REESE LIBRARY 
 
 ;HK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Acctssions 
 
 Shelf No. 
 

 
 
 
 
THE INFINITE 
 
 AND 
 
 THE FINITE. 
 
 BY THEOPHILUS PARSONS. 
 
 UNIVERSITY!) 
 
 O S T O N : 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1872. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1872, by 
 
 THEOPHILUS PARSONS, 
 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 PRKSS OK JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 WHAT is MATTER? 12 
 
 I. OF THE BELIEF IN GOD 20 
 
 II. OF THE NATURAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES 23 
 
 III. OF THE SPIRITUAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES 28 
 
 IV. OF THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL AF- 
 
 FECTIONAL FACULTIES 42 
 
 V. OF SOME RELATIONS BETWEEN THE NATURAL 
 
 AND THE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES .... 51 
 VI. OF THE COMPARATIVE STRENGTH OF THE 
 
 NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES . 63 
 
 VII. OF THE IDEA OF GOD 70 
 
 VIII. OF THE GROWTH OF THE IDEA OF GOD . . 78 
 
 IX. GOD AN INFINITE PERSON 80 
 
 X. MAN is IMMORTAL 8(3 
 
 XI. OF FREEDOM 91 
 
 XII WHENCE THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM ? 100 
 
 XIII OUR LIFE OUR OWN AND YET GOD S LIFE . 112 
 XIV. WHAT is THE PREPARATION FOR ANOTHER 
 
 LIFE? ; 119 
 
 XV. How THE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES REGARD THE 
 
 NATURAL FACULTIES 121 
 
 XVI OF THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 127 
 
 XVII. REVELATION 181 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 XVIII. THE SUCCESSION OF REVELATIONS . * . . 134 
 
 XIX. CORRESPONDENCE 137 
 
 XX. THE TEST OF CORRESPONDENCE .... 140 
 
 XXI. THE ANCIENT CHURCHES 142 
 
 XXII. THE BIBLE .- 143 
 
 XXIII. THE FIRST CHRISTIAN REVELATION ... 146 
 
 XXIV. THE SECOND CHRISTIAN REVELATION . . 148 
 XXV. A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MATERIAL 
 
 WORLD AND THE SPIRITUAL WORLD . . 152 
 
 XXVI. SWEDENBORG 156 
 
 XXVII. SPIRITISM 103 
 
 XXVIII. WlIO RECEIVE THE LATEST REVELATION . 1G9 
 
 XXIX. THE WORD OF GOD CANNOT PASS AWAY . 173 
 
 XXX. FUTURE REVELATIONS 175 
 
 XXXI. HE COMES WITH POWER 177 
 
 XXXII. AND WITH GREAT GLORY 181 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 ^^ilPQU^^^ 
 
 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 WHATEVER is was created, excepting the Creator. 
 If we go up with the ascending series of cause and 
 effect, when we come to the summit we find that 
 which was not caused ; for if it were caused, we must 
 go a step farther to find its cause. And that which 
 is at the summit, and is itself not caused, has the 
 whole series below it, and must be the cause of all 
 causation. 
 
 The totality of being consists of Creator and 
 created. But the Creator, whom we will call God, 
 did not create out of nothing. If God willed that 
 something should be which was not before, His will, 
 His thought, His power, were there, and clothed 
 themselves with the effect and were in the thing He 
 caused to be. He did not create out of nothing ; for 
 if what He created consisted of nothing, it would 
 be nothing. He created from Himself, and is Him 
 self the substance of all that is ; for He created all 
 things from His own substance, and is in all things 
 

 6 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 that are. In the phrase which the Apostles used so 
 often, He is " All in All." Is this Pantheism ? It 
 would be so if we held that the totality of created 
 things constituted God, and all the God there is. 
 But then there would be no Creator. The doctrine 
 above expressed is discriminated from Pantheism, by 
 two truths which find no place in that dreary theory. 
 One is, that God, the cause, exists prior to the created 
 universe, or to the effect, and remains as distinct 
 from it after creation as before. 
 
 Prior in degree, in nature: I do not say prior 
 in time ; for when we attempt a consideration of the 
 beginning in time of the putting forth of Divine 
 power in the wo"rk of creation, we go beyond 1 he 
 limitations of finite thought. But God is prior to 
 the universe in degree, and perfectly distinct from it 
 while He forms and fills it. 
 
 The other truth which is indeed but another 
 form of the first, or a consequence of it is that the 
 created universe is as distinct from God as He is dis 
 tinct from His creation ; for God, the Creator, gives to 
 every thing He creates to be itself, to be other than 
 Him, and distinct from Him ; or, in other words, He 
 so creates every thing that it may possess its own 
 identity or selfhood, and thus be itself and not 
 Him. In the lowest, or mineral kingdom, by force 
 of this selfhood the solid earth with all it contains, 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 without knowledge and without will, performs its 
 functions as the home, the feeder, and the instru 
 ment of all things that live. The vegetable king 
 dom performs its functions, and especially that of 
 drawing from the lower kingdom nutriment, and 
 preparing therefrom nutriment for the kingdom 
 above it. It does this without knowledge and with 
 out will, but with the semblance of both in many of 
 what seem its efforts to do its work. 
 
 Animals resting on the mineral kingdom and fed 
 by the vegetable kingdom, by force of this selfhood, 
 not only do their appointed work, but do this with a 
 consciousness of every effort they make, and with 
 every effort springing from a will, but with no knowl 
 edge whatever of the ultimate purpose of what they 
 do and what they are. And then we rise to man. He 
 is above animals in all respects, and has what they 
 have, and more ; and all with a boundless capacity of 
 indefinite development. In nothing is this superi 
 ority greater than in the nature and effect of that 
 selfhood or identity which makes him to be himself, 
 and perfectly distinct from his Creator. And the 
 higher character and greater completeness of this 
 selfhood in man is the cause from which the whole 
 of his superiority, including his immortality, pro 
 ceeds, and the ground on which it rests. 
 
 For this universal selfhood of creation is more 
 
8 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 than selfhood with man. It is in him ownhood, an 
 ownhood of his life and of himself. For God gives 
 to him to be most truly and most perfectly himself, 
 by giving to him this perfect ownhood of himself 
 and of his life. 
 
 The created universe and all things in it are per 
 fectly distinct from God. And man, especially, is 
 himself, and not a part of God, and is most perfectly 
 distinct from God. And now we must remember 
 that distinctness is not independence. For if the 
 universe and man are entirely distinct from God, 
 they are most perfectly, constantly, and absolutely 
 dependent upon Him; just as dependent upon Him 
 always for their continued existence as they were 
 for their creation at the beginning of their being. 
 There can be no time to the eternal, and no space 
 to the infinite ; for only to us, the finite and created, 
 do time and space belong. This must be so, how 
 ever difficult it may be to apprehend and apply this 
 truth. But in the degree in which we are able to 
 comprehend it, and make use of it in our thoughts 
 concerning God, we shall be able to see that creation 
 is not a completed work, but the continual, unceas 
 ing, constant, ever-present work of an ever-creating, 
 ever-immanent God. 
 
 Then we shall see that not only our whole being, 
 but every part and element of our being, is con- 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 stantly and unceasingly given to us. As we do not 
 see to-day by the light which came to us yesterday, 
 so we do not live to-day by the life which came to 
 us yesterday or at our birth. We see always by 
 the light which comes now, and we live always by 
 the life which comes now. Every affection, every 
 motive, every feeling, every thought or other intel 
 lectual state or act, comes to us from the Source of 
 life, then when we possess it. 
 
 But because man has life, and this ownhood of his 
 life, he has freedom. I shall have occasion to say 
 more about freedom hereafter. There are those 
 who deny it altogether. The argument for its im 
 possibility, which to some minds seems decisive and 
 unanswerable, is this : Whatever is must be the effect 
 of some cause. That cause could produce only that 
 effect, and must produce that effect. But that cause 
 is itself the effect of a prior cause. Carry the series 
 as far backward or forward as we will, the law re 
 mains the same. Always whatever is must be the 
 effect of a cause which could not but produce that 
 effect, and could not produce any other effect. This 
 argument, which is not wholly unsound as to things 
 without life, is fatally erroneous as to things having 
 life, because it takes no notice of a higher law than 
 that on which it rests ; and this is that freedom is an 
 element of life and belongs necessarily to life. An 
 
10 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 organism which is wholly without freedom has no 
 life ; it is a machine ; it is dead. The possession of 
 freedom of some kind is that which differentiates 
 living organisms from machines. Indeed a living 
 organism w hen it loses all its freedom loses all its 
 life, and becomes less than a machine, because it 
 cannot be moved by a force from without. Freedom 
 may be variously modified in things having life, but 
 cannot be wholly suppressed and leave any life. 
 And this necessary element of life, this freedom 
 which belongs to life, enables things having life to 
 act in some way and measure on things not having 
 life, and thus affects the series of cause and effect 
 which belongs to them. 
 
 Man s ownhood of his life, and his freedom, are as 
 perfect as if they were given him at the moment of 
 his birth, to last while he lives and be always per 
 fect. This freedom, as to the spiritual part of his 
 nature and his spiritual destiny, is always perfect. 
 As to his external life and nature, it is constantly 
 modified and restrained just so far as his spiritual 
 interests require. But his spiritual freedom is con 
 stant. Into this ownhood, this freedom, all that his 
 Creator gives him is constantly given. Life, and all 
 the moral and spiritual elements of his life, are sub 
 jected to his own will; and he may do with them 
 what he wills. He may use them as they were given 
 to be used, or he may pervert and misuse them. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 11 
 
 Hence man, and man alone, has duty. Hence he 
 determines his own destiny, and he does this by 
 determining his own character. Hence are for him 
 the hope and the possibility of eternal happiness. 
 And hence this is only hope and possibility, and not 
 certainty. In later pages I may endeavor to show 
 that the highest conceivable happiness of a created 
 being is to receive into his own will and by his own 
 choice, and in his own freedom appropriate to him 
 self, divine life and the happiness which belongs to 
 it; and because this is the highest happiness, the 
 divine goodness, because perfect, must so create and 
 govern him as that he may be able to do this and 
 thus enjoy this happiness; and to this end must 
 give him ownhood of his life, and freedom; and 
 freedom, if real and actual, must be capable of abuse, 
 and equally capable of use and of abuse. 
 
 If we return to the material universe, there too 
 we shall find that creation is a constant work ; and 
 that the support, the maintenance in being of what 
 has been created, is a continual creation of it. All 
 the forces and energies of Nature are but forms and 
 activities of the Divine force which forms and fills 
 them, and which is determined in its action and 
 manifestation and effect by the inmost form or na 
 ture of the created thing in which and through 
 which it acts ; and the methods of its activity are 
 what we call the laws of Nature. 
 
12 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 WHAT IS MATTER? 
 
 We say, and we say truly, we live in a material 
 body, and in a material world. But what is matter? 
 It has been already said that the Creator creates 
 the world from Himself, from His own substance, by 
 causing that to flow forth somewhat as heat and 
 light flow from the sun and sustain the earths around 
 it. This effluence, when it reaches the farthest limit 
 to which it goes or needs to go, forms and consti 
 tutes the substance of the material body with its 
 organs and sensories, and of the material world. 
 The infinite wisdom from which it flows forms the 
 material world, and forms all the things of the 
 material world in such perfect adaptation to our 
 organs and sensories, and it forms our organs and 
 sensories in such perfect adaptation to our minds, 
 that through these organs and sensories the outer 
 world affects the mind in such a way as to produce 
 sensations and what we call perceptions. And all 
 this adaptation of the world without to the sensories 
 and the senses, and to the mind which is within the 
 senses and receives their report, is so perfect, so 
 wonderful, as to offer an irresistible proof that intel 
 ligent design has presided over creation. 
 
 But what do we know of matter ? It is certain, 
 
WHAT IS MATTER? 13 
 
 and to whoever thinks it is obvious, that we know 
 directly only our own sensations, and our thoughts 
 about them. All the rest is inference. / 
 
 You are looking at a tree. What is it that you, 
 the perceiving being, see? Only a minute picture 
 painted on the back of the eye. It is painted there 
 because the eye is an optical instrument, which, in 
 accordance with the laws of optics, brings all the 
 rays of light from that tree to a focus on the retina, 
 -just as the glasses of a photographic camera bring 
 all the rays of light from an object to a focus on the 
 plate, and paint its picture there. This is all the 
 mind can see, if indeed it can be said to see this. 
 
 Why, then, do I think I am looking at a tree of 
 that size and in that place? Certainly not from 
 sight alone. To the babe the moon is as near as the 
 lamp on the table. Presently he begins to touch 
 and handle things. He moves, and reaches some 
 things sooner than others. The sense or thought of 
 time, of space, of place, shape and dimension, of 
 effort and resistance, dawns upon him. Day by day 
 his sensations grow more numerous and diversified. 
 Unconsciously he compares them and draws his 
 inferences ; and all this before he is old enough to 
 know his own thoughts distinctly, or remember them 
 afterwards. So he grows up with a world around 
 him, of which he has no more doubt than of his 
 
14 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 own existence. Nor need he or should he doubt. 
 It exists as much as he does. He thinks he knows 
 that it is there where he sees and feels it, and that it 
 is what he sees and feels. But all he does know, or 
 can know, is that through his sensations, and his 
 thoughts about his sensations, something produces 
 the impressions which he has. 
 
 Idealist philosophers in all ages have followed out 
 this train of thought, until it led some of them still 
 farther, even to the conclusion that there was no 
 real world outside of sensation and of thought. 
 This was a fatal error. 
 
 Their argument, that sensation can tell us only of 
 itself, and that thought about sensation can tell us 
 only that these sensations have a cause, is sound. 
 But their conclusion, that nothing without us causes 
 our sensations, so offends our inevitable convictions, 
 that these philosophers never believed it themselves, 
 and none ever believed it. I cannot be more sure 
 there is a ME, than I am that there is a NOT ME. 
 And it is true ; for the totality of being consists of 
 God, who is Being in Himself and the Source of all 
 being, of spiritual substance created by Him, and of 
 material substance created by Him ; and this mate 
 rial substance is created for the wants and the use 
 of spiritual being, and is adapted to those wants and 
 that use. But of what this substance is, in itself. 
 
WHAT IS MATTEK? 15 
 
 and independently of the sensations it produces, 
 we know absolutely nothing. The statement that 
 " mind makes matter," if used in one sense, has some 
 truth; and in another has none whatever. It is 
 inaccurate if when we say "make" we mean 
 "create." The mind does not create any thing: 
 there is but one Creator, God. That which un 
 derlies matter and is its substance flows forth from 
 the Divine substance. But mind causes, or rather 
 co-operates to cause, the form, shape, incidents, and 
 appearance, under which we give to this substance 
 the name of Matter. This is not a false appearance ; 
 it is not an appearance as of something where there 
 is nothing. It is a true appearance of a most actual 
 reality. But this reality is one of which we can 
 know nothing whatever, but from the action of mind 
 on the impressions made by this substance on the 
 mind through and by means of the senses. Nor can 
 we in this way learn or know any thing of this 
 substance as it is in itself. 
 
 The exceeding importance of this truth lies in the 
 rational belief which it permits us, that we may 
 have a body, a home, and a world, when we leave 
 this world. If material substance is but the efflu 
 ence from and of the Divine substance, caused to be 
 and to affect us in a certain way for our use and 
 benefit while we live in this world, the same efflu- 
 
16 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 ence from the same Divine substance may provide 
 for us, when we rise from this body, a body and all 
 organs and sensories of spiritual substance, and a 
 home and a world of spiritual substance, as exqui 
 sitely adapted to our organs and sensories, and to act 
 on us and on our minds through our organs and sen 
 sories, as this world now is. 
 
 We have no reason to believe that we, our bodies, 
 or our world, will be just the same then and there 
 that they are now and here. But I would defer to 
 a later part of this work my reasons for believing 
 that they will be not the same, but similar, or rather 
 correspondent. Let me now, however, add a word 
 concerning Space and Time. They are not beings, 
 not existing things : they are instruments or forms 
 or methods of thought. And in saying this I only 
 repeat what all philosophy now asserts ; and I will 
 not attempt to present the familiar argument which 
 leads to this conclusion. 
 
 We look at an insect one-tenth of an inch long. 
 We wish to examine it, and we make use of a lens 
 magnifying tenfold in linear direction, and the insect 
 is now an inch long. We say it is one-tenth of an 
 inch long, and seems to be an inch long because we 
 see it through that convex glass. But it is the con 
 vex lenses of the eye which make it appear one-tenth 
 of an inch long. If they were more or less convex, 
 
WHAT IS MATTER? 17 
 
 it would be longer or shorter. Perhaps we see, in 
 a book on Entomology, two drawings of the insect, 
 one a tenth of an inch long, and this is marked 
 " actual size " ; and the other an inch long, and this 
 is marked " magnified ten times." And yet one of 
 these is just as much the actual size as the other. 
 Seen through the lenses of the eye, it has the 
 shorter length ; if we add another lens, it has the 
 greater length. If the added lens is concave, it 
 looks less than one-tenth of an inch. We cannot 
 see it at all except through the lenses of the eye ; 
 and their form and arrangement, and nothing else 
 whatever, determine the length it shall seem to have. 
 This we may diminish or enlarge at pleasure by 
 using additional lenses; and through all these 
 lenses, those in the head and those outside of it, 
 light, acting in accordance with certain known laws, 
 paints the picture we contemplate, and paints it 
 such in shape and dimension as those lenses 
 whether made for us or made by us determine. 
 What, then, is an inch, or a tenth of an inch, in 
 length ? 
 
