whom the mortal body is like a parchment written within and without—a truly mournful and terrible record of the deeds done in the body.

But if all this is possible with an organism possessing so little plasticity as the natural body, and where the wish of the individual is to preserve a respectable exterior, what must be the case in the soul[66] of such a man?—‘If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?’ What a hideous and horrible likeness must not that foul thing have that issues forth from the ‘grave and gate of Death’ into the presence of the Unseen and Eternal?

259. It is extremely striking to read in this connection the following extract from Plato’s Gorgias. We quote from Jowett’s translation. Socrates is the speaker:—

‘This is a tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, and from which I draw the following inferences: Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body;—this, and nothing else. And after they are separated they retain their several characteristics, which are much the same as in life; the body has the same nature and ways and affections, all clearly discernible; for example, he who by nature or training, or both, was a tall man while he was alive, will remain as he was after he is dead; and the fat man will remain fat; and so on: and the dead man, who in life had a fancy to have flowing hair, will have flowing hair. And if he was marked with the whip and had the prints of the scourge, or of wounds in him while he was alive, you might see the same in the dead body; and if his limbs were broken or misshapen while he was alive, the same appearance would be visible in the dead. And, in a word, whatever was the habit of the body during life would be distinguishable after death, either perfectly or in a great measure and for a time. And I should infer that this is equally true of the soul, Callicles; when the man is stripped of the body all the natural or acquired affections of the soul are laid open to view. And when they come to the judge, as those from Asia came to Rhadamanthus, he places them near him and inspects them quite impartially, not knowing whose the soul is: perhaps he may lay hands on the soul of the great king, or of some other king or potentate, who has no soundness in him, but his soul is marked with the whip, and is full of the prints and scars of perjuries, and of wrongs which have been plastered into him by each action, and he is all crooked with falsehood and imposture, because he has lived without truth. Him Rhadamanthus beholds, full of all deformity and disproportion, which is caused by licence and luxury and insolence and incontinence, and despatches him ignominiously to his prison, and there he undergoes the punishment which he deserves.’

260. As, in Eastern monarchies, a veil was sometimes cast over the face of the guilty;[67] so in the New Testament the veil of darkness is drawn over the fate of the lost soul who falls into the hands of the living God. ‘And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding-garment: and he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding-garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’[68]

We greatly question whether any school of theologians have succeeded in throwing a single ray of real light into this mysterious region.[69] Our readers are well aware that there are three such schools. One of these contemplates the eternity of punishment physical, mental, or both; another the final salvation of all men; while a third expects the annihilation of the wicked in Gehenna. Now while it is entirely without our province to enter into these discussions, we may yet be permitted to point out that, as it appears to us, the principle of Continuity demands not merely one state, but rather an eternal and infinite succession of states, in order to constitute true immortality.

The precise conditions of such an immortality it is not for us to discuss. Under any school of theological thought a glorious immortality implies the ultimate union, morally and spiritually, of the individual with the Divine over-life, while the fate of the impenitent must surely be something so awful that language fails to bring it fully before the mind.

261. But this graphic and powerful picture of the fate of the lost fared as badly as other New Testament conceptions when it fell into the hands of the materialists of the middle ages. Its meaning was entirely altered, and the Christian Hell, instead of being the Gehenna of the Universe, where all its garbage and filth is consumed, was changed into a region shut in by adamantine walls and full of impossible physical fires—the Devil being the chief stoker.

The one idea is awful, while the other is simply grotesque. An antient Jew who had occasion to pass by the valley of Hinnom, and whose senses were invaded by the sights and smells of that doleful region, must have entertained a conception of the Hell described by Christ as different as possible from that which has reached us from the middle ages, and to which some even of the readers of this book may have been accustomed in their earlier years. The reader who desires to know something of the more than fiendish malignity with which human beings (mainly Christian ministers) have improved upon the solemn but markedly reserved language of Scripture on such points has only to refer to the Inferno. Perhaps the hideous realism of Doré’s illustrations will of itself be enough for him. If not, a very few lines of the original cannot fail to suffice.

