the advent of man. Divine Interferences. 177 He seems to have had his first dwelling in the East, where flesh-food was not strictly necessary for him -a pleasant land. "These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good, Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then!" Paradise Lost. The history of the earth is wonderful. The consecutive formation of continents, deep oceans, and mountain-ranges indicate repeated upheavals, subsidences, and curvings, caused by the dissipation of heat. The extent and rapidity of these changes, the wear and tear of world-wide nature, were great in the earlier periods, and apparently irregular in their course, one wave interfering with another. It is not necessary to believe in many destructions and repeated new creations; we acknowledge an economy of internal and external partsa continuous connection between the distribution of living things over the globe, their variation and modification, and the relations of land and sea. These physical changes were not fortuitous; but, with the wonderful art in nature seen in form, ornament, and physiology, are the sum of the action of mysterious Energy on matter, and part of a great philosophy. Every one being the complex of so many relations, a conjuncture of so many events, a synthesis of so many energies, that to know one event thoroughly is not possible, except by an intuition embracing the whole universe. Unity everywhere is an expression of will, and varieties unbounded show that law is not fate-things being different when the conditions of their existence change. The origin of life was by the interference of a Power exceeding all that is mechanical in matter: the introduction of a new state from a previous state by means of a process which we cannot investigate, and of which we know nothing: nevertheless we can affirm-Life is not a functional product, but that by which function is possible and actual. When vegetation appeared, the inorganic was subjected; when animals came, the vegetable was subordinated; and when man entered, life-energies advanced to mental and moral manifestations. The complication seems like a vast oceanswell. On the surface large billows roll, themselves bearing M smaller waves and wavelets roughened by riplets, the accumulated momentum disappearing only to reappear. Every commencement having origin in some pre-existing source of power, this power being the manifestation of a principle, active in every form of matter and path of motion, impressing our thought with the conviction that beyond all, and containing all, is the Infinite and Eternal. When godless men tell us that their mechanics are the highest phenomenal conception which can be formed to represent the Ineffable Reality, or rashly assert that humanity is the most perfect type of existence in the universe, they are like minnows mistaking their native rivulet for the outlying ocean. True men know that these rivulets have their origin in water-threads drawn from the mountain-side. They ascend the mountain, guided by the thread, till finally they arrive at the vast snowfields of the summit. There, where earth ceases, they stand perplexed, thrilled, awed-they worship; worship the great God who makes the thread of light, the cloud of spray, the leaping cataract, the flowing river, the sea-wave, the floating mist, the snow-flake, to be embodied histories-successions of events— in which alone the ultimate particles of matter are real and lasting. Of the innumerable combinations of matter in infinite space, and of the progressions of energy, we know but little. To assert that "yonder hundred million spheres" contain no forms of existence transcending manhood-as manhood transcends life in the rain-drop, that our intelligent will is not a sparklet of the Intelligent Will-is not so much a height of unwarrantable assumption as an abyss of folly. We are sure that there is a vast outlying Invisible World. No merely ideal production, though beyond the range of actual presentation, like snow at the North Pole. Mental vision, so far as science is concerned, being the only limit of verification; for the domain of the senses is almost infinitely small in comparison with the vast regions which can be traversed by the intellect. These regions are, some of them, in strict accordance with the visible, and may be dealt with in confidence; or they may be disengaged from conformity with the sensible, not written in any rubric of the known, though the phenomena Changes are Subject to Law. 179 presented to sense may afford a base line for some proximate measurement of the parallax of the inaccessible, or yield indistinct views of a spirit-world wholly unlike the material world. A spirit-world not ceasing to be spiritual because it has means of passage to, and modes of action on, our intellectual and moral nature; even as refined and immaterial existences freely pervade the grosser. Thus we perceive that our range of possible knowledge is infinite, nor must we allow Materialists to deprive us of those vast and glorious operations which belong to intelligence, nor to shut us within the bars of that which we touch, taste, see, hear, smell. The constant change by which the pole of our earth revolves round the pole of the ecliptic in 24,450 years, so that the polestar of to-day will not be the pole-star 3000 years hence, is a regulated process extending to all things, even to those which seem lawless. The two hundred and seventy volcanoes constantly or intermittently throwing out steam, hot ashes, and lava; the story of the submergence of an ancient continent, whether fabulous or true; the Atlantis of Plato, even if but a myth; may be accounted for by law. Law, infinite in variety of operation, making of the sea a