 Let a reader imagine that, while he sleeps to 
 night, the whole world, with all things in it, becomes 
 ten or a hundred times larger than before ; and that 
 lie too, and all that is in him or belongs to him, 
 within or without, and all motion and all action, 
 
 2 
 
18 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 grow in precisely the same way and proportion. 
 He could know nothing of this change when he 
 wakes. Measured by any standard he could apply, 
 spontaneously or by effort, the outer world would be 
 just what it was before, and would seem so. 
 
 Has it, then, any actual size or place? It has 
 existence, but it has no size or place excepting what 
 sensation and thought cause it to have.* 
 
 * One of the latest and most important discoveries of natural 
 science has suggested that all the forces and energies of Nature, 
 electric, magnetic, or actinic, heat and light, and even motion itself, 
 are resolvable into each other, and are but the varied forms and 
 effects of one force. This new truth is sometimes called the Doctrine 
 of the Unity of Force. It is not yet perhaps established, and cer 
 tainly not well understood. When it is, it will be extended upwards 
 until it embrace^ mind and thought and affection ; and yet farther, 
 until it covers all the life and activities of the spiritual world ; and 
 yet farther, until it touches the throne of God. For there is primarily 
 and originally but one Force; and it is the Infinite Love of God 
 which in itself utterly inaccessible to defining thought, and beyond 
 all adequate conception comes forth, self-impelled, and creates and 
 fills all forms of being. If, then, we ask why, if all forces are one 
 in essence and in origin, they are so diversified in their appearance 
 and in their action, we find the answer in the principle that this One 
 force or energy is always determined in its manifestation, its char 
 acter, its aspect and effect, by the inmost nature of the things which it 
 form s and fills; which it forms for that purpose and fills with that 
 effect. 
 
 The oldest religious philosophy which ever existed among men, 
 so far as we know, had its home in India. The foundation-myth 
 of the whole was, that, when Brahm proposed to himself to create the 
 universe, he took as his wife Maya, and all things are their children. 
 Brahm is the name of the absolute and infinite Being, from whom 
 
WHAT IS MATTER? 19 
 
 Then, What and Where is the external world we 
 now live in? It is what the mind makes it and 
 where the mind places it, acting on impressions 
 made upon the mind through the senses by material 
 substance. 
 
 And What and Where is the external world of 
 the life after death? It is what the mind makes it 
 and where the mind places it, acting on impressions 
 made upon the mind through the senses by spiritual 
 substance. 
 
 And what are material substance and spiritual 
 
 all being proceeds. Maya means "appearance." This, at least, 
 from all I have been able to learn of it, was its primary meaning. 
 This name is sometimes translated "illusion"; and if this be its 
 true meaning, it -would follow that the falsity of a pure idealism 
 existed even then. But if, or while, the word meant Appearance, 
 we may believe that they thought that all existing things received 
 their being from the Infinite, and their form and manner of being 
 from Appearance. Then, they who, after the fashion of that age, 
 expressed their philosophical theory by that myth, held that what 
 ever we see or hear or feel or taste or touch is but the effect, mani 
 festation, and appearance of that of which we can know nothing 
 else from our sensations, or from sensuous thought concerning our 
 sensations, than this Appearance ; arid the outer world is made to 
 bear this appearance to our senses, and to our minds through our 
 senses, that we may thus have a body, a home, and a world. This 
 we believe ; and also that the need of these will go with us when we 
 leave this world, and will be supplied as it is now. And all ex 
 ternal things will be seen and known in Space and Time ; but Space 
 and Time so modified and changed, and with them all external 
 things, as our new condition will then require. 
 
20 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 substance? Two forms or modes of the one sub 
 stance which flows forth from its Divine origin, and 
 takes one or the other of these forms, to provide for 
 man a body and a world, first in this beginning of 
 life, and then in the life which follows this. 
 
 As God is the beginning of all being, so the 
 knowledge of God is the beginning of all knowledge 
 concerning things which belong to man as immortal. 
 Let us now inquire into the origin and nature of 
 man s belief of God, and the manner in which and 
 the purpose for which this belief is given to us. 
 
 I. OF THE BELIEF IN GOD. 
 
 It has been often said that a belief in God, of 
 some kind or measure, belongs to human nature, 
 and is inevitable and universal. If any tribes are 
 found so utterly savage that they seem to have no 
 religion whatever, it is said that a more thorough 
 knowledge or a more careful inquiry would detect 
 some notion of a governing God, although it might 
 be dim and clouded. .And if men of ability and cul 
 ture deduce their unbelief from what they consider 
 logical reasoning and declare it unreservedly, it is 
 then said that they are mistaken as to their own 
 opinions, and that within their ratiocinative denial 
 
THE BELIEF IN GOD. 21 
 
 lies an unconscious belief, because the heart refuses 
 to listen to argument on this point. It may be 
 doubted whether this be quite so. 
 
 There seem to be some savages so wholly brutified 
 that no spark of religion, even in the perverted form 
 of superstition, can be detected by the sharpest 
 scrutiny. 
 
 On the other hand, there have been in all ages, 
 and certainly are in this, men distinguished for intel 
 lectual power and cultivation, who not only assert, 
 but manifest, in the whole course of their thought 
 and the whole structure of their opinions, absence 
 of all belief in a God. This absence must be ad 
 mitted as to them, unless we are prepared to say 
 that this belief is so necessary a part of human 
 thought that no evidence can prove its absence. 
 We may at least conclude that if a belief in the 
 existence of a God cannot be wholly extirpated 
 from a human mind, it may be to the last degree 
 dim and feeble in such savages on the one hand, and 
 in such men of high culture on the other. 
 
 How is this to be accounted for? Here are two 
 classes of men standing at the opposite extremes of 
 intellectual ability, natural or acquired; and they 
 agree in this most exceptional condition of mind, 
 a condition so exceptional that many doubt whether 
 it can exist, and would not admit its existence with 
 out decisive evidence. 
 
THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 If the class of nearly brutal savages stood alone, 
 there would be no difficulty. It would be said only 
 that such an instance proved that something more 
 than mere human nature was necessary to*this be 
 lief; or, in other words, that it was possible for 
 beings to exist who were no higher than animals in 
 this respect, but in others lifted so distinctly above 
 animals that the name of man could not be refused 
 to them. 
 
 But how is it when we find these savages stand 
 in this respect on a common ground with some who 
 are commonly ranked among the ablest thinkers 
 that have lived? What is the connecting link be 
 tween them ? Or if we go farther, and say that we 
 find such instances not only at these extremes of 
 intellect, but that all the way from the bottom to 
 the summit there may be found some a very few, 
 but still some of every grade of power and culture, 
 who stand in this exceptional condition of mind, the 
 question then takes this form : what is the connect 
 ing link which gathers into this class of persons 
 who deny or do not know that there is a God, men 
 who in all other respects are so entirely apart, and 
 so far apart ? 
 
 The answer we would give requires some analysis 
 of the human mind and character. 
 
THE NATURAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 23 
 
 n. OF THE NATURAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 
 
 We often say that man has a body and a soul, 
 and only these ; and whatever belongs to him as a 
 part of his selfhood belongs either to his body or 
 to his soul. If we accept this as an accurate and 
 exhaustive division of the elements of human nature, 
 let us look a little at each of them. 
 
 Man s body makes it possible for him to live on 
 earth. Not only so, but his material body is exqui 
 sitely adapted to this material earth. The indefi 
 nitely various bodies of all animals are adapted to 
 the earth, so far at least that it provides for them a 
 home, where the individual existence may be sup 
 ported and preserved, the race propagated, and some 
 degree of comfort or pleasure .be enjoyed. But ani 
 mals differ among themselves exceedingly on this 
 point. Some get vastly more out of the earth than 
 others. Some are adapted to the earth far more 
 completely than others, so that they can utilize it to 
 a far greater extent. On this point, as on most 
 others, man far exceeds all other animals. Not, 
 however, because his body is so much better adapted 
 to the earth than theirs, but because he has also 
 mental faculties additional to theirs ; or, if the same 
 in character as theirs, of far greater strength, which 
 
24 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 are exquisitely adapted to bring the general adapta* 
 tion of the body to the earth into the fullest devel 
 opment, the greatest activity, and the most important 
 results. 
 
 Thus man alone can make and use tools or instru 
 ments. By these he asserts a superiority over all 
 animals, and a far greater capacity than theirs for 
 making use of the earth. But beyond this, indefi 
 nitely beyond this, he has faculties perfectly adapted: 
 to observation of the earth, to an investigation into 
 all its forms and forces, its laws and their results 
 and manifestations. Of this nothing is within the 
 reach of animals. But man possesses powers of this 
 kind, of which we may not say there is no limit to 
 them or to their work, but may say that, far as we 
 have advanced in this direction, every step forward 
 has revealed new possibilities, and given new cause 
 for effort and for hope. 
 
 It is by the cultivation of these faculties that all 
 natural science has reached its present stage of 
 growth. Among them may be ranked even the 
 mathematical faculty. This, in theory and in some 
 of its working, seems lifted above the earth. It 
 deals with abstract quantities and relations, which 
 exist only for the imagination. But the laws which 
 it investigates are only the inner laws of mate 
 rial things. When the mathematician has pushed 
 
THE NATURAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 25 
 
 his calculus to the farthest result he can now reach, 
 and has learned all it can tell him of the most tran 
 scendental curves and motions, the astronomer takes 
 these results and applies them to the sky, sure that 
 the deductions of pure reason are one with the laws 
 of the universe. Why are these truths within these 
 laws as their guides and masters ? Only by antici 
 pating what might perhaps be better said at a later 
 period, can we answer this question : they are there 
 because the reason which placed them there and 
 works within them is one with the reason in man 
 which finds them there. 
 
 Nor is it astronomy alone which seeks the aid of 
 mathematics. Chemistry, botany, and even geology, 
 are all invoking it. And the science which bears 
 the name of applied mathematics brings down the 
 best work of the pure reason to render service to 
 man in carrying on the business of life and procuring 
 its enjoyments. 
 
 How much farther man may go in these directions 
 none may say. It is only certain that we have not 
 reached the end, nor yet come within sight of the 
 end. The impossibilities of a few generations ago 
 are our actualities. Their dreams belong to our 
 waking life ; and, in some things now familiar to our 
 use, we have gone beyond even the dreams of former 
 generations. All this excites, and perhaps it justifies, 
 
26 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 a boundless hope for the future : the hope of a future 
 in which the material universe, and all there is in it 
 of substance, or force, or activity, will in some way 
 minister to the wants and promote the happiness of 
 man. 
 
 But of all these faculties, even in their widest 
 possible or conceivable development, one thing re 
 mains to be said. 
 
 None of them, no one of them nor the whole 
 together, belong to man as an immortal being, or 
 necessarily imply, or lead the thought to, immor 
 tality. And if they alone belonged to the human 
 mind, and constituted the whole of its intellectual 
 power or wealth, they could never lead the thoughts 
 towards any life other than life on this earth. 
 
 We have indeed at the present time what may be 
 regarded as positive proof, that these faculties, al 
 though exerted with the utmost vigor and reaching 
 the highest attainable success, have, of themselves, 
 no power and no tendency to look beyond this 
 world. We have this proof in the fact that so 
 many persons who stand in the very first class of 
 scientists at this day have but little scruple in 
 some instances, none whatever in letting it be 
 understood that they consider the things of another 
 world, or the fact of another world, as not within 
 the scope of human knowledge or rational belief. 
 
THE NATURAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 27 
 
 Some evidence to the same effect may be found 
 in the fact, that other eminent scientists, who de 
 clare their belief in God and in religion, separate 
 this belief entirely from scientific inquiry or thought ; 
 and some as Faraday, for example are of opinion 
 that religious faith is to be protected and preserved 
 only by an entire severance from those other topics 
 or processes of thought and knowledge. 
 
 The sell-contentment of these human faculties in 
 their own work has led to a conclusion which seems 
 to be now quite widely held, that the difference 
 between man and the lower animals is a difference 
 of degree and not of kind; inasmuch as we can see 
 in the animal kingdom the beginnings of all those 
 faculties which grow into greater strength and do 
 far greater work in man. This is true in respect to 
 all the faculties adapted only to utilize the earth for 
 practical or scientific purposes. But there is still a 
 decisive difference between man and animals, even 
 in respect to these faculties. Every animal is born 
 into possession of the faculties his parents had, and 
 can never enlarge them. He is not educated into 
 the use of his faculties ; nor does he inherit any 
 advance in the use, of them if his parents made any. 
 In fact they made and could make no advance. 
 The instances known of breeds of domestic animals 
 acquiring and transmitting new powers or new 
 
28 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 methods of using common powers, are, in the first 
 place, too slight to form a noticeable exception to 
 the rule. And in the next place, whatever may be 
 supposed by some theorists, we have no evidence that 
 even those improvements are ever effected except 
 among domestic animals, or are ever the results of 
 mere animal effort unaided by the care and training 
 of men. And even if we admit a gradual enlarge 
 ment and gain in successive generations of animals, 
 produced by " the struggle for life," or " the survival 
 of the fittest," or other causes, one thing remains 
 true and certain. It is, that animals cannot volun 
 tarily and consciously, and by efforts made for that 
 purpose, transmit all that one generation has learned 
 to the next, and so by accumulation through ages 
 add to the constantly growing mass of knowledge 
 of the external universe and to their ability to make 
 use of this universe. And so we reach the conclu 
 sion, that man has all the faculties to utilize the 
 earth which animals have, and yet other faculties 
 which make his power to utilize the earth vastly 
 greater than that which animals possess. 
 
 HI. OF THE SPIRITUAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 
 
 All the faculties we have spoken of above are nat 
 ural to man. We use this phrase because by Nature 
 
THE SPIRITUAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 29 
 
 from nascor, to be born we mean the world 
 into which man is born and all that belongs to it, 
 and all those faculties of his mind which enable him 
 to study and comprehend the external universe, 
 and enlarge indefinitely his scientific knowledge 
 thereof, and make use of its substances, its forces 
 and its laws, for his own benefit. We call these 
 faculties, therefore, his natural faculties. It is a con 
 venient phrase ; and, if the definition we have given 
 be remembered, we shall not be misunderstood 
 when we make use of it. 
 
 The important fact which we would now remem 
 ber is, that the natural faculties of man do not lead 
 him to any knowledge or belief of God or of another 
 life ; and do not, of themselves, cause or suggest 
 any thought of that kind. They are adapted to 
 this earth in the most perfect manner. This is their 
 end and purpose ; and to this end and purpose they 
 are entirely adequate. And to this end and purpose 
 they are confined and limited, in their capacity and 
 in their action. Of themselves and in their own 
 activity, they stop short of any thought or any 
 knowledge or belief, other than belong to this world 
 and the things of this life. 
 
 And yet it is certain that all or very nearly 
 all men have a belief, or thoughts, referring in 
 some form or measure to another life. How is this 
 
30 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 to be accounted for ? By the fact that man has, in 
 addition to his natural faculties, another class of 
 faculties. These differ so entirely from the natural 
 faculties, that they constitute between man who pos 
 sesses them, and animals who do not possess them 
 in the slightest measure, a difference which is not a 
 difference of degree, but radically and essentially a 
 difference of kind. This difference constitutes in 
 deed the essential difference between man and the 
 lower animals. Only by considering it, only by 
 learning as well as we may what this difference is, 
 and whence it arises, and what is its effect, can we 
 arrive at just results concerning human nature. 
 
 It must be very difficult to many to see that this 
 is so ; and to some it must be impossible. The rea 
 son is, that it can be seen to be true only by an 
 exercise of these higher faculties, because they only 
 can take cognizance of this matter. And this again 
 is a hard saying. Perhaps it may be made easier by 
 some considerations which may lead us to see why 
 it is that man possesses faculties of these two classes, 
 distinguished from each other in this way. 
 
 I must, in the first place, assume that there is a 
 God ; and this I do without the slightest attempt, at 
 this time, to prove His existence, and still remem 
 bering that the natural faculties cannot recognize 
 this truth. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 31 
 
 In the idea of God, and by this I mean in every 
 actual idea of God, must be included the idea that 
 He in some way made the universe and man, and 
 governs both. At all events, I assume this; and 
 admit at once that if this be not admitted I have no 
 basis whatever for the argument I now attempt to 
 present. 
 
 It does not necessarily follow from the fact that 
 God made man, that man is immortal. But if it be 
 admitted that God made man and the universe, and 
 placed man here and made man such as he is, there 
 are reasons enough derivable from man s relations to 
 the universe, and from his mental, moral, and phys 
 ical nature, for believing that man is immortal. But 
 these reasons can have no force or effect unless they 
 are seen and weighed by the spiritual faculties. It 
 is my present purpose to show the reasonableness 
 of believing the existence of these faculties ; and I 
 will not attempt to show this by an inference from 
 the work they do, but again assume man s immor 
 tality. 
 
 I stand then here : I assume that God made man, 
 and made him to be immortal. This means that 
 God made the universe as a home for man, not only 
 in the beginning of his being, but made him such, 
 that, after he had ceased to live in this world 
 or state or manner, he should live in another 
 
THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 world or state or manner, and should live there 
 always. 
 
 And now my argument is, that, if God made man 
 to live first in this world, he would give him facul 
 ties adequate to this world and suited to make the 
 most of it. And if God made man to live another 
 life after this has ceased, he would make this life 
 such, in its relation to the other, that it might be 
 preparatory for the other, or helpful to man consid 
 ered as one who would live after he ceased to live 
 here ; and would give him faculties by which he 
 would make this use of this life. 
 
 We know that man has faculties, many and vari 
 ous faculties, perfectly adapted to utilize this earth 
 in every way that begins and ends upon this earth. 
 So much no one ever doubted. But to him who be 
 lieves that man only begins to live here, and that 
 God places him here so to begin life, and gives him 
 
 these faculties adapted to this beginning of life, 
 
 to him it will seem most reasonable to believe that 
 God made him to begin life here, with a view to his 
 living hereafter, and with the purpose that by living 
 here he might live more happily hereafter ; and that 
 if God gave man faculties admirably adapted to 
 utilize this life in itself, so he would give him 
 faculties by which while living here he could utilize 
 this life for another life. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 33 
 
 More than this. If life is limited here, and the 
 life hereafter is without limit, it must be infinitely 
 more reasonable to believe that God would give man 
 faculties suited to prepare him by a due exercise 
 thereof for that unending life, than that he would 
 give him faculties suited to live comfortably here. 
 
 And because that life cannot be precisely the same 
 with this, but may be similar, and, if this life is in 
 tended to be preparatory for that and as an appren 
 ticeship or school for that, must be believed to be 
 in important respects similar ; so it is reasonable to 
 believe that the faculties adapted to utilize this life 
 as a preparation for the other life are not the same, 
 but are in important respects similar to the faculties 
 which are adapted to this life in and by itself. 
 
 And one point of similarity between these two 
 classes of faculties may reasonably be believed to 
 be this : as the faculties possessed by man, to utilize 
 this world for all its possible advantage to him while 
 living here, do not benefit him excepting in propor 
 tion as he makes a suitable use and exercise of them ; 
 so the faculties possessed by him that while living 
 here he may prepare himself for greater happiness 
 hereafter, do not benefit him in that respect except 
 ing in proportion as he makes a suitable use and 
 exercise of them. 
 
 It is by these higher faculties that man thinks of 
 3 
 
34 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 another life, and of a God who is the creator, gov 
 ernor, and preserver of all things. It is by these 
 faculties that man thinks of the things of religion ; 
 that he thinks spiritual thoughts. And we give to 
 these faculties the name of spiritual faculties. 
 
 We have spoken of the natural faculties and 
 spiritual faculties as entirely different and dis 
 tinct. It might be more satisfactory to some 
 minds, if we said only that they worked in 
 entirely different ways, on entirely different planes, 
 and with entirely different results. Perception, 
 comparison, imagination, reason, analysis and syn 
 thesis, are all employed as natural faculties; and 
 they are all employed as spiritual faculties. We 
 know so little yet of the forces of the external uni 
 verse and the way they run into one another and 
 manifest a unity in the midst of diversity ; and so 
 much less of the spiritual faculties and their true 
 relation to the natural faculties, that we are not pre 
 pared to see distinctly how far they are separate and 
 distinct, in themselves, or how far they are the 
 same, differing only in the modes of their activity ; 
 or differing as in degree or rank, the one set being 
 lower and the other higher, or the one set external 
 and the other internal. Without pausing now on 
 this point, the difference between them is abun 
 dantly sufficient to prevent our being misunderstood 
 
THE SPIRITUAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 35 
 
 when we speak of the faculties last described as 
 spiritual faculties. 
 
 The radical difference between them is this. By 
 the natural faculties, man may investigate and 
 master the external universe. But they go no 
 further ; not even in thought, or desire, or hope. 
 They would be and do just what they are and do ; 
 and we can suppose that they might have gained 
 for man all the treasures they have won ; and that 
 they might gain for him all that ever shall be won 
 in the same direction if the wildest dreams of 
 scientific enthusiasm become realities, whether 
 man lives after death, or is extinguished when he 
 dies. This could make no difference to them, none 
 to their work or its results. They would be and do 
 all they now are and do, if this external universe, 
 born of itself, had come into being by its own ener 
 gies, and was in its complex God and the only God. 
 
 The utter unreasonableness, the fearful absurdity 
 of such a supposition can be apparent to, can be 
 even suggested by, only some exercise of the spir 
 itual faculties. For it is to them and to them only 
 that we owe whatever we have of thought or hope 
 or belief of an immortal life, and of a personal 
 Father of us and all things whom we may obey 
 and trust and love. We should not have the pos 
 sibility of any thoughts like these had we no spir- 
 
36 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 itual faculties. We cannot have the actuality of 
 any such thought or faith, if these faculties are not 
 awakened and exercised. 
 
 In another respect these two classes of faculties 
 are perfectly alike. While both are necessary 
 elements of human nature and must belong to man 
 because he is man, they may, both or either, exist 
 only potentially, and not actively. Or they may 
 have any degree of activity; the natural faculties 
 from the least and lowest found in the most savage 
 
 & 
 
 life, to the greatest height they have yet ascended 
 or ever may ascend, in the most powerful and cul 
 tivated intellects; the spiritual faculties from the 
 total or almost total absence of any spiritual thought, 
 through all degrees of dimness or obscurity or clear 
 ness and strength of such thought, to the most 
 intense religious conviction. So, too, they may, 
 both or either, be misguided and mistaken. The 
 brutal life of the savage, who makes little or no use 
 of his natural faculties, finds its exact correlative in 
 the ignorance or unbelief of those who make no use 
 of their spiritual faculties, whatever they may do 
 with their natural faculties. The wild and foolish 
 and sometimes mischievous theories and supposi 
 tions which have prevailed as to external things, in 
 different places and .iges, find their exact correlative 
 in the fantastic and irrational and sometimes most 
 
THE SPIRITUAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 37 
 
 mischievous theories and suppositions which have 
 prevailed as to matters of religion. 
 
 But, while these two classes of faculties are alike 
 in these respects, they manifest their distinction 
 from each other by their perfect independence of 
 each other. There is no form and no degree of 
 disregard or even contempt or dislike of the natural 
 faculties and their exercise, which may not coexist 
 with some form of sincere and profound religious 
 faith. Asceticism proved this ; and perhaps all ten 
 dency to asceticism is a tendency in this direction. 
 On the other hand, no kind and no degree of vigor, 
 activity, and success of the natural faculties implies, 
 or of itself indicates, any action of or any vitality in 
 the spiritual faculties. 
 
 This law is at once illustrated by, and gives us 
 an explanation of, the fact to which reference was 
 made at the beginning of this essay; the fact, 
 namely, that to-day utter unbelief of religion is to 
 be found mainly in those two classes of human 
 beings who stand, as to the exercise of the natural 
 faculties, at the opposite poles of human nature ; 
 surrounded equally in both cases, as to the spiritual 
 faculties, with arctic barrenness, silence and death. 
 At the one extreme stands the lowest savage ; 
 utterly wanting in spiritual thought and belief, be 
 cause, while his natural faculties are only so far 
 
THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 brought into play as to preserve his life and per 
 petuate his race, his spiritual faculties are, if pos 
 sible, still less active. At the other extreme stands 
 the eminent scientist, who, as to his spiritual facul 
 ties, and all that they would teach, is just where the 
 savage is; because his natural faculties are exer 
 cised with an intensity, and the exercise itself and 
 its results are loved with a passionate and exclusive 
 devotion, which leaves nothing of interest, nothing 
 of power, nothing of life, to his spiritual faculties. 
 And he knows nothing and believes nothing of 
 what they would tell him. In one half of his na 
 ture, how far beyond the savage ! in the other half, 
 how entirely the same ! 
 
 While writing this, I met with a paper in a recent 
 English periodical, by Professor Huxley. I need 
 not say that this gentleman stands high in the high 
 est class of scientific men. In this paper he is re 
 viewing a book in which the ends of creation and 
 the origin of life, and other topics of like kind, are 
 much considered. Mr. Huxley, after noticing the 
 author s views and some of an opposite kind, comes 
 to the conclusion that all such inquiries are vain and 
 fruitless. He ends thus : Why trouble one s self 
 about matters which are out of reach, when tho 
 working of the mechanism itself, which is of infinite 
 practical importance, affords scope for all our ener- 
 
THE SPIRITUAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 39 
 
 gies." In this short sentence four things are worthy 
 of notice. The first is , that he regards all truth of 
 the kind which the author he is reviewing seeks 
 that is, all spiritual truth as " out of our reach." 
 The second, that he regards the universe as " a 
 mechanism." The third, that the working of this 
 mechanism considered by itself is a topic " of infinite 
 importance." The fourth, that the study of it, its 
 laws, forces, aspects and relations as a mechanism, 
 offers scope for all our energies." 
 
 And, on his own ground, he is perfectly right on 
 all these points. He has used the natural faculties 
 only, used them with earnestness and eminent suc 
 cess, but used only them. He knows no other, and 
 believes in no other. And it is entirely true that 
 all the topics which he thus contemns are " beyond 
 the reach of those faculties ; " that, so far as they 
 can see or teach, the universe is "a mechanism;" 
 that the investigation of it as such is the only work 
 which those faculties can recognize, and to them it 
 is " infinitely important ; " and it " affords scope for 
 all their energies," and is their proper object, and 
 suffices and ever will suffice to employ and to ex 
 haust all their strength. 
 
 Speak to one who has devoted his life to the em 
 ployment and invigoration of these lower faculties, 
 while the higher slept in utter inaction and uncon- 
 
40 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 sciousness, speak to him, in any words which man 
 can use, of God, and another life which will not end, 
 and of faculties which are given us that we may 
 learn truth concerning these spiritual things, and 
 utilize this truth for advantages which are related to 
 all that the lower faculties can give as eternity to 
 time, and how is it possible that he should under 
 stand you any more than if you spoke in a language 
 he did not know ? 
 
 As we can have no idea whatever of any religious 
 truth except by the exercise of these higher spirit 
 ual faculties, so the religious ideas we have will 
 be distinct or dim, strong or weak, constant and 
 habitual, or intermitting and infrequent, precisely as 
 these faculties act distinctly or obscurely, vigorously 
 or feebly, continually or with longer or shorter in 
 tervals of slumber. So, too, these ideas will be accu 
 rate or mistaken accordingly as these faculties are 
 wisely or unwisely exercised. 
 
 These faculties are given us that we may be pre 
 pared by a life in this world for life in another world. 
 The lower, natural faculties relate to this world only. 
 It is therefore obvious that an undue love of this 
 world, or worldliness (and so it should be called 
 whatever form it takes), must tend to give undue 
 development and strength to the natural faculties, 
 and in the same degree to suppress the spiritual fac- 
 
THE SPIRITUAL INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. 41 
 
 ulties. And most true it is that there are none in 
 whom this woiidliness does not exert some influ 
 ence adverse to that of the spiritual faculties ; and 
 few in whom this adverse influence is not powerful ; 
 while in many persons it is so strong and so constant, 
 that if it does not wholly prevent any exercise of 
 the spiritual faculties, that is, if it does not wholly 
 prevent any thought or belief of God or immortality, 
 it makes such thoughts poor, feeble, unfrequent, 
 and inoperative. 
 
 It may be what would be called the cares of 
 this world, the pursuit of wealth, power, or fame ; 
 or it may be only the labor and devotion to daily 
 occupation which seem necessary for comfortable 
 subsistence ; or it may be an extreme sensuous en 
 joyment of what the world offers to the senses ; or 
 it may be the engrossing love of external knowledge 
 or science for its own sake or for its rewards ; it 
 may be either or any of these causes, which confine 
 our thoughts and concentrate our interest upon 
 things which belong to this world only. Then, in 
 the same measure, the faculties we possess for the 
 sake of the other life and which refer to that or to a 
 preparation for that, are torpid and powerless. Let 
 me again suppose that we live in this short life 
 that we may prepare in it for another life of indefi 
 nite length, and that our life through the unending 
 
42 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 hereafter will be profoundly affected by our life here 
 and by every part of it ; then let us cast the light of 
 these truths upon the course of belief, affection, and 
 conduct which prevail in society, and what must be 
 our conclusion ? 
 
 IV. OF THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL AFFEC- 
 TIONAL FACULTIES. 
 
 The same distinction which exists between the 
 natural and the spiritual faculties considered intel 
 lectually, exists between them if they are considered 
 affectionally. 
 
 The man, as to all within the body, consists of 
 will and understanding. All his powers and all 
 their functions may be referred to what he thinks, 
 believes, or denies, or else to what he feels, loves, or 
 hates. Because we begin our existence in this 
 world, our natural intellectual faculties are adapted 
 to this world. But we have also natural affectional 
 faculties; and these, like the natural intellectual 
 faculties, are adapted to this world, and to all its 
 gifts, its requirements, and its relations. But as we 
 live in this world to prepare for another world, we 
 have not only spiritual intellectual faculties by means 
 of which this preparation may be made, but also 
 spiritual affectional faculties to co-operate with them, 
 or rather to lead, in this work of preparation. 
 
THE AFFECTIONAL FACULTIES. 43 
 
 We have seen that the natural intellectual facul 
 ties may have any measure of strength or culture, or 
 activity or success, and yet remain purely natural, 
 with no light cast upon them or on their work by 
 the spiritual intellectual faculties. Precisely so the 
 natural affections may take any form or any charac 
 ter, be strong or weak, be good or bad, and either 
 good or bad in any degree, and yet remain only 
 natural affections, with no life in them from spiritual 
 affections. 
 
 There can be no enjoyment of life in this world, 
 without mutual kindness. This emotion all good 
 men feel, and all wise men cultivate. So, too, the 
 race could not be perpetuated if there were no par 
 ental affection. The utter feebleness of the infant 
 and his perfect dependence upon his parents would 
 make the continuance of his life impossible without 
 their care ; and this care would be impossible without 
 parental affection. This love is therefore universal. 
 If it ceased to exist and to be powerful in any race, 
 that race must die out. 
 
 We may go to a yet higher love, that which 
 unites husband and wife. The sexes must come 
 together, or the race will not be perpetuated. This 
 end might be answered without choice, constancy, or 
 permanence in this relation. But these add infinitely 
 to the comfort and enjoyment of life. The great 
 
44 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 majority of men acknowledge this in theory ; and 
 great numbers live in the practice of it. 
 
 Is not all this good ? Certainly. But that is not 
 now the question. It is, Are these affections natural 
 or spiritual ? As there are natural intellectual facul 
 ties and spiritual intellectual faculties, and natural 
 affections and spiritual affections, so there is natural 
 goodness and spiritual goodness. And to the ques 
 tion, Is not all this good ? while we answer, Certainly 
 it is, we may then ask the farther question, Is it nat 
 ural goodness or spiritual goodness? And to this 
 question we must apply the same test as before. 
 The natural affections look to this life and to this 
 alone. The spiritual affections look to God and to 
 another life. The natural affections, born in this 
 world, live here and die here. Spiritual affections, 
 born in this world, rise above it, and never die. The 
 natural affections belong to man as he is one among 
 the animals; and the beginnings or rudiments of 
 them, as of the natural intellectual qualities, may be 
 found in his brother animals. But to find the first 
 trace or semblance of spiritual affections we must 
 go above animals : we must go to man ; we must go 
 to that in man which makes him other than animals. 
 We must go to man as an immortal being, and to 
 that part of his nature which is given him to the 
 end that, while he is living the temporary life he 
 
THE AFFECTIONAL FACULTIES. 4) 
 
 shares with animals, he may be preparing for immor 
 tal life. And now we have the means of answering 
 the question, What is this goodness ? 
 
 If it be only as above described, it is only nat 
 ural goodness. Later in this work it will be my 
 endeavor to show that these two classes of facul 
 ties natural and spiritual stand in such relation 
 to each other, that the highest possible culture of 
 the natural intellectual faculties prepares them to 
 be the most effectual instruments of the spiritual 
 intellectual faculties, when these take their proper 
 place and do their proper work ; for then they will 
 not renounce what the natural intellectual faculties 
 have gained, but will find in all of it inexhaustible 
 illustration and indispensable assistance. Just so, 
 when the spiritual affectional faculties command the 
 character, they will not renounce natural goodness, 
 but will rejoicingly adopt all of it, and make it their 
 own form and expression, and fill it with new and a 
 far more vigorous life. 
 
 The distinction between the natural and the spir 
 itual intellectual faculties is much more clearly 
 defined and more easily seen than that between 
 natural and spiritual affections. But this too is vis 
 ible, or discoverable ; for we have the unfailing test 
 of a reference to God and immortality in the one 
 class, and the absence of such reference in the 
 other. 
 
46 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 There is an immense amount of good in the 
 world : of mutual kindness, of parental affection, of 
 conjugal love. This age, certainly in this country, 
 is characterized by an active and general and effi 
 cient philanthropy. There seems to be a more pro 
 found and more operative belief than ever before 
 manifested itself so widely, that it is an important 
 part of the business of mankind to help mankind. 
 The miseries and evils prevailing among us are 
 searched into, their causes investigated, and earnest 
 and able men are laboring to devise and to apply 
 the best preventives or remedies. This is good, and 
 very good. But the question still remains, what is 
 the nature, what is the quality of this goodness ? Is 
 it natural, or is it spiritual ? or, in other words, how 
 far is its purpose limited to the improvement of 
 human life, conduct, and condition in this world, and 
 how much in it looks upon this life in its relation to 
 another life ? 
 
 I have been struck with a fact which I do not 
 find noticed. There is now almost no form of vice, 
 or misconduct, or misery, which has not its energetic 
 assailants. Associations are formed to overcome it. 
 The poet, orator, and essayist are all invoked against 
 it, and answer to the call. But I have not been able 
 to discover, in the constitutions, or platforms, or 
 resolutions of these societies, in poem, speech, or 
 
THE AFFECTIONAL FACULTIES. 47 
 
 writing, any argument for these reforms grounded 
 upon the necessity of preparing by a life in this 
 world for a life to come after this is finished. There 
 may be some such ; but there cannot be many, or I 
 think I should have noticed them. And if it be said 
 that some of these reformers are religious men, and 
 refrain from bringing forward the religious aspect of 
 the case from an apprehension that it might disturb 
 united action, and so work a practical mischief, 
 what is this -but an admission that the active and 
 prevailing principles which are urging on these 
 efforts to reform, must, in the present condition of 
 human thought and character, be kept perfectly free 
 from all reference to another life, or they would be 
 obstructed and paralyzed ? Does not this fact, with 
 whatever qualification any may wish to give to it, 
 help us to answer the question, whether this good 
 ness is spiritual or natural? 
 
 But, if we look at the question on broader grounds, 
 is there not a strong tendency in these days to 
 regard conduct independently of motive, or at least 
 so much of motive as refers to religious faith. 
 
 "For creeds and forms let graceless bigots fight; 
 He can t be wrong whose life is in the right." 
 
 This is entirely true, if life is here understood as 
 comprehending all life, the life of thought, belief, 
 
48 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 and motive as well as of act, and if right is rightly 
 understood. But is it not plain that these words 
 are not, generally, so used ? It is not meant that he 
 who is kind, pure in conduct, benevolent and useful 
 to all around him and injurious to none, is a good 
 man (which he certainly is), whatever may be the 
 reason or motive or faith on which this conduct is 
 grounded ; but that he is the good man, so good that 
 it is only " graceless bigots " who ask that he should 
 be still better, or think that he may be. Let it not 
 be supposed that the reality of this goodness is 
 denied or doubted by me, or its measure of efficiency 
 which may be spoken of more fully in other con 
 nections in doing that work of preparation for 
 another life, which is the object of this life, although 
 not the object of that goodness; nor let it be 
 supposed that between the natural faculties, intellect 
 ual or affectional, and the spiritual faculties, or be 
 tween natural goodness and spiritual goodness, there 
 is any antagonism. The truth is precisely the oppo 
 site of this. As the external universe, with all its 
 relations, is perfectly adapted to the external needs 
 of man, so is it perfectly adapted to the internal 
 needs of man when it is called to the service of 
 those needs. And as the natural faculties compre 
 hend and utilize the external world for the purposes 
 of this life, so the same faculties, when they are the 
 
OF THE 
 THE AFFECTIONAL FAc|^f J y 9g J IJ 7 
 
 instruments of the spiritual faculties and are subor 
 dinated to and animated by them, lose no jot of 
 their energy or their success; and their work is 
 thankfully accepted by the higher faculties as the 
 foundation of their work. 
 
 Here is a good man. He is energetic and comba 
 tive, and his benevolence turns his energy and com- 
 bativeness against the mischiefs and miseries he sees 
 around him. Or he is good in a more private way. 
 His very nature makes it painful to him to see pain, 
 and he does what he can to relieve or prevent it and 
 give pleasure. But would this man abate his energy 
 or grow less kind and benevolent, if he habitually 
 looked upon all men as his brethren because all are 
 the children of one Father ; if he habitually regarded 
 this life as a preparation for another, and all his 
 efforts against human suffering were invigorated by 
 the thought, that the great causes of this suffering 
 are to be found in the moral depravity, or the moral 
 faults, which mar the character and sicken the soul 
 just where they must be clean and healthy if eter 
 nal happiness is sought for ? Would the parent be 
 less loving if he looked upon his children as immor 
 tals to whom he had been permitted to give life, and 
 who had been placed in his care that he might train 
 them for a happy immortality ? Would the husband 
 and the wife love each other less or with less purity 
 4 
 
50 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 and constancy, if they believed that their Father 
 had given them to each other, as the very best 
 assistants either could have, and as claiming from 
 each other the best assistance either could give, in 
 walking together in the path of unending life ? 
 
 There is an antagonism between all that is natural 
 and all that is spiritual, when that which is natural 
 rebels against all that is spiritual, and if it had its 
 way would suppress and destroy it. And there is 
 another antagonism when the spiritual rises against 
 the natural, and believes that its own growth and 
 health demand the suppression of the natural. As 
 ceticism thought so, and acted upon this belief; and 
 this may have been well in times when the spiritual 
 could not live unless the natural was suppressed. 
 And they may well think so now, who not only feel 
 the natural constantly rising against the spiritual, 
 but find also in themselves nothing by which they 
 can compel the natural to serve instead of ruling. 
 
 But all this is disorder. If it is good at all, It is 
 so only because disorder makes it the best thing for 
 the time and the person. There are no natural in 
 tellectual faculties which would not be helped and 
 strengthened if they permitted the spiritual intellect 
 ual faculties to become their guides and their sup 
 port. And there are no true spiritual faculties of 
 the intellect, which would not guide wisely, and 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 51 
 
 invigorate, and make more and more successful the 
 natural faculties. And there are no natural qualities 
 or affections, and no form of natural goodness, which 
 would not find new strength, earnestness, and hap 
 piness, if they would accept spiritual motives and 
 affections as their very soul. 
 
 V. OF SOME RELATIONS BETWEEN THE NATURAL 
 AND THE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 
 
 The truth which answers all questions as to the 
 relations between these two classes of faculties, or 
 qualities, is that which tells us that this life is a 
 preparation for the other life. But this truth is 
 itself apprehended and perceived only by the spir 
 itual faculties. In their present debility it is seen 
 imperfectly, if at all. Probably multitudes would 
 admit it in words ; and would rather expect it to be 
 said in any writing concerning man s nature and 
 destiny. But everywhere in life, in common opin 
 ion, motive, interest, and conduct, we find over 
 whelming proof that this truth is seen but very 
 dimly, and holds a very subordinate place and exerts 
 but little influence in human thought. Hence the 
 consequences of this truth must be seen but very 
 dimly and imperfectly. But if this central truth in 
 the philosophy oi human life and destiny were seen 
 
52 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 with any clearness, it would also be seen as a posi 
 tive certainty, that this world must exist because of 
 and in reference to another, and that the faculties 
 which have this world for their proper object, must 
 exist for the sake of those which have another world 
 for their proper object. It would be seen and 
 known that the lower should be the instruments of 
 the higher, and would find in this instrumentality 
 their greatest value ; and that the higher need these 
 lower as instruments without which their own work 
 cannot be done as it should be done. 
 
 If we believe that this life is intended to be pre 
 paratory to another, we may believe that this world 
 was intended to assist us in making this life a prepa 
 ration for another. And that, for this purpose, this 
 world is created such as to afford exercise not only 
 for the natural faculties which would utilize it for 
 itself, but for the spiritual faculties which would use 
 it in this way of preparation. To some extent this 
 has always been seen ; and some religious men have 
 labored to find in this evidence of the existence, the 
 love and wisdom and providence, of God. 
 
 The men who are most energetic and successful 
 in their investigation of physical nature may not 
 know, or may forget, that this creation must be, in 
 some way and measure, a record of its Maker; and 
 a record, which, if we have not yet read it, can 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 53 
 
 hardly be illegible in itself. If this be true, God 
 must know it, and cannot forget it. And it may be 
 that if the present condition of human nature makes 
 it now impossible for these two uses of the external 
 world, for the knowledge of itself which the 
 study of it yields, and the knowledge of Him which 
 the study of it might yield, if these two uses 
 cannot now be brought into unity and conjunction 
 and worked out together, it may be that He can 
 provide, and is providing, for them separately. If 
 the scientists of to-day, in their devotion to external 
 nature, are blind to all that is within it or above it, 
 they may still be accumulating stores of natural 
 science, which at a later age of the world and by 
 other men will be made to yield their harvest of 
 spiritual science. 
 
 Attempts of that kind have not been wanting in 
 various ages. But it must be admitted that they 
 have been feeble and ineffectual. If a poet has said 
 that " an undevout astronomer is mad," he has not 
 shown it to be so, nor is it more true of an astron 
 omer than it is of any other scientist. We live 
 in an age characterized by a marvellous activity 
 and success of the natural faculties, and an equal 
 torpor .and debility of the spiritual faculties; but 
 we may hope that another age will come, when the 
 spiritual faculties will be roused and strengthened, 
 
 z" i^f 
 
54 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 and will do their proper work with an energy and a 
 fruitfulness like those which mark the present activ 
 ity of the natural faculties. Perhaps an early part 
 of this work will be the laying hold of this external 
 science, by those whose spiritual faculties are equal 
 v j to the effort and can therefore make an appropriate 
 use of all it has gathered for them, and show that 
 i the world which God made and pervades is a mirror 
 of Him, and its activity of His activity. I indulge 
 the hope that, when that good day that brighter 
 
 jJ[ day shall come, it will not be found needful to 
 
 \ continue this division of labor with such an entire 
 
 distinctness of work. But that the natural scientist 
 
 will then be also the spiritual scientist ; and that he 
 
 . ? ^ will labor with not less earnestness and efficiency and 
 enjoyment, when he is guided and animated by the 
 experience that every day adds to his knowledge of 
 the universe which God has made; and at the same 
 time to his knowledge of its Maker. Then, at least, 
 one long-lived delusion will have perished, the 
 "delusion which tells us that this life and immortality 
 are enemies, and that each must be guarded from 
 the encroachment of the other. For it will be seen 
 that life is but the beginning of immortality, and 
 immortality but the completion of life ; and that 
 they have one Lord, and one Law. 
 
 There is one way in which the present predomi- 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 55 
 
 nance of the natural faculties over the spiritual 
 faculties leads to a sad result, which cannot be un 
 derstood without some consideration of a distinction 
 between these two classes of faculties, which is sel 
 dom adverted to, and perhaps not often known. It 
 is the distinction between the evidence which the 
 natural intellectual faculties require and may find, 
 and that evidence which the spiritual intellectual 
 faculties require and may find. 
 
 The former ask for proof of a certain kind. All 
 this proof must necessarily begin, as all proof must 
 begin, with axioms, or truths not proved nor prov 
 able, but held to be true because they are seen to be 
 true, and the natural reason declares that they must 
 be true. But after these first and simple foundations 
 are laid, a superstructure is built upon them by 
 gradual accretions of truth admitted upon a certain 
 kind of proof. If mathematics enters into the in 
 quiry, this proof must amount to what it considers 
 demonstration. If the facts or laws of natural sci 
 ence are investigated, here too must be proof; not 
 now mathematical, but resting upon facts which the 
 senses may ascertain, and conclusions which may be 
 tested by these facts, and which solve the problems 
 of science ; and only when they do this perfectly are 
 the principles of science acknowledged as certainly 
 true. 
 
56 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 But there may also be progress in spiritual knowl 
 edge by the exercise of the spiritual faculties. This 
 too must begin, as all knowledge and all proof must 
 begin, with axioms ; with truths conceded because 
 they are seen by these faculties to be true. And 
 these axioms can be seen to be true and certain only 
 by the spiritual intellectual faculties. For the 
 natural faculties have nothing to do with them; 
 they can neither discover, nor recognize them, nor 
 use them as the foundations for farther natural 
 knowledge. And then when the spiritual faculties 
 use these axioms, they use them in their own way. 
 They do not build up on them a structure of belief 
 every part of which is made certain by evidence or 
 argument of like kind with those which are proper 
 to natural science. There is nowhere what natural 
 science would call proof. I will not now attempt to 
 state the reason for and the good derived from this 
 difference, but will only say that there never yet 
 was, and there never will be, because there never 
 can be, any religious truth which is not so given and 
 does not so present itself to the mind, that it may 
 be rejected if the mind be in a negative state in 
 regard to it. Neither the central truth, that there 
 is a God, nor any of the truths which cluster about 
 this centre, admit of proof in the natural sense of 
 that word. For spiritual truths rest on spiritual 
 
NATUBAL AND SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 57 
 
 proof. They admit certainty, and certainty of a 
 higher kind. They not only rest upon primary 
 axioms as do natural truths ; but in the whole struct 
 ure of belief and faith, something of this character 
 of axioms, of this acceptance of truth because it is 
 seen to be truth and necessary truth, prevails. 
 There is, in systematic religious truth, ample room 
 ibr the most exact logic, the profoundest argument, 
 the most cautious sagacity. But they are spiritual ; 
 they are true to their own work and their own char 
 acter ; they do not ask for and would not be satis 
 fied with what natural science regards and requires 
 as proof. 
 
 Hence we may see one difficulty under which 
 scientific men labor with regard to spiritual truth. 
 They have established habits of experiment and 
 observation by the senses, and of rigorous ratioci 
 nation of a kind appropriate to the subjects of their 
 inquiry. They owe their success whether this 
 means fame and position, or the pleasant conscious 
 ness of knowledge to a careful adherence to this 
 way of thinking and concluding. It is and must be 
 very difficult for them to believe that there is or 
 can be any truth which should not be sought and 
 may not be learned in that way. But religious 
 truth cannot be so learned, and should not be so 
 sought for. This, however, is the only way they 
 
58 THE INFINITE AND TIIE FINITE. 
 
 know of, for seeking after or learning truth. How 
 can they escape the conclusion that religious truth 
 lacks all basis, all confirmation, and is not truth but 
 error ? 
 
 With all the breaking down of religious doctrine, 
 there is still much religious sentiment with many 
 persons. It refuses to be suppressed. And a^ it 
 demands some formal belief as its expression, it ac 
 cepts that into which it was educated, or which it 
 prefers among the many it may choose from. This 
 religious sentiment imparts its own conviction to 
 the belief thus held ; and this belief thus becomes, 
 in many cases, very strong. It is far better than 
 unbelief; but it is not held on spiritual-rational 
 grounds. This is so now ; but it needs not be so, 
 and will not always be so. 
 
 A distinction exists between the natural affections 
 and those which are spiritual, analogous to that 
 between the natural and the spiritual intellectual 
 faculties. We have already said there is much nat 
 ural goodness among men now ; much that is real, 
 active, and most beneficial. But in some minds it 
 leads to the positive rejection of spiritual goodness. 
 They do not desire, they cannot perhaps imagine, any 
 higher goodness than they can see to be derivable 
 from a due desire to make men live as they should 
 live, and be what they should be, in this world. 
 
NATURAL Al^D SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 59 
 
 They may or they may not express this rejection of 
 all spiritual goodness. But it is there. 
 
 With many of those who are characterized by 
 natural goodness, while there is no positive rejec 
 tion, there is little thought of, or care for, or aim 
 after, spiritual goodness. It is only nothing to 
 them. 
 
 Let me try to illustrate this distinction or differ 
 ence farther. And, first, as to the intellectual facul 
 ties. 
 
 As the external world is given us for two pur 
 poses, one, to be a suitable home for us while we 
 live in it; the other, to educate us for the other 
 world while we live in this, it is the lower or 
 natural faculties which utilize this world as our 
 home, and find pleasure in studying it and all its 
 elements with no reference to any possible relation 
 to another world ; while the higher or spiritual 
 faculties do or may lay hold of all the external truth 
 which the lower faculties discover, and use it for their 
 own higher purposes. Because man possesses these 
 two distinct classes of faculties, every thing belong 
 ing to the external world may be seized and used 
 by either class, in its own way, for its own purpose, 
 and its own result. 
 
 Precisely the same thing is true of every thing of 
 the inner world, of mind, thought, or affection. 
 
60 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 Thus, there are certain ideas (I do not profess to 
 use this word with metaphysical precision, if indeed 
 there be such a thing) which belong to every ra 
 tional mind ; as the ideas of existence, of unity or 
 plurality, of identity or difference, and very many 
 others, and among them the idea of cause, or causa 
 tion. I have nothing to say as to whether these 
 ideas are innate or connate, or suggested, or original 
 or derived, or constructed, all of which phrases and 
 many more are used by those who treat of these 
 subjects. I mean only that every rational human 
 mind finds these ideas in it, when it has any occa 
 sion to make use of them. 
 
 For example, take the idea of causation. This 
 belongs necessarily and inevitably to human thought. 
 No man ever got rid of it, or lived a day or an hour 
 without making use of it, however unconsciously. 
 Natural common sense constantly accepts it, relies 
 upon it, and makes use of it. But how do natural 
 science and natural logic deal with it ? They recog 
 nize only certain sequences of events : they say, we 
 neither know nor can know any thing more than 
 that, when a certain thing has occurred, another cer 
 tain thing has followed, and this so uniformly that 
 we believe it always will. This is true, say these 
 faculties, as far as we know. And then they hold 
 that we fall into the mistake of thinking that to be 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 61 
 
 necessary which we first think only invariable. They 
 suppose we know nothing of cause, or causation. 
 And they are perfectly right, on their own ground. 
 The natural powers of the mind do know nothing, 
 and never can know any thing, about the origin or 
 nature or reality of causation ; although the idea of 
 causation is universal and inevitable, and the natu 
 ral faculties do themselves seize and hold it and use 
 it in their earlier development, and continue so to 
 do in their fullest development. 
 
 It is in every mind ; and it is there for two pur 
 poses. First, that natural common sense, or the 
 natural faculties in their healthy condition and nor 
 mal action, may make use of it for all the needs and 
 uses of common life or of natural science. But this 
 idea is in the mind for another purpose also : it is, 
 that the higher spiritual faculties may make their 
 use of it ; and that, so used, it may lift up the mind 
 through the chain of causes to the Supreme Cause; 
 and thus make some idea of God to exist in all minds 
 but those incapable by -degradation of thinking such 
 thoughts, or those in whom the idea is crushed out 
 forcibly by the natural faculties when they have 
 become so perverted, so unhealthy, insane, as 
 to aim at and succeed in paralyzing the spiritual 
 faculties. 
 
 For the natural faculties may utterly pervert the 
 
62 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 influence and effect of this idea of causation. They 
 may come to the conclusion that the chain of causes 
 does not extend upwards and end in a Supreme 
 Cause ; but that it is a revolving, a circular or end 
 less chain. They may hold that the universe exists 
 as a congeries of causes and effects, which produce 
 each other; that it is sufficient in itself; that so 
 much cause, or force, is in it, and operates in a defi 
 nite and unchanging way in and through all the 
 modes of action which, taken together, constitute the 
 universe. They may call this universe God, or not ; 
 nor does it make any difference except in words. 
 For Pantheism is simply Nontheism. 
 
 Then, the natural faculties deny that there is any 
 such thing as causation. They can hardly help doing 
 so, if they are true to their own logic. For all 
 force, or potency, or causation, is from God, and is 
 Him in action. It is the putting forth of His infinite 
 power which sustains all being by continual and 
 constant action ; and all the laws of being are but 
 the methods of that action. He is the First Cause ; 
 and all subsequent causation is the extension of His 
 primary causation. This, the merely natural faculties 
 cannot perceive or understand or acknowledge ; be 
 cause the whole subject lies beyond their scope. 
 
 Now let us turn to the natural affections, and sup 
 pose them carried to the utmost point of philanthropy, 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 63 
 
 private or public. Men ask what more can they do ? 
 They are right in this question, on their own ground. 
 They not only stand on earth, but they do not lift 
 their eyes from earth. They regard only earth and 
 earthly life. And, for this life, what more can be 
 done than natural philanthropy can do? But this 
 philanthropy takes no cognizance of the truth that 
 whatever we can do to help a man through an un 
 ending life is of far more worth than all we can do 
 to help him during this transitory life. Natural 
 philanthropy does not know, cannot possibly know, 
 that it would itself be far more ardent, far wiser, far 
 more successful in its own work, if it were the ex 
 pression, the instrument and embodiment of a spirit 
 ual philanthropy. 
 
 VI. OF THE COMPARATIVE STRENGTH OF THE NAT 
 URAL AND THE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 
 
 As either the natural faculties or the spiritual 
 faculties may have any measure of strength or of 
 weakness, so the quality and character of a race, an 
 age, an individual, depends mainly on the prevalence 
 of the one or the other of these two classes of facul 
 ties, and also upon the degree of the prevalence of 
 that which is the stronger. For either may be the 
 master, but with only an uncertain ascendency ; or 
 
64 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 it may have any degree of sovereignty, until it be 
 comes despotic, and is fiercely hostile to the other, 
 and seeks its destruction. 
 
 A general view of the condition of mankind, es 
 pecially among the nations of Christendom, and most 
 among those which may be considered as the most 
 advanced in civilization, would lead to the conclu 
 sion, that at no period within the records of history 
 have the natural faculties of men been so powerful, 
 so active, or so successful, as in the present period. 
 And that at no former time have the spiritual facul 
 ties, intellectual or affectional, been, in proportion to 
 the natural faculties, so feeble, so inactive, or so un 
 fruitful as they are now. If this be true, it is a 
 truth which cannot be generally acknowledged. For 
 it can be seen to be true only by those faculties 
 Avhich are now so feeble, and which, if not silent, 
 speak in muffled and uncertain tones. 
 
 If this be so, the darkness which covereth the 
 nations may be nevertheless, and we believe it is, 
 that darkest hour which precedes the dawn. And 
 we believe too that the day, which is about to come, 
 already casts some light, a dim and broken light, 
 upon the clouded sky. 
 
 These higher faculties certainly are not in all men, 
 nor in most men, wholly silent. Perhaps in no man 
 are they absolutely inert ; for then it would be im- 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 65 
 
 possible to rank the man higher than the animal. 
 They tell nearly all men that there is a God ; that 
 there is a future life ; and that the life which follows 
 death is in some way dependent upon the life before 
 death. They tell these great truths very obscurely 
 and imperfectly, and very variously ; and everywhere 
 their utterance is distorted by the influence of the 
 natural faculties. These can, of themselves, tell us 
 nothing whatever concerning God or immortality. 
 When the higher faculties take some cognizance of 
 these ideas, and at least hold them as topics for 
 consideration, and the lower faculties claim the right 
 to deal with them as their property, supposing 
 themselves to be sovereign over all the domain of 
 truth, a claim now generally advanced by those 
 who have cultivated these natural faculties most 
 exclusively and most successfully, these lower fac 
 ulties can only deceive, can only darken the intellect. 
 It is of the higher faculties that we must ask about 
 these higher things. They will use the lower fac 
 ulties, and all they teach, as their instruments; will 
 find them most useful and wholly indispensable 
 instruments. These two classes of faculties (and 
 each of them is either intellectual or affectional), 
 taken together, constitute the man. Let the two, 
 the inner and the outer, co-operate, the lower in due 
 subordination to the higher, and there is no limit, 
 
 5 
 
66 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 and there will be no end, to their progress. There 
 will be error in their utterance, but it will be that 
 which is due to the mists of morning and the shad 
 ow of the earth; and it will gradually disappear 
 as the light grows stronger. If there be danger in 
 listening to their voice, we shall be effectually guarded 
 against it if we listen reverently and humbly, seek 
 ing to hear in their voice the voice of God, and 
 believing that if what we hear is true, it is then 
 His truth, given by Him to men, through the facul 
 ties which He has given to men that through them 
 they may hear Him and know Him. And the hope 
 is not presumptuous, that in this way we may reach 
 some elementary knowledge of the relations between 
 the Infinite and the Finite, between God and Man. 
 
 It is perhaps impossible that either the natural 
 or the spiritual faculties should be utterly extinct 
 or wholly silent. It may never be so in any age, 
 or any race, or any man. But one of them may 
 be far more powerful than the other ; for upon either 
 of them the whole strength and force of the race or 
 the man may be concentrated, leaving the other 
 exceedingly feeble. In the early ages of civilization 
 it would seem that religion exerted great power. 
 Of its character or quality I say nothing, but only 
 that it had great power. One test of this may be 
 found in the remains of their architecture. These 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 67 
 
 are all, or nearly all, religious structures ; many of 
 them of enormous magnitude, indicating that the 
 whole strength of the nation must have been em 
 ployed in their erection. And such remains as we 
 have of their literature or philosophy lead to the 
 conclusion that their religion such as it was 
 mingled with all their thoughts, giving to them a 
 certain tone and color. 
 
 Most true it is that religion was then very largely 
 a superstition, often irrational, and sometimes cruel. 
 But it was still religion, however false, mistaken, and 
 perverted. We must not forget that the question 
 of the comparative vitality and force of either the 
 natural or the spiritual faculties is the only one we 
 are considering now, and is perfectly independent 
 of the question whether the spiritual faculties, intel 
 lectual or affectional, were exerted wisely or foolishly, 
 usefully or mischievously. The spiritual faculties 
 may be very feeble, and yet in all they do be wild 
 and erroneous. They may have any measure of 
 strength and predominance, and be equally wild and 
 mistaken. 
 
 This superiority in force and activity of the spir 
 itual faculties comes down to historic ages, and in 
 Greece fills the poems of Homer with Gods and 
 Goddesses ; and holds such a place in the mind of 
 Plato, that one of his critics, perhaps the ablest, 
 
68 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 has said that it seemed impossible for him to pursue 
 any train of thought without beginning and ending 
 with the idea of God ; and it built the Parthenon. 
 The latest historians of Rome attribute the invin 
 cible strength of Roman character in their earlier 
 ages to the force of the religious sentiment and the 
 power of the sanctions of religion, derived, as some 
 of them say, from their Oscan ancestry. And if we 
 smile with equal sadness and contempt at the deifi 
 cation of Augustus and his immediate successor, let 
 us remember that there was a reality in this to many 
 minds. Nor is it a wholly meaningless fact that 
 among the offices by which Augustus secured that 
 aggregation of all political power which made him a 
 despot, was that <5f Pontifex Maximus, High 
 Priest. 
 
 If we come to the Middle Ages in Europe we may 
 remember the Crusades. Then too were built those 
 cathedrals which remain the unequalled wonders of 
 the world. We call those centuries " the dark ages," 
 because there was so little of what we call light. 
 We may well call them so if we look only at the 
 fantastic follies which seemed to darken human 
 thought on every subject. We may say it was a 
 mere folly which threw Europe upon Asia in the 
 Crusades ; but it was a religious foll}^ And let us 
 not forget, if we are seeking to know only whether 
 
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL FACULTIES. 69 
 
 religion was strong or feeble in those days (not 
 whether it were wise or foolish), the diversified but 
 irresistible evidence that it entered, in some form 
 or other, and with some result or other, into all 
 speculation and nearly all action. 
 
 If we come down to our own times, the field is too 
 broad to be examined in any detail. If we suggest 
 that the temple of Luxor, covering some thousands 
 of acres, and proving by its stupendous fragments 
 the enormous amount of labor it must have cost, if 
 we suggest that this one temple in the estimation of x < 
 skilful engineers consumed as much of labor as the , ^f 
 iron road which is now a pathway from the Atlantic jhCi 
 to the Pacific, or the canal of Suez which now con 
 nects Europe with Asia, we do but touch upon a 
 course of inquiry which would lead to the conclusion v / 
 we have already expressed concerning the character . [ 
 of this age in comparison with that of its predeces 
 sors. Whether it were wiser and better to make that 
 long railroad rather than a temple as large as that 
 of Luxor, is not now the question; which is only 
 this : was it the spiritual or the natural element of 
 the human character which built the temple or the 
 railroad ? 
 
 But, we repeat, these spiritual faculties are never 
 utterly extinct, or wholly silent. Man must have 
 some idea, some thought of God, some thought of 
 
70 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 spiritual things, even if it does not amount to belief, 
 or even if it amounts to denial ; or he would cease 
 to be man. And these spiritual faculties are far 
 from being extinct or wholly silent now. 
 
 VH. OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 What is our idea of God ; what idea of Him, the 
 Infinite, is possible to man ? 
 
 To answer these questions we must revert to the 
 
 fact already fully stated, that man possesses at his 
 
 birth two natures, meaning by this word " nature " 
 
 the complex of all the qualities, faculties, and ten- 
 
 v. dencies which he has at birth. All of these are then 
 
 \~ " : wholly undeveloped ; and all are capable of indefi 
 
 nite development. 
 
 All of them which taken together constitute one 
 of those natures, I have called the natural faculties ; 
 they may be said to constitute the earthly nature. 
 All of them which constitute the other and the 
 higher nature, I have called the spiritual faculties ; 
 >,they may be said to constitute the heavenly nature. 
 
 The earthly nature is given for two purposes ; one 
 
 ^ v is, to possess and comprehend and utilize the earth 
 
 and all that belongs to it ; the other is to subserve 
 
 the purposes of the heavenly nature. For this na 
 
 ture is given because man is immortal, and it is such 
 
 
THE IDEA OF GOD. 71 
 
 that, by a due exercise and cultivation of it, man s 
 immortality may be happy ; that is, heavenly. And 
 the earthly nature is in all respects and particulars 
 adapted to become the instrument of the heavenly 
 nature, and the means by which man, while living 
 on earth, becomes prepared for heaven. 
 
 The next question I would consider is, in what 
 way and by what means are these two natures, first, 
 or in the beginning, exercised or developed? Or, 
 what is the foundation of their development? 
 
 As to the lower or earthly nature there can be no 
 uncertainty. Sensation is the foundation of all its 
 activity and the beginning of all its growth. An 
 infant, a child, or a man, would be perfectly devoid 
 of thought, consciousness, or action, if he never had 
 sensation. He learns first from his senses, and after 
 wards from his thoughts about his sensations. In 
 the beginning what he learns from his senses is ob 
 scure and imperfect, and his thoughts about his sen 
 sations even more so. As growth proceeds, what 
 he thus learns, and what he thinks about what he 
 thus learns, becomes more distinct. This improve 
 ment goes on indefinitely. The senses never tell 
 him every thing, and what they tell him often needs 
 correction. But his mind makes this correction, 
 step by step, and gradually enlarges and rectifies his 
 knowledge of the universe about him, beyond what 
 
72 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 the senses alone can ever teach him. This his nat 
 ural faculties do by rationally using instruction de 
 rived from his senses ; for that instruction remains 
 for ever the foundation of all he learns or can learn 
 about his earthly home. 
 
 If, now, we ask what is the foundation of the 
 earliest exercise and the continued growth of the 
 higher, the spiritual, the heavenly nature, the answer 
 is this : what sensation is to the lower, the natural 
 or earthly faculties, Revelation is to the higher, the 
 spiritual or heavenly faculties. 
 
 This is not so obvious. Or rather this truth can 
 itself be apprehended only by the higher or spiritual 
 faculties. This age is characterized by the compar 
 ative debility of these faculties, and none escape the 
 influence of their age. It must then be difficult for 
 the spiritual faculties to see clearly their own foun 
 dation, while the lower faculties do see clearly their 
 foundation. But were the spiritual faculties as 
 strong and free and unimpeded in their perceptions 
 and in their work as the natural faculties are, they 
 would see clearly that they rest wholly upon Rev 
 elation. For they would see that it is simply impos 
 sible for the natural faculties, however powerful or 
 however cultivated, to form, of and from themselves., 
 the first or simplest idea of any thing more than 
 earth and earthly knowledge and earthly life. 
 
THE IDEA OF GOD. 73 
 
 They could not have or give the least idea or sug 
 gestion of any life after death, or of an invisible, 
 personal, infinite God. For all this, man must de 
 pend on Revelation. I mean by this word Revela 
 tion, truth taught by the Lord directly to mankind 
 in such places, in such times, in such measures or 
 forms, and by or through such agencies, as He sees 
 to be best. I shall recur to this subject and en 
 deavor to say something of these various forms and 
 agencies. Now I would say only that I consider 
 the primary and constant law to be this. All truths 
 or germs or elements of knowledge, which relate to 
 this world or life therein, must come to the mind 
 from this world, through sensation; and are then 
 committed to the lower or natural faculties, which 
 are adapted to these truths and to this world. Pre 
 cisely so all truths or germs or elements of knowl 
 edge which relate to the other world and life therein, 
 must come to the mind from that world through 
 Revelation, and are then committed to the higher 
 or spiritual faculties which are adapted to those 
 truths and to that world. 
 
 The spiritual faculties, receiving thus the idea of 
 God from Revelation, impart it to the natural facul 
 ties. The spiritual faculties can receive it at first 
 only in its simplest form, and they can impart it to 
 the natural faculties only in such wise and measure 
 
74 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 as they are ready to receive it. In such wise they 
 do receive it, and may thereafter bring their resources 
 to the aid of the spiritual faculties. Thenceforward, 
 as far as these two classes of faculties are free from 
 perversion and abuse, and work together in harmony, 
 the lower subordinated to the higher and the higher 
 instructing the lower, just so far the whole man 
 grows in intelligence and wisdom, and the ideas of 
 God, and of immortality, and all the ideas which 
 belong to religious truth, grow in force, distinctness, 
 and development. 
 
 What, then, is the first and simplest form of the" 
 idea of God; its seed-form so to speak, out of 
 which may grow all possible development and en 
 largement ? 
 
 The first answer and a most important answer 
 to this question is, that this idea must, while 
 given by Revelation, rest upon and be clothed with 
 ideas derived by man from himself. All knowl 
 edge originates in sensation, and all thought must 
 begin with the objects of sense. But in man it soon 
 rises into consciousness. And if we ask ourselves 
 what we know, we become aware that we know our 
 own existence more certainly than we know any 
 thing which the senses teach us, or which we can 
 learn from thought employed about what the senses 
 teach. We cannot doubt our existence because that 
 
THE IDEA OF GOD. 75 
 
 doubt proves existence. And we learn our existence 
 from consciousness. 
 
 As soon as consciousness passes beyond this first 
 and simplest idea of personal existence, it begins 
 to ask itself what it knows of our personal indi 
 viduality. It knows this: that we have affections, 
 or purposes, or a motive force within us; that we 
 have thoughts; and that we act because our affec 
 tions through our thoughts lead to action, and we 
 have power to act. Then the spiritual faculties may 
 begin to impart what they have learned from Rev 
 elation. And then and thus men acquire the idea . 
 of One, in whom affection, thought, and power exist/ 
 in a far higher degree than in ourselves ; and we go 
 forward until we think that they exist in God with 
 out limit and without qualification. And then, as 
 our idea of God enlarges, we attribute to this One 
 the creation and the government of the universe. 
 They who now with most success are investigating 
 the earliest forms of human thought and belief find 
 much indication that, in ages so remote that but 
 faint intimations of their characteristics have come 
 down to us, this first and simplest idea of God pre 
 vailed. 
 
 It is very common for writers on these subjects to 
 object strongly to all "Anthropomorphism," as they 
 call all effort to construct the idea of God out of our 
 
76 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 idea of man. I have no fear of this word. It is a 
 wrongful anthropomorphism which would degrade 
 and lessen God into likeness with ourselves. It is a 
 rightful anthropomorphism which seeks most ear 
 nestly to rise into a likeness to God. If He were 
 altogether other than we are and in all respects that 
 which we are not, it would be impossible for us to 
 form any idea_of_Him, or have any knowledge of 
 Him, or any faith in Him, or any affection for Him. 
 And this is precisely the result to which some are 
 led by their dread of likening God to man. It is 
 because He has made us in His image and likeness, 
 that every religious man of every name, or age, 
 or faith, consciously or unconsciously regards the 
 growth in resemblance to his Father as the measure 
 of all progress and the goal of all good life. 
 
 They who thus fear and dislike anthropomorphism 
 are wrong in so far that it is impossible to construct 
 the idea of God out of any other elements than 
 those which consciousness gives us. But they are 
 right in denouncing it as open to great danger. It 
 is the spiritual faculties given us for that purpose, 
 and taught and aided by Revelation, which so con 
 struct, out of the elements given us primarily by 
 consciousness, this idea of God. It is only the spir 
 itual faculties which can give us this idea. But then 
 the natural faculties receive it, and afterwards will 
 
THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 77 
 
 be heard about this idea ; and they will do their own 
 work upon it. And unless they acknowledge their 
 absolute subordination to the higher faculties and 
 bear a true allegiance to them, they can say no word 
 on these subjects that is not false, and can do no 
 work upon this idea of God that is not mischievous. 
 Therefore it was that the natural faculties, qualities, 
 and proclivities of men laid hold of this idea, and 
 burdened and distorted it with fantasies and idol 
 atries of every description. But the spiritual part 
 of man neither slumbered nor died. It worked, 
 however impeded and fettered, for the salvation of 
 men. It could not cast off the monstrous lies and 
 follies which the natural part of man devised and 
 loved. But even in them it did what good it could. 
 And far better was it and is it for man to worship 
 all the Gods or idols of superstition, or the sun and 
 stars, or stocks and stones, than to have no God, 
 and no sense of worship. For one who passes into 
 the other world with no sense of worship, is to the 
 last degree unprepared for that heaven where life is 
 worship ; and worship is the expression of love to 
 God ; and the love of the neighbor is born from love 
 to God, and manifests itself in constant usefulness. 
 
 The Bible tells us that God made man in His own 
 image and after His own likeness. This is much 
 worse than nothing to those who deny the sanctity 
 
78 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 and authority of the Bible. They call it a false 
 hood springing from the tendency of the human 
 mind to liken God to man. And because they deem 
 it a falsehood they argue from it against the author 
 ity of the Bible. But is this tendency always and 
 altogether mistaken ? One answer is, that it is in 
 evitable ; it is of the very essence of our nature. 
 Other answers will be given as we go on. 
 
 OF THE GKOWTH OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 We have seen what constitutes the primary and 
 the simplest idea of God. Let us try to see what 
 more the spiritual faculties, using the instruction of 
 Revelation, and unimpeded by the natural faculties, 
 and helped by them so far as that may be, can do 
 for this idea. 
 
 We shall see that all there is in man that is not 
 material belongs either to what he loves or desires, 
 or else to what he thinks and knows ; and we may 
 give to the whole complex of all affections, desires, 
 or motives, the name of Will ; and we may give to 
 the whole complex of all thought and intellectual 
 process or conditions the name of Understanding. 
 
 We have seen that only by exalting them to the 
 utmost, and taking from them limit or qualification, 
 do we form, by our spiritual faculties, an idea of 
 
GROWTH OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 79 
 
 God. The simplest name to give to this first and 
 simplest idea, is that of a Divine Man. But the 
 spiritual faculties, by which we construct this idea, 
 then using the instruction of Revelation, help us 
 to protect and preserve it from the errors and fal 
 lacies which the natural faculties would cast upon 
 it. And holding it in its purity, they go on to give 
 to this idea distinctness and extension ; and they 
 develop such further ideas as grow out of this idea, 
 under their influence. 
 
 They begin with guarding this idea from the fal 
 lacies of sense and natural faculty. They assert a 
 Divine Man. He is their God. But they deny to 
 Him shape, or any of the limitations without which 
 the natural faculties cannot take one step in any 
 direction. 
 
 They deny to Him shape, or local form or pres 
 ence. But, if they do this, how can they retain any 
 idea whatever of God as a Divine Man ? The natu 
 ral faculties certainly cannot ; but can the spiritual 
 faculties ? 
 
 In the first place, let it be said, and remembered, 
 that the spiritual faculties, unless grievously per 
 verted, are humble. They know their own feeble 
 ness, their own immaturity, their own limitations. 
 They know the infinitude of truth. They know that 
 it must come to us and be seen by us only gradually ; 
 
80 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 and that, come as it may to any beings anywhere, it 
 must so come, that, when its infinitude is remem 
 bered, it is seen to come only little by little. They 
 know that, as there is no limit to the possible 
 progress of truth, so there is no limit to the possible 
 advance of their capacity to see and comprehend 
 the truth, however feeble the beginning. They 
 know that it would be the worst of follies to cast 
 off or doubt a truth they do see, because around 
 it lie difficulties or present impossibilities, which do 
 not throw them backwards, but only point out the 
 forward path which their future progress is to 
 pursue. 
 
 IX. GOD AN INFINITE PEKSON. 
 
 An Infinite Person. The difficulty lies in recon 
 ciling these two words, or the ideas they express. 
 But the higher faculties look to the higher things in 
 man. They look to his affections and his thoughts ; 
 for these constitute the man. The body is adventi 
 tious ; it is his instrument, not himself. Changing its 
 substance every day, and indeed with every breath, 
 it is no essential part of the abiding individual man. 
 It is not of the essence of the Person. We can 
 know each other only in the body, because that is 
 the covering and instrument of our senses. But 
 what we know, unless our knowledge is very super- 
 
GOD AN INFINITE PERSON. 81 
 
 ficial, is the man within the body. Our habit of 
 looking only at and thinking much of the body, and 
 of getting access to the person only through the 
 body, makes it difficult for us to think of God as 
 man, and yet not think of Him as in a body as we 
 are. And while the higher faculties are controlled or 
 importantly affected by the lower faculties, it is 
 impossible to do this ; and hence the old mytholo 
 gies and idolatries. But these higher faculties, in 
 the degree in which they are liberated from the 
 influence of the lower faculties, see clearly that this 
 difficulty belongs to them and not to the object of 
 thought. And being sure that He is a Divine Per 
 son, and thankful for this certainty, they wait with 
 hope and patience for the gradual increase of their 
 capacity to conceive of Him adequately : sure also 
 that, while this increase will be constant and eternal, 
 it will never enable the finite fully to comprehend 
 the Infinite, as it is in Itself. 
 
 The higher faculties are employed upon affections 
 and thoughts ; and these are beyond the scope of 
 Space and Time. And while they acknowledge the 
 difficulty ol thinking without reference to Space 
 and Time, they know that a reference to them of 
 things or thoughts which do not belong to them 
 causes error, and against this error they are on their 
 guard. 
 
82 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 God is a Divine Person ; a Divine Man ; consist 
 ing of Love and Wisdom, both without limit, and 
 this Love is infinitely active and productive through 
 this Wisdom. Here then are infinite love, infinite 
 wisdom, and infinite activity or power. Taking 
 with us this idea of God, let us now ask what are 
 the relations between this God and Man. Nor can 
 we answer this question except in the degree in 
 which we can account for and explain Existence 
 and the Laws of Existence. 
 
 God is a Person, of or possessing infinite Love. 
 What is Love? What it is in its perfection 
 and infinitude we cannot completely know. Nor 
 can we know any thing about it except by that 
 analogy to man to which we are compelled to refer 
 continually. Of what love is in man we know some 
 thing. We know this. That love desires to do 
 good to its object, and make its object happy. It is 
 in its fulness in God. It must be in Him an infinite 
 desire to make others happy. It must be in Him 
 an infinite desire to have, and that He may have, to 
 create, those whom He -may make happy. This, 
 then, is the final cause of creation. And it must 
 also be the final cause, or the constant rule and 
 guide, of this Love in the government of the world 
 which it has created. Here then we take our stand 
 upon a simple truth which must be appreciable to 
 
GOD AN INFINITE PERSON. 83 
 
 all ; and which has in it nothing of novelty, for the 
 higher faculties have always suggested it ; and it 
 presents nothing of difficulty to those faculties, 
 although meaningless and mere nothing to the lower 
 faculties. This truth is, that God creates and gov 
 erns the universe, that He may satisfy His own 
 Infinite Love. 
 
 Let us take one step farther. Love desires to 
 make its objects happy. In its fulness it desires to 
 give all it can, to give itself, all it is and has, to the 
 beloved object. Love is in its fulness in God. He 
 then desires to give all He can, Himself and all He 
 is and has, to the objects of His Love. He must 
 desire to create them such that He may impart Him 
 self to them. Here then we have reached a truth 
 which will guide us and may help us in all inquiries 
 as to the purposes and the methods of divine crea 
 tion and government. It is not so simple as the 
 former truth. But we believe it to be intelligible ; 
 and that it will be seen to be true by those to whom 
 it commends itself. 
 
 This truth, stated as well as I can, is, that God 
 creates and governs the universe, that He may have 
 objects of His love, to whom He may, in the degree 
 in which it is possible, impart Himself and His own 
 happiness. 
 
 It may be well to remember that if God be Love, 
 
84 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 or if He have love, He must desire to give hap 
 piness to those whom He loves. But His own hap 
 piness must be full and perfect. We cannot think 
 otherwise. There can then be no happiness more 
 than his, or other than his ; for then it would be 
 wanting to or absent from a happiness which being 
 perfect can have no want. He must then desire to 
 impart of His own happiness to the objects of His 
 love. Now what is His happiness; what does it 
 consist of; what does it flow from ? Here, as else 
 where, in thinking of the Infinite Divine, we may 
 exercise the powers given us, upon the truths given 
 us, that we may know Him ; and, feeble and imma 
 ture as these powers may be, they may give us at 
 least some elementary knowledge of Him, which, 
 however little it is, may yet be sound and just. To 
 the question, What is the happiness of God? we 
 answer, that it must be that of Love, exerted 
 through Wisdom, in Effect ; that is, in use or work, 
 which work is the creation and support of the 
 universe. Then it would follow, necessarily, that 
 this is the happiness He must desire to give to men. 
 And this truth will be commended to us, when we 
 see that it offers an explanation of the constitution 
 of man and of the universe which is his home. We 
 find that man, forgetting for the moment his body, 
 consists of Will and Understanding. And why? 
 
GOD AN INFINITE PERSON. 85 
 
 Because God creates in him a Will, as a recipient 
 of His own Love ; and creates it such a recipient, 
 that it may receive into itself Divine Love, and that 
 the Love so received may become all there is in 
 man of affection, desire, or motive power. He 
 also creates in man an Understanding as a re 
 cipient of His own Wisdom, and such a recipient 
 that this Wisdom becomes therein all there is 
 in man of thought, perception, or reason. But 
 this is not all. The Divine happiness does not 
 consist merely in the possession of Love and Wis 
 dom, but in the activity and productiveness of the 
 Love through the Wisdom. This, too, is infinite 
 and constant; and the universe is its continual 
 Effect. In whatsoever is, from the smallest grain or 
 cell, and far below this, from the primary atoms or 
 elements of matter, up through suns and earths and 
 systems, everywhere the Love of God, in His Wis 
 dom, is ever creating, producing, governing, sus 
 taining. This is His infinite activity, and from it 
 His happiness. He desires to give of this to man. 
 And therefore He clothes man s will and under 
 standing with a body, as He clothes His own Love 
 and Wisdom with the universe. He makes man s 
 body such (a natural body here, a spiritual body 
 hereafter) that all there is in him of affection or 
 desire may, through his thought, act, produce, and 
 
86 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 be of use. And all this use or work of man, miser 
 ably feeble almost to nothingness as it is, wherever 
 it has any existence whatever, and so far as it is not 
 polluted by selfishness which is the opposite of love, 
 is in the image and the likeness of the infinite use 
 fulness of God. 
 
 X. MAN IS IMMORTAL. 
 
 This explanation of the constitution of man may 
 suggest many questions. One of them is this : How 
 can we suppose that the very, very feeble reception 
 by man of the divine love, wisdom, and usefulness, 
 and happiness thence, can satisfy the infinite desire 
 and purpose of God ? We cannot, unless we sup 
 pose, farther, that man is immortal ; that he lives 
 through eternity; and that he is made capable of 
 growing in love, in wisdom, and in usefulness and 
 happiness, through eternity. 
 
 But, limiting our thoughts at present to this life, 
 another question may be this : If all of man s love, 
 wisdom, and usefulness are God s love, wisdom, and 
 usefulness in him, where does his hatred, his folly, 
 his selfishness, his wrong-doing, come from? How 
 does love, proceeding from God, become in man ha 
 tred ; how does divine wisdom become human folly, 
 and divine usefulness human mischief ? 
 
HUMAN SELFHOOD. 87 
 
 The answer to this question must reveal the very 
 heart of all that we can know of the relations be 
 tween God and man. 
 
 That answer is, that God gives life to man, by 
 giving His own life to man, to become in man MAN S 
 OWN LIFE, his own, his selfhood. 
 
 This is a truth very liable not to be understood 
 at all, and to seem wholly unintelligible, or to be 
 misunderstood. It is a truth, but only one of 
 two truths which together make a whole. The 
 other truth is, that the whole of man s life is 
 given by God, of His own life, instantly, inces 
 santly, always. 
 
 The whole truth is new on earth. I do not 
 mean that I have discovered it, for I have learned 
 it. But it has been delayed until the human mind 
 was in some readiness to receive it. It is now 
 new in human thought, and that readiness is most 
 imperfect. 
 
 The whole truth, stated as one, may have this 
 form. Man lives because there is a continual 
 flow of God s life into him to become man s own 
 life. 
 
 My endeavor now will be to explain this truth ; 
 for, being understood, it is nothing less than the key 
 to the mysteries which belong to the relation of 
 God to man and of man to God. I undertake this 
 
THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 with the certainty that I shall do it imperfectly, and 
 with the fear that I may fail to place this truth 
 within the reach of those who would welcome it. 
 But I will do what I can. 
 
 First, then, as to the first element of this truth ; 
 namely, that the life of God flows into man contin 
 uously and always. He did not impart life to the 
 father of the race, and give to that life the power of 
 independent continuance through all the generations 
 of his offspring. He did not give life to each one 
 of us when we began personally to be, and such a 
 life as would abide for ever, or even until our death, 
 without farther gift of life. But at the first moment 
 of each one s existence He gave the life of that mo 
 ment ; and, at every succeeding moment either in this 
 world or the other, He gives the life of that moment. 
 I am obliged thus to speak of succession, and con 
 tinuity, and moments. And yet the spi ritual facul 
 ties, by which alone we can form or approach an idea 
 of the Infinite, must be feebly exercised if they do 
 not assure us that with God there is no Time. That 
 belongs to us. Eternity is something more than a 
 mere indefinite aggregation of time. What it is we 
 cannot adequately know, because while we are here 
 our minds cannot wholly escape the controlling 
 influence of Time and Space. Neither can we ade 
 quately conceive of a personal existence without 
 
HUMAN SELFHOOD. 89 
 
 Time. But we can detect and avoid the errors 
 which come into our mind when we connect the 
 ideas of Space and Time with that which we must 
 know to be independent of them. When we say 
 that God exists independently of time, we may not 
 be able to conceive adequately how this is, or can be. 
 But we may be able to detect and avoid the error 
 and the obstruction to thought caused by the influ 
 ence of this idea of Time when we connect it with 
 the idea of God. 
 
 It is one of those errors to impute a past or future 
 to God, as He is in Himself. What He did, He does. 
 He did not give, and stop giving. He gave and is 
 giving. We may formulate this by saying that 
 existence is perpetual subsistence. We subsist from 
 God, and from His gift of Being to us. We exist 
 continuously because we continue so to subsist from 
 Him. 
 
 This is a hard doctrine. What is more common 
 than the notion that every man has at birth a certain 
 measure of vitality, and, if his life be not cut short 
 by disease or casualty, he will live on through the 
 periods of growth and decay, and die, sooner or 
 later, when that vitality, be it less or more, is ex 
 hausted ? There may be so much of truth in this as 
 to the body, as can be found in the fact that this 
 body is weaker or stronger as inheritance or other 
 
90 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 circumstances may determine, and will continue for 
 a longer or a shorter time to be the clothing and 
 instrument of the man. But Time, the word and 
 the thought, belong only to the body and its world, 
 and to the faculties employed upon them. They 
 have no reference whatever to the man himself, or 
 to his soul. This will not die. But from the mo 
 ment it begins to live through its unending life, it 
 lives by instant and incessant communication of life 
 from the only Source of life. Every affection or 
 feeling or emotion, every thought and whatever 
 pertains to thought, comes to him, then, when it 
 exists. It comes to him as life, modified by the 
 instruments through which it passes and the method 
 of transmission, and is thus exquisitely adapted to 
 become and constitute his life. 
 
 Then, when I recur to the second of the two 
 propositions which constitute the truth I have stated 
 above, when I say that this divine life is given to 
 man to become and be his own, perfectly his own, 
 his very self, I state a still harder doctrine. 
 
 Because man s life coming to him from God is 
 given to him to be his own, he has power over him 
 self, a power of self-determination, which, as to all 
 spiritual things, and all that belongs to his spiritual 
 character and destiny, is complete and perfect. 
 
 He has freedom, because his life is his own. This 
 
OF FREEDOM. 91 
 
 freedom no more originates in him than does his life. 
 It is his, because it is given to him. It is his, because 
 it is given to him with life ; and it is given to him 
 with life, because it is an element of life. It is his, 
 because life is given to him in such wise that he 
 cannot but be free; he must be free for the very 
 reason that his life is given to him to be absolutely 
 his own, and in that life is freedom. 
 
 XI. OF FREEDOM. 
 
 The idea of freedom is one of the primitive ideas 
 of consciousness, and is in itself so simple that no 
 one doubts what freedom is until he begins to con 
 fuse and obscure his thoughts by the effort to make 
 that plainer which is in itself perfectly plain. We 
 define any thing, or describe it, by referring to plainer 
 and simpler thoughts or truths, and asking them to 
 cast their light over the thought or thing to be de 
 fined. But freedom cannot be thus defined, for the 
 very reason that it is itself the plainest and simplest 
 thought. We know what freedom is, also, by the 
 checks and limitations to it, as we know what light 
 is by darkness. In physical matters these limitations 
 are constant and universal. While every man has 
 something of physical freedom, no man has all. So 
 it is with natural freedom, which is above mere 
 
92 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 physical freedom, and distinguished from it by in 
 cluding all the freedom we have in the exercise of 
 all our natural faculties, whether intellectual or 
 affectional. 
 
 Here, too, freedom is always limited and qualified. 
 The reason is, that as temporary life on earth is 
 given as a means of preparing for the unending life 
 that comes afterwards, so all our natural faculties are 
 given us to be used as the instruments of our spirit 
 ual faculties in this work ; and all our merely phys 
 ical and natural faculties are restrained in their use 
 and exercise so far as may be required by the end for 
 which all are given. This end is spiritual prepara 
 tion, and it is placed in man s power. Not one par 
 ticle can he do of it or for it, but by the exercise of 
 the spiritual life and power given him for this end. 
 But this work can be done as it is intended that it 
 should be done, and as the highest happiness possible 
 for us requires that it should be done, only by man s 
 co-operation, and only when man in the exercise of 
 his spiritual freedom does his part of the work. 
 Therefore is his spiritual freedom free from the lim 
 itations which belong to his natural and physical 
 faculties. And only by the spiritual faculties can 
 spiritual freedom be judged of, or made use of, or 
 even recognized as existing. 
 
 Very few topics have been the subject of more 
 
OF FREEDOM. 93 
 
 earnest reasoning and speculation than that of 
 human freedom; but to very little purpose. Only 
 the lower, only the natural faculties have been, for 
 the most part, brought into action in relation to this 
 subject. And the body has but little freedom. Man 
 goes through this life, as to all his lower nature, in 
 fetters. This is true of all the natural faculties 
 whose proper scope is the body and its home. And, 
 while bound and shackled by these fetters, religious 
 men have entered into these questions, and some of 
 them have founded religious doctrines upon the 
 views which their natural faculties led them to take 
 of spiritual freedom. For it is just as possible to 
 bring the natural faculties to bear upon the spiritual 
 topics suggested by the spiritual faculties, as on any 
 other. Unless they are subordinated to and directed 
 by the spiritual faculties, they do not change their 
 nature, nor their method of working, nor the charac 
 ter of their results, when they are employed upon 
 topics higher than themselves. They have no apti 
 tude for these topics, and can lead only to* fallacy 
 and falsity when applied to them. I wish it were 
 possible for me to present this truth with the clear 
 ness which belongs to it. The higher and the lower 
 faculties coexist in every man. It may be that 
 there are those in whom the higher faculties are al 
 most wholly suppressed, but such cases must be rare. 
 
94 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 It may also be that there are those in whom the 
 higher faculties refuse all fellowship with the lower 
 and suppress them almost utterly, but such cases 
 also must be rare. The lower faculties can of them 
 selves, as has been repeatedly said, teach nothing, 
 know nothing, think nothing about God, or the In 
 finite. The higher faculties can employ themselves 
 to the best purpose for the objects they may reach, 
 when they make a rightful use of the natural facul 
 ties as their instruments ; but never when they per 
 mit these lower faculties to bring what is their light 
 as to natural things, but their darkness as to spiritual 
 things, to cloud the spiritual faculties in their inves 
 tigation of spiritual things, and distort and falsify 
 their conclusions. And yet this has been the com 
 monest thing in the history of thought and belief. 
 Men of the greatest ability have devoted themselves 
 to religious inquiries, but have brought their natural 
 faculties to mingle in these inquiries, and perhaps to 
 exercise a controlling influence therein. A reason 
 for this has sometimes been their consciousness of 
 the unusual vigor of those faculties and a pride in 
 this superiority, and when in their religious inquiries 
 they found themselves pushing questions into the 
 nature of the infinite, farther than the spiritual facul 
 ties were able to answer them, they resorted to the 
 natural faculties to work out for them some scheme 
 
OF FREEDOM. 95 
 
 or theory which should at least seem to answer ; and 
 they did this unconsciously, because they did not 
 recognize any distinction between these faculties. 
 An answer to such questions given by the natural 
 faculties must necessarily be mistaken. It may well 
 be that the spiritual faculties cannot now give a 
 complete answer, and, conscious of their present lim 
 itations, make no attempt to do this. But the natu 
 ral faculties have no such hesitation. In their own 
 way they construct an answer, which, because it is 
 founded upon reasoning which is only true in its 
 application to the finite, necessarily misleads when 
 it is applied to the Infinite. 
 
 Let me take an illustration from this matter of 
 freedom. Calvin, by his method of reasoning, came 
 to the conclusion that it was inconsistent with the 
 being and government of God that man should have 
 spiritual freedom. He was right and unanswerable 
 on his own grounds. Man s freedom was inconsist 
 ent with the being and government of Calvin s God. 
 Because the idea of God suggested by the spiritual 
 faculties was surrendered to the natural faculties, 
 and therefore his God was one whose being and 
 character were measured and defined by the natu 
 ral faculties. The perfect proof of this is to be 
 found in his doctrine of ^predestination, or election 
 and /preordination. For this idea, and the whole 
 
96 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 argument by which it is supported, become nothing, 
 when we refuse to attribute man s time to God. For 
 if we refuse to attribute time to God, we shall no 
 longer speak of any thing in Him as before or after. 
 Very little reasoning suffices to satisfy us that time 
 cannot be an entity ; that it is but a method of per 
 ception, or result of intuition, or a law of thought. 
 What, then, must be the result of reasoning founded 
 upon making that which belongs to man only, and 
 his way of viewing things, a positive fact in itself 
 and of the very essence of the infinite God ? 
 
 So too with Jonathan Edwards. Let not one jot 
 of the credit due for extraordinary power of intel 
 lect be denied him. But the intellect has its natural 
 powers as well as its spiritual powers; and when 
 Edwards reasoned, whatever might be his topics, he 
 exerted the natural powers which in him had great 
 vigor, and he did not subordinate them to his spir 
 itual faculties. Both Calvin and he, after asserting 
 and maintaining with all their might predestination 
 and the absence of human freedom, then labored 
 strenuously to reconcile this fallacy with human 
 duty and responsibility. But they labored wholly 
 in vain. Words may assert any thing. A man may 
 say that he believes black to be white ; but he does 
 not believe this, for the reason that it is simply im 
 possible to think so. If a man really believes that 
 
OF FREEDOM. 97 
 
 Omnipotence decreed before he was born that he 
 should go to heaven or to hell, he cannot believe 
 that by any act or effort of his own he can change 
 his destiny. 
 
 And now it may be asked whether when we say 
 that the spiritual faculties assure us that time, or its 
 incidents, effects, or conclusions, can have nothing to 
 do with the Eternal and Infinite, we say also that 
 these faculties can teach us how the Eternal thinks, 
 knows, and acts without time. Certainly not. What 
 they can do is to protect us from the error derived 
 from supposing that He thinks or knows in time, 
 and under the conditions of time. They do not 
 reconcile the infinite knowledge of God with man s 
 freedom ; but they show us that no reconciliation is 
 required, because it is only our lower and natural 
 faculties which place any antagonism between His 
 knowledge, or between knowledge as it must be in 
 Him, and the freedom of man. They show us that 
 there is no antagonism except between our finite 
 mode of knowledge indefinitely enlarged and human 
 freedom ; and that His mode of knowledge is not 
 our own indefinitely enlarged, for it must be other 
 than our own, and precisely other in that particular 
 from which alone comes that antagonism. We 
 cannot think as He thinks, for we are finite and 
 He is infinite. But well may we keep our faith 
 7 
 
98 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 and trust in the perfect wisdom which foresees all 
 our needs and perils, and provides for them. It is 
 right that we think of Him and speak of Him thus, 
 for this is the form which His infinite care for His 
 creatures puts on when it comes down within those 
 bonds of space and time which belong to us. But 
 let us not lay these bonds on Him, nor argue from 
 them as if they belonged to His own essential infin 
 itude. 
 
 The spiritual faculties declare that they cannot 
 comprehend the mode and manner of infinite 
 thought, and therefore they cannot investigate the 
 compatibility of that thought with human freedom. 
 They are certain of both of these facts. They are 
 certain of freedom from consciousness ; and this con 
 sciousness is confirmed and illustrated by ample and 
 powerful reasons and considerations drawn from 
 what these faculties perceive or learn concerning 
 the relation of God to man and of this life to the 
 next. They are certain that God is infinite, and, as 
 He must possess knowledge, that His knowledge 
 must be infinite. Being certain of these two facts, 
 they are certain that in some way they are compat 
 ible and reconcilable; but that they cannot be 
 clearly and fully seen by us to be so, for the simple 
 reason that our finite faculties cannot have clear and 
 full and adequate perception of the Infinite. They 
 
OF FREEDOM. 99 
 
 are certain of both facts, as certain of the one as of 
 the other, and therefore certain of their coexistence, 
 although this may be to a large extent incomprehen 
 sible by us in our present condition. And then they 
 are equally certain that all denial or doubt of either 
 of these facts, and all disturbance of mind from the 
 difficulty of reconciling them, must be caused by 
 the efforts of the natural faculties to take within 
 their inquiry and determination questions beyond 
 their reach and scope, and above their proper func 
 tions. 
 
 Not only the religious men I have mentioned 
 and many others have dealt with this question on 
 natural grounds, but philosophers have gone deeply 
 into it. Some of them have come to the conclu 
 sion that there could not be in the nature of things 
 any such thing as freedom. The main argument 
 which has led to this conclusion is, as has been 
 already intimated, that every effect must have its 
 cause ; that whatever is, is the effect of its cause ; 
 and that that cause could not but produce that ef 
 fect, and could not produce any other effect. Hence 
 it follows that whatever we feel, or think, or do, had 
 its cause, and that cause its cause, and so through 
 this chain of causes and effects the result we know 
 came by inevitable sequence. So they have con 
 cluded. And to what purpose? None whatever. 
 
100 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 They never produced on themselves or others much, 
 if any, actual effect. No man ever lived a day or 
 an hour without exercising some freedom, and know 
 ing that he exercised it ; for every man is more sure, 
 infinitely more sure, that he nas freedom, than he 
 can be of any of the premises on which any such 
 reasoning rests. Whence comes the fatal error of 
 this reasoning? It has been already said, and is 
 now repeated, that this error consists in utter igno 
 rance of the distinctions between life and non-life. 
 Of things without life the natural faculties may 
 judge, and the reasoning above stated has much 
 (though but a qualified) application to them. But, 
 when we come to consider things having life, the 
 first thing we must know is, that Freedom is an 
 essential element of Life. There can be no freedom 
 where there is no life ; there can be no life where 
 there is no freedom. 
 
 XIL, WHENCE THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM? 
 
 Whence comes this consciousness, this certainty 
 of freedom ? In. the first place, the consciousness of 
 natural freedom belongs to the natural facilities. 
 Then the consciousness of spiritual freedom belongs 
 to the spiritual faculties. The spiritual faculties 
 must not only be possessed by every man, but we 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM. 101 
 
 hold that they must have some life, some exercise in 
 him, or he would cease to be more or other than a 
 mere animal. And man is not permitted to sink so 
 low as this. Animals have and exercise their own 
 measure of physical freedom ; but they do not know 
 it, because they cannot have the idea, or conscious 
 ness, of freedom. This they cannot have ; but man 
 can have it, and cannot but have it, because the 
 consciousness of natural freedom belongs to the 
 human natural faculties, and they cannot lose it. 
 And the consciousness of spiritual freedom belongs 
 to the spiritual faculties, and they cannot lose it. 
 This is so, because if there were no freedom there 
 would be no duty, and no responsibility ; and with 
 out some sense of freedom there could be no sense 
 of duty or responsibility. And no living man was 
 ever absolutely denuded of this sense, even if he 
 thought he was. 
 
 Without some sense of duty and responsibility, 
 man could not take one step in advance from his 
 natural condition. Human improvement would be 
 impossible, and all preparation in this life for another 
 would be impossible. The one end for which we 
 begin life in this world would be perfectly defeated. 
 That this may not be so, that the possibility at least 
 of this improvement may always be open to all, this 
 consciousness of freedom is given to all, and pre- 
 
102 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 served in all as an essential and an abiding element 
 in human nature. Hence, I repeat, it may be be 
 lieved that no man anywhere ever lived and died, 
 without some sense of duty and some sense of re 
 sponsibility. It is too plain to require more than 
 the mere statement already made, that, if there were 
 absolutely no freedom whatever, there could be no 
 duty whatever, and no responsibility. And it must 
 be equally certain that, if there were no sense of 
 freedom, there could be no sense of duty; for the 
 idea or thought of duty implies as its necessary pre 
 requisite some consciousness of freedom. 
 
 We may go farther. The sense of duty and re 
 sponsibility not only requires the consciousness of 
 freedom, but will be measured as to strength and 
 quality and character by this consciousness. The 
 natural faculties of man, in so far as they are higher 
 than those of the mere animal, suggest to him the 
 consciousness of freedom, and keep it alive. But 
 they limit this consciousness within the bounds 
 which belong to these faculties and their exercise ; 
 and these are the bounds of this life and all that 
 belongs to it. They are very wide, they embrace 
 all the relations and all the possibilities of this life ; 
 but there they stop. The sense of natural duty and 
 responsibility is conterminous with this natural con 
 sciousness of freedom. It may be very wide in its 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM. 103 
 
 scope and working; it may cover all the relations 
 and possibilities of this life ; it may have a word to 
 say, and that a good word, whenever any question 
 arises from any relation of any man to his neighbor 
 in this life. It may command purity of conduct, 
 benevolence, and honesty ; it may tend to produce 
 quiet and order and mutual assistance, and to secure 
 and promote all the comforfs of this life. But there 
 this natural sense of duty stops : it goes no farther 
 and it looks no farther. There have been instances 
 not many perhaps, but still instances of men who 
 displayed all these virtues, while they emphatically 
 disclaimed any belief in, any reference to, any thought 
 of, God, religion, or another life. 
 
 This is all that natural duty, founded upon natural 
 consciousness of freedom, can do. But then the 
 higher faculties, the spiritual powers of man, may 
 awaken their consciousness of freedom and of duty ; 
 and they will deal with it very differently. 
 
 In the first place, to them it is a consciousness of 
 spiritual freedom. They look upon this life as one 
 of preparation and education for another. They 
 look, and earnestly, upon this world, for the very 
 reason that it is preparatory and instrumental to 
 another world. In their sight, and in all their teach 
 ing and all their influence, the other life is primary. 
 They recognize natural goodness, and gladly pro- 
 
104 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 mote and assist it, even if they cannot raise it to 
 spiritual goodness. For they see in it the means by 
 which men may in some measure prepare for another 
 life, although unconsciously, and with no wish or 
 purpose of the kind on their own part. And this 
 imperfect preparation is made possible for them, 
 because they are made incapable of any better by 
 their unwillingness to "desire any better. 
 
 But when spiritual emotions and principles gov 
 ern, or, to vary the phrase, when spiritual ends are 
 sought, then justice, love, and purity are transfig 
 ured. They have lost no strength, no tenderness, 
 no beauty ; but all these are increased a thousand 
 fold. The standard of all excellence is infinitely 
 higher, and the motive to approach it infinitely 
 stronger and more effectual. 
 
 Such is a spiritual view of freedom and a spiritual 
 use of freedom. But it is a view which only the 
 spiritual faculties can take ; and it is a use which 
 only the spiritual faculties, intellectual and affec- 
 tional, can make. I have already referred to Pro 
 fessor Huxley ; and I may well do so, for I can find 
 nowhere a more prominent example of the natural 
 scientist of this day. In an address recently deliv 
 ered by him to the Young Men s Christian Associa 
 tion of Cambridge, England, he speaks of freedom 
 thus: "I protest that if some great Power would 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM. 105 
 
 agree to make me always think what is true and do 
 what is right, on condition of being turned into a 
 sort of clock and wound up every morning before I 
 got out of bed, I should instantly close with the 
 offer." Now these few words show plainly, first, that 
 Professor Huxley is conscious of possessing Freedom, 
 and is sure of it ; and that he is also conscious that 
 there is a right way and a wrong way of exercising 
 this freedom, and is more or less pained by the con 
 sciousness that, possessing this freedom, he does not 
 always exercise it aright. But we cite this passage 
 mainly to say that it seems to us nothing less than 
 marvellous that Professor Huxley does not see that 
 by closing with this offer he becomes a clock and 
 ceases to be a man ; that he becomes a mechanism, 
 and man is not a mechanism. Why does he not see 
 that freedom is an element of human life, and so essen 
 tial an element of human life that where it is wholly 
 absent life is in no sense human ? We can account 
 for this marvel only by supposing that he cannot 
 see this, because only the spiritual faculties can dis 
 cern this truth. Spiritual or moral freedom is this 
 constant and necessary element of human life for a 
 certain purpose. Only the spiritual faculties can 
 discern this purpose, only they can promote it; for 
 it is the preparation of the man for eternal happiness 
 bv the rightful exercise of this freedom. Only the 
 
106 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 spiritual faculties can teach him or can help him to 
 make this preparation ; and they only can recognize 
 the truth that freedom is an essential element of 
 human life, because they only can recognize the pur 
 pose for which freedom is made to be this essential 
 element. 
 
 Personally I may be doing great injustice to Pro 
 fessor Huxley. I speak only of what he says to the 
 public. And I am glad to admit that he says to 
 them some other things which cannot be reconciled 
 with these. 
 
 There may be those who stand at either extreme ; 
 who are so wholly natural that nothing of spiritual 
 life is in their thoughts, or who are so far spiritual 
 that merely natural emotions or purposes have no 
 power within them. But, if there are any such, they 
 must be very few. In most men, if not in all men, 
 these two classes of faculties or feelings mingle their 
 influence. But it must be plain that these higher 
 faculties will be strong or weak, predominant or 
 subordinate, wise or mistaken, in proportion to the 
 clearness of view with which the fundamental prin 
 ciples of all spiritual truth are seen, and to the force 
 of the motives which are founded on these prin 
 ciples. And none of these lie nearer the foundation 
 of all truth than those which assert the fact of free 
 dom, and disclose its origin and purpose, and then 
 
OF 
 
 THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF 
 
 v* 
 
 throw their light upon the law of fluty. To find 
 
 these principles we must go back to the twofold 
 doctrine which presents two truths, but forms of 
 them one. Of these two, one is that human life is 
 divine life given continuously and incessantly to 
 man. The second is that this divine life becomes 
 man s life by being given to man to be his own, and 
 so make him to be himself. 
 
 These truths coalescing into one become the 
 source of all we can know on this subject of life, 
 freedom, duty. But they must both be held : they 
 must be so united that the one suggests the other, 
 and refuses to be seen apart from it. For, if either 
 be held alone, it profits us little and exposes us to 
 great peril; and if either predominates over the 
 other, or eclipses the other, in the same measure 
 will our thoughts on all these subjects be distorted 
 or darkened. To believe that all our life is divine 
 life in us, and to believe this alone, would deliver us 
 up to many and gross errors. To believe that our 
 life is our own, in the sense that it is self-derived and 
 self-existent and independent of God, would lead us 
 to more and if possible to still worse errors. But if 
 we are able to see both of these truths clearly, and 
 to see them as one truth, and then to see why man 
 is so constituted, we are restored at once to a sense 
 of the most perfect dependence upon God, and to 
 

 108 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 an equal sense of freedom, of responsibility, and of 
 duty. 
 
 It is more than easy for a man to believe that his 
 life is his own. It is difficult, not to say impossible, 
 to believe otherwise. This is indeed a universal 
 belief, and it might almost be said a universal con 
 sciousness. Wherein then lies the importance or 
 the novelty of this doctrine ? It lies in its connec 
 tion with the belief of the higher truth, that he lives 
 by constant and perpetual reception of divine life 
 which is constantly given to him. 
 
 It is natural to man to believe that he lives from 
 himself; or if he supposes that his life came to him 
 from his parents, then to believe that human life 
 originated in and from itself; or if some religious 
 influence leads him to refer the beginning of human 
 existence to God, then to believe that it was given 
 once for all, and that each man s life is his own 
 share of this common property. Either of these 
 beliefs, if it does not destroy all sense of dependence 
 upon God, leaves this sense imperfect and uncertain. 
 Such a belief that man s life is his own is a falsity, 
 and may well become a fatal falsity. It has a 
 direct and a strong tendency to self-pride, self-trust, 
 self-love ; and these are the sources of all sin and all 
 misery. 
 
 On the other hand, the belief of man s entire and 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM. 109 
 
 constant dependence upon God has, in all ages, been 
 carried so far by some religious men, as to make 
 man, in his best estate, only the passive instrument 
 of God ; and it prescribes to man, as his highest duty 
 and his highest condition, to submit himself, without 
 responsive action on his part, to the divine will and 
 the divine action. 
 
 This too is a falsity ; less mischievous, less danger 
 ous than the other, but still a falsity. It is harm 
 ful in many ways. It prostrates the man before 
 what is little else than a divine fatality. Its com 
 plete surrender of all selfhood paralyzes the will, and 
 makes a healthy activity and a living interest in the 
 duties of life impossible. Such may be its effect on 
 those who succeed in this surrender of selfhood. 
 To those who cannot succeed or who will not make 
 the attempt, it suggests an excuse for the absence 
 of all effort to grow better. It says to them : You 
 are in the hands of God, let Him work his will upon 
 you. Of yourself you are nothing. If it be His 
 pleasure to make you good, He will do so, and you 
 cannot resist Him. Nor can you if it be His pleas 
 ure to leave you the wicked man you are, or let you 
 grow worse. If he who is good has nothing to do 
 with his own goodness, surely he who is sinful has 
 nothing to do with his own sinfulness. If God is 
 all, and you are nothing, what have you to do but 
 submit to your destiny? 
 
110 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 Bring the two truths together, and we are safe. 
 If we believe, and with every day strengthen our 
 belief, that we are more than dependent upon God, 
 that we live from Him at every moment of our 
 lives, that our whole life and every thing which con 
 stitutes or belongs to life is given to us to be our 
 own, and that freedom, as an element of that life, is 
 given us to be our own, freedom so to use the life 
 thus given us that we may become His conscious, 
 living, willing, and active instruments, or to turn 
 away from Him and pervert and abuse our life, 
 then shall we be safe from the danger of supposing 
 that we live from ourselves, and from the other 
 danger of supposing our salvation from sin is a work 
 wrought for us with no need of co-operation on our 
 parts. 
 
 There are two ways in which a man may believe 
 that his life is his own, which are exact opposites 
 of each other. One is to believe that human life is 
 self-originated and independent. The other is to 
 believe that it is our own by the constant gift of 
 God. The first is false, and the source of falsehood. 
 The other is true, and a centre from which truth 
 radiates. The apostolic command, " Work out your 
 own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is 
 God who worketh within you both to will and to do 
 of his good pleasure," can be understood when the 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF FREEDOM. Ill 
 
 light of this truth is cast upon it. The word " for " 
 in this passage might better be translated "be 
 cause : " it indicates that what follows this word is 
 the cause or reason for what precedes it. But is it 
 not strange that we are required to do a work our 
 selves, because another does it all himself? 
 
 It is of the will of God and His good pleasure that 
 all men should be saved. To that end He causes 
 His own life to enter within us. It comes always 
 and precisely so qualified and modified as to be in 
 perfect adaptation to our state and our needs at 
 that moment. Thereafter God ever worketh within 
 us that His will and good pleasure may be carried 
 into effect. Nothing that infinite love can prompt, or 
 infinite wisdom devise, or infinite power do, to lead 
 us to work out our salvation, is omitted; but this 
 limitation remains for ever. We can work out our 
 salvation only because He worketh within us to en 
 able us to do this. And He can work within us only 
 to enable us to work out our own salvation, only 
 to enable us to work with Him. He can do no 
 more. All His providence, the constitution and 
 ongoing of the universe, all the circumstances of our 
 lives, all the influences which are caused or permit 
 ted to act upon us, the greatest and the least, all 
 are governed by Him to this end. He can do no 
 more. He cannot violate this law of human free- 
 
112 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 dom, because this law is but the method by which 
 infinite love and wisdom seek to impart to man the 
 highest good and the greatest happiness. For this 
 must ever be, the choice of good rather than evil, 
 the love of goodness in itself, in and from our own 
 actual and perfect freedom. 
 
 XIII. OUR LIFE OUR OWN AND YET GOD S LIFE. 
 
 We cannot advance far in any just idea of God, 
 without seeing that He must be alone and infinite. 
 He alone can have life in Himself, and from Him 
 self. All life but His must be derivative. We may 
 perhaps suppose that man lives, or the world exists, 
 because He commanded them to be; or, in other 
 words, that He created them by His will out of 
 nothing. This question has already been consid 
 ered, and may be again ; and the reasons more fully 
 given for the statement that He does not create out 
 of nothing, but from Himself. If He is infinite, 
 there must be a sense in which He is All ; for if 
 there be any thing outside of Him and independent 
 of Him, this something must be an addition to or 
 more than infinitude. He creates from Himself; He 
 creates by imparting Himself. He makes man to 
 be a living man, by imparting to him life from His 
 own Life. When this truth has full possession of 
 
OUK LIFE OUR OWN AND YET GOD s LIFE. 113 
 
 the mind and is seen in all its clearness, then it will 
 be seen and known that, at every instant of the life 
 of every man, he owes the life of that instant, be it 
 of the thought or of the will or of the body, to the 
 life of God flowing into him at that instant. 
 
 This truth has no claim to novelty. When it is 
 said, in the second chapter of Genesis, that "the 
 Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, 
 and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 
 man became a living soul;" and when Paul says 
 that "in Him we live and move and have our 
 being," and the apostles in the Epistles use, as they 
 do four times, the phrase that God is " all in all," it 
 may seem to be implied that, in some way, we have 
 our being because God imparts to us His being. 
 But I would present this truth as a precise, exact, 
 and absolute truth ; for only when we hold it so, do 
 all its momentous consequences follow. Then it 
 would be impossible for us to live for a moment in 
 the belief that we are independent of God. We 
 should feel that He was our Father, ns we could not 
 otherwise. We should no longer believe that He 
 gave us life by a solitary act at the beginning of our 
 being; for we should know that He gave it to us 
 then, and gives it to us ever since, and ever since as 
 much as then. From such a conviction as this, not 
 only the sense of dependence upon Him, but the 
 
114 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 constant thought of Him, and look to Him, and 
 regard to His will, in all the hours of life, would 
 necessarily derive new permanence and strength. 
 
 This is the good it would do. But can it do 
 no harm ? Yes : much harm, if this conviction 
 stands alone in our minds. As has been already 
 intimated, it might generate a feeling of fatal 
 ity, a sense of constant subjection to overruling 
 power. It would intensify our sense of dependence 
 upon God to the suppression of all sense of depend 
 ence upon ourselves, or of responsibility for wrong 
 doing. It would give into the hands of God the 
 whole work of our lives, leaving no part of it in our 
 own hands. It would make of us the mere lifeless in 
 struments, the mere channels of his will. Or it may 
 exert a different influence, and give us over to enthu 
 siastic self-conceit. We may think God has given us 
 His own life, Himself; nor could we otherwise live. 
 What more can we want, what more can He give ? 
 Are we not as God ; are we not, each of us, a God 
 to himself? From some feeling of this kind, not 
 exactly defined in the consciousness, but very power 
 ful, and never more powerful than now, a part of 
 existing infidelity has arisen; and in its turn it 
 asserts often in different language and confirms 
 the fearful falsity that man is sufficient unto him 
 self. 
 
OUR LIFE OUK OWN AND YET GOD s LIFE. 115 
 
 x 
 
 It has always been the great problem of religion 
 to reconcile a perfect dependence upon God with 
 the free will and free agency of man. They have 
 not been reconciled. Religious men looked first 
 and most at this dependence : anxious to fasten this 
 belief in their minds, and conscious how it was 
 dimmed and resisted by all worldly influences, they 
 seemed to care for nothing else. They labored to 
 impress upon their own minds, and upon their hear 
 ers, this truth in its fullest intensity. The Imitation 
 of Christ, Law s Serious Call, and the Theologia 
 Gerinanica three most excellent and most useful 
 books carry this doctrine, so to call it, to the last 
 extreme. The last-named expressly declares that 
 the last good of human possibility is to be " the 
 Lord s Hand ; " and most earnest and pathetic elo 
 quence is employed in the effort to make men seek 
 to become mere unresisting instruments of God, 
 through whom He can do his work with nothing of 
 their work mingled with it. 
 
 This is an excess, but it is an excess of a good 
 thing ; and it is an excess which was justified and 
 perhaps made necessary by the perfect antagonism 
 between the truth and all that belongs to the merely 
 natural man when that revolts against the spiritual. 
 Hence the opposite extreme is far more common. 
 The irreligious man considers religion as slavery. 
 
116 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 He feels, and all these ascetic writings seem at least 
 to justify his feeling, that religion claims not only 
 his obedience, not merely the destruction of his 
 freedom, but the suppression of himself. He will 
 have none of it, that he may have full possession of 
 all that belongs to his nature; and for that pur 
 pose he vindicates his freedom by denying his God. 
 Generally, men have stood somewhere between 
 these extremes, shifting their position from day to 
 day, or from mood to mood ; at one time inclining 
 more to their sense of dependence upon God, and at 
 another to their desire for freedom and their con 
 sciousness of it, always going to either by leaving 
 the other, and never seeking to reconcile the two 
 into unity. 
 
 And yet this can be done. They may be recon 
 ciled into a perfect unity. And this is done when 
 we hold with equal clearness and certainty the two 
 propositions that our life is God s life always and 
 incessantly given to us, and that this life is so given 
 that it becomes and is in us our own, our own 
 life, perfectly our own, and none the less always 
 and constantly God s life in us. It is given to be 
 perfectly our own, that our freedom in the use of 
 it may be perfect; may be real, and not apparent 
 only. It is still our Lord and Father who, in His 
 infinite Love and Wisdom, so gives and so gov- 
 
OUR LIFE OUR OWN AND YET GOD S LIFE. 117 
 
 erns this inflowing life in every particular of every 
 life, that all is done for man to induce him and to 
 help him to use this freedom aright, but nothing to 
 impair this freedom. 
 
 All our nature, all that belongs in any way to 
 our natural faculties and affections, tells us that 
 our life is our own. In this it does not tell a false 
 hood. But it tells us also that all these faculties 
 and affections, with all the life they constitute, are 
 self-originated ; that they are ours by the inherent 
 quality of our nature ; that they are not from God, 
 nor from any source other than ourselves; that 
 they are not only in us, but from us. And this is 
 not only a falsehood, but the worst of false 
 hoods. 
 
 Then the spiritual part of man comes in aid of 
 the natural part of man. The higher accepts all of 
 truth that the lower has to say. It accepts its as 
 sertion that our life is our own ; but it rejects the 
 falsehood that we live from ourselves. It recog 
 nizes the need that we should do our whole duty, 
 earnestly and devotedly; and that we may so do 
 our duty it knows that God has given us with 
 our life a consciousness that our life is our own. 
 But it also knows that this consciousness is not 
 true nor trustworthy if it exists alone in the mind. 
 It knows that from the beginning of human life 
 
118 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 there have been with all men intimations of the 
 higher truth which consecrates this lower truth. 
 And probably none have wholly escaped from 
 the conviction that there is a higher power than 
 we are, a Creator, a Father, who gave us life 
 and governs our life. There may have been and 
 there still are those in whom perfect and indurated 
 worldliness appears to suppress every thought and 
 every feeling which has not this world for its 
 home; and all worldliness must do so in the de 
 gree in which it has an influence over our thoughts 
 and affections. And there have been and are those 
 who, in the pride of their self-ascribed reason and 
 philosophy, have renounced all higher thought or 
 feeling. But it may well be hoped that the light 
 of the central truth of all religion has been some 
 times able to penetrate even these dark and deep 
 shadows. 
 
 It has been said that the natural faculties are 
 given us to utilize this world, and the spiritual facul 
 ties are given us to prepare in this life for the 
 unending life which follows this. But the spiritual 
 faculties make this preparation, in part and a most 
 important part, by using the natural faculties for 
 this end. 
 
WHAT IS THIS PREPARATION? 119 
 
 XIV. WHAT IS THIS PREPARATION? 
 
 Again and again has it been said that this life is 
 intended to be a preparation for another and an 
 unending life. I would attempt to say what this 
 preparation is, but to exhibit this in any fulness 
 would require another volume. I can only give 
 some indication of it in its most general form. 
 
 Heaven is God s Kingdom. There he reigns, and 
 is known to reign. But how poor this language is, 
 for it suggests only command and rule and sover 
 eignty ! They who are there recognize in its entire- 
 ness the truth that their life is His life given to them 
 to be their own. Their life and their happiness are 
 measured by the completeness and the purity of 
 their reception of His life and of His happiness. 
 And His life is Love and Wisdom, in constant ac 
 tivity. They are able to receive more of this love 
 in the measure in which they have put away from 
 themselves self-love ; for this is the one opposite to 
 divine love, the one barrier to its reception. They 
 are able to receive more of this wisdom in the 
 measure in which they put away from themselves 
 that belief in their self-sufficing independence of 
 God, which is the centre of all falsehood. They see 
 Him in all His goodness, in all His constant good- 
 
120 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 ness to them and to all. They cannot but love Him 
 supremely, and their love to Him gives birth to 
 a love for others which casts off all selfishness as 
 an abhorred thing. They see Him in all His provi 
 dence ; and they are wise, because the reception of 
 His wisdom makes them able to understand His 
 wisdom in its working, and to discern clearly what 
 they must be and what they must do, that His will 
 may be done, and His love carried into its fullest 
 effect. They seek no more than this; but this they 
 ever seek, and ever find in uses and activities as far 
 beyond our imagination as they would be beyond 
 our present powers. They look after their duty, He 
 takes care of their happiness. 
 
 This is Heaven. And every hour of our life on 
 earth offers us an opportunity to become more pre 
 pared to enter into this heaven. For, if we make a 
 rightful use of the faculties given us for this purpose, 
 in every hour we may resist and weaken some pro 
 clivity to