Since the time of Dante many attempts have been made, unsuccessfully, by men without his genius, to import additional horror.

To some extent no doubt Christ’s description of the Universal Gehenna must be regarded as figurative, but yet we do not think that the sayings of Christ with regard to the unseen world ought to be looked upon as nothing more than pure figures of speech. We feel assured that the principle of Continuity cries out against such an interpretation—may they not rather be descriptions of what takes place in the unseen universe brought home to our minds by means of perfectly true comparisons with the processes and things of this present universe which they most resemble? And just as, in the visible universe, there is apparently an enormous and inexplicable waste of germs, seeds, and eggs of all kinds, which die simply because they are useless—analogy would lead us to conclude that something similar, and to at least as enormous an extent, happens in the Unseen with the germs of spiritual frames. The caterpillar which has not chosen a secure place of refuge in which to assume the chrysalis form does not live to become a perfect insect. The seeds that fell by the wayside, though scattered by an intelligent sower, were devoured by the birds of the air. ‘Let every one of them pass away, like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.’ ‘For many are called, but few chosen.’[71]

262. Thus the Christian Gehenna bears to the Unseen Universe precisely the same relation as the Gehenna of the Jews did to the city of Jerusalem; and just as the fire was always kept up and the worm ever active in the one, so are we forced to contemplate an enduring process in the other.

For we cannot easily agree with those who would limit the existence of evil to the present world. We know now that the matter of the whole of the visible universe is of a piece with that which we recognise here, and the beings of other worlds must apparently be subject to accidental occurrences from their relation with the outer universe in the same way as we are. But if there be accident, must there not be pain and death? Now these are naturally associated in our minds with the presence of moral evil.

We are thus drawn, if not forced, to surmise that the dark thread known as evil is one which is very deeply woven into that garment of God which is called the Universe.

In fine, just as the arguments of this chapter lead us to regard the whole Universe[72] as eternal, so in like manner are we led to surmise that evil is eternal, and therefore we cannot easily imagine the Universe without its Gehenna, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. The process at all events would seem to us to be most probably an enduring one. [Many passages of the New Testament, however, seem to point to a continuity of moral development in the unseen universe, a development whose climax is to be reached when the last enemy, death, is destroyed in Gehenna.]

263. But it is fruitless to expect that Science should throw any light upon that greatest of all mysteries—the origin of evil. We have now come to a region where we must suffer ourselves to be led solely by the light which is given us in the Christian Records. And while here we would quote from a very remarkable work on the Lord’s Prayer[73] by the Rev. Charles Parsons Reichel, B.D., which exhibits in a singularly clear light the testimony given by Scripture, as well as the fruitlessness of all attempts to obtain information from any other quarter. Our first extract relates to the personality of ‘The Evil One:’—

‘In refutation’ (says the writer) ‘of the objections that have been urged against the personal existence of the Adversary, this one observation is quite enough: that of the world of spirits we cannot possibly know anything save by direct revelation. It is beyond the domain of the senses; it is beyond the cognisance of reason. A man born blind might therefore as rationally attempt to disprove by a process of reasoning the existence of a sense of which he can know nothing except by testimony, as we attempt by a process of reasoning to disprove the existence of a spirit of whose existence we can know nothing save by testimony. The only point to be ascertained in either case is whether the testimony be sufficient. If the testimony of Scripture be deemed sufficient, then I cannot see that it is possible to deny the Personal existence of Satan any more than that of God. How Satan exists, or where at the present time, or how his power avails, as we are told it does, to contrive and suggest temptations to the mind of man; and to what extent he is aware of what is passing in men’s minds, so as to adapt his suggestions to their weakness, we are not told, and do not therefore know. But our not being told the manner in which his power is exercised and brought to bear, is no proof of the unreality of that fearful Being who is everywhere in the New Testament exhibited as the adversary of God and goodness, whether in the individual, or in the development of the human race.’