continent, and of the continent a Polynesia; interspersing catastrophes with uniform operations, so that no catastrophe is too great or too sudden to be theoretically inconsistent with the reign of law; variations in flora and fauna being wrought by some continuous influence acting for ages, or, it may be, at some special moment starting out on a new line, or a comparatively swift energy stamping old forms with a new type. One germ is microscopic, but it develops into a highly organised animal. Another germ is also microscopic, but it becomes an animal altogether different, or no animal at all—a plant. These changes are all governed by a deep and wide-reaching law, but we are absolutely ignorant of it. Must we say, because our imperfect symbols whereby we try to realise that which sustains the law, are unable, apart from Revelation, to construct a science of the Deity, "Law is Fate?" Certainly not. The world, in some respects, is inscrutable as the Godhead; but we know much of that world, and that our will avails something in it; know of God, and that His will avails much more. To say that the Supreme must not be accounted Intelligent because all our notions of intelligence are limited, is equal to the absurdity of declaring that there cannot be one infinite space, because space, however extended, must lie within another space. It has been well said, "The undevout astronomer is mad.” Why mad? Because he knows, and no one better, that the worlds in space are manifestations of a Power to which no limits can be assigned, either in time or space. This is the scientific, fundamental truth as to Godhead, and the astronomer, the man of science, knows, unless he is the fool of Scripture, that "the heavens declare the glory of God." To tell us we must not worship God because His essence, His energy, His infinity, His eternity, His omnipresence, are incomprehensible, draws forth the reply, "When our intelligence is baffled, when the Infinite confronts us, we worship." Not ignorantly, not measuring the Creator by the creature, we adore Him as that highest absolute Being in whom all possibilities of existence are comprehended. We consecrate memories of the illustrious dead-those who, under God, have made us what we are. We rejoice in that communion of saints, unseen yet real, whose heroic sufferings rise melodiously to heaven as a sacred prayer-whose heroic actions are a psalm of praise; and our enthusiasm grows into devotion, reverence, and majestic grandeur, when assembled myriads worship. We take facts as we find them. Butler said, "Things are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be; why, then, should we desire to be deceived?" The duration of life on our globe is but a single pulsation of the mighty life of the universe. Nay, the duration of the planetary system itself is scarcely more. Life, then, is a very small matter; yet, for life the whole scheme seems planned. Countless other systems, unless science is utterly at fault, passed through their processes and died out, that our sun and his family might be formed of their nebulæ; and countless others will be built when our habitation of life has fallen to ruin. The infinite universe is, and must be, so far as we can understand, without beginning and without end. The centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. Not suns only, but systems of suns, and galaxies of systems, are passing Life in other Worlds. 181 to higher and higher orders-connected with time intervals infinitely great and infinitely small. Infinitely small as compared with eternity in which they are lost. Infinitely great in comparison with the duration of our earth, and the yet smaller span of its existence as a dwelling for life. Nevertheless, it is at the least "probable that every member of every orderplanet, sun, galaxy, and so onward to higher and higher orders endlessly-has been, is now, or will hereafter be, life-supporting 'after its kind.'" It is therefore utter unwisdom to suppose that our earth is the only inhabited orb of the universe. Though, when we scan the sky, millions of lifeless worlds are found-for every life-sustaining star; and though the lifesustaining condition of stars and suns and galaxies is a period short indeed as compared with their duration; yet that lifeperiod is their flower and fruit time. It seems, indeed, as if the support of life was nature's great purpose. Land, water, air, teem with life. In the bitter cold of arctic regions, with strange alternations of long summer day and long winter night, frozen seas, perennial ice, and scanty vegetation, life has its hundred forms. The torrid zone, blazing with heat, parched with drought, fierce raging hurricanes driving away oppressive calms, contains myriads and myriads of living things. Mountain summits, depths of valleys, midocean, arid desert, are all inhabited. So, likewise, in past ages there was abundant life. No trace remains of millions and millions of the primitive living creatures in the earliest eras; yet, from the remains of other eras we know that living creatures abounded in the sea-forming strata after strata; and that on the land multitudes of creatures fed. This incalculable multiplication of life on earth is due to solar agency; and physical laws, like those ruling our planet, are traced everywhere; the unbounded diffusion of sun and starlight warrants our faith that there is life in many worlds. The same physical laws operate wherever matter is, and we reasonably conclude that the same moral power exists in every abode of mind. Why may not the universe be aglow with the lamplight and hearth-light of many happy homes? The suns are not mere gilded shows, nor blazing points. They are sources 1 "Life in Other Worlds:" Richard A. Proctor. |