The next passage is one which all of us may study with much advantage. It refers to temptation:—

‘Every risk incurred unnecessarily for the sake of exhibiting our trust in God, every unusual or unnecessary act done merely or chiefly for the purpose of displaying our privileges or our conviction, or of attracting attention and admiration, every stepping out of the plain, unadorned, and unadmired path of simple duty, is a phase of it.’

‘Why God should permit any of his creatures to be tempted is a question we can no more answer than we can that question of which indeed it is but a case, why God should permit evil to exist at all. But we know that evil does exist; and we know too that temptation does exist. That evil was first introduced into the world by a Being who goes under the name of Satan or the Adversary (2 Cor. xi. 3) we are told: that this Being endeavoured first to seduce, and afterwards to menace our Saviour into evil; and that he is constantly engaged in tempting us as he tempted Christ, we are also told.’

‘And the true rendering of the last clause in Christ’s own prayer would seem to intimate that the same Being is also busy in suggesting temptations to every follower of Christ—“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One.”’

264. But we must now draw to a close; first of all, however, let us briefly sum up the results of our discussion.

The great scientific principle which we have made use of has been the Law of Continuity. This simply means that the whole universe is of a piece; that it is something which an intelligent being is capable of understanding, not completely nor all at once, but better and better the more he studies it.

In this great whole which we call the Universe there is no impenetrable barrier to the intellectual development of the individual. Death is not such a barrier, whether we contemplate it in others, or whether we experience it ourselves. And the same continuity which has been insisted on with reference to our intellectual conceptions of the universe applies, we have little doubt, to the other faculties of man, and to other regions of thought.

When we regard the universe from this point of view we are led to a scientific conception of it which is, we have seen, strikingly analogous to the system which is presented to us in the Christian religion. For not only are the nebulous beginning and fiery termination of the present visible universe indicated in the Christian records, but a constitution and power are therein assigned to the Unseen Universe strikingly analogous to those at which we arrive by a legitimate scientific process.

265. Our readers are now in a position to perceive the result of questioning science in this manner, and of abandoning ourselves without mistrust or hesitation to the guidance of legitimate principles. It is that science so developed, instead of appearing antagonistic to the claims of Christianity, is in reality its most efficient supporter; and that the burden of showing how the early Christians got hold of a constitution of the unseen universe, altogether different from any other cosmogony, but similar to that which modern science proclaims, is transferred to the shoulders of the opponents of Christianity.

266. For the present we would only add that the principle, of the aid of which we have availed ourselves, is not a mere theological weapon, but will, we believe, ultimately prove a most powerful scientific auxiliary. Already we have used it in our endeavour to modify the most probable hypothesis which has been formed concerning the ultimate constitution of matter.

The truth is, that science and religion neither are nor can be two fields of knowledge with no possible communication between them. Such a hypothesis is simply absurd.

There is undoubtedly an avenue leading from the one to the other, but this avenue is through the unseen universe, and unfortunately it has been walled up and ticketed with ‘No road this way,’ professedly alike in the name of science at the one end, and in the name of religion at the other.

We are in hopes that when this region of thought comes to be further examined it may lead to some common ground on which followers of science on the one hand, and of revealed religion on the other, may meet together and recognise each other’s claims without any sacrifice of the spirit of independence, or any diminution of self-respect. Entertaining these views we shall welcome with sincere pleasure any remarks or criticism on these speculations of ours, whether by the leaders of scientific thought or by those of religious inquiry.

It must never be forgotten that, whether we take the scientific or the religious point of view, one great object of our life in the visible universe is obviously to learn; and that (as human beings are constituted) advance in learning necessarily implies a high purpose kept steadily before us, and a continuous and arduous pursuit. For, as we are told in the First Epistle of John, ‘This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith.’

Τῷ νικῶντι δώσω αὐτῷ φαγεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ξύλου τῆς ζωῆς ...

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THOMAS AND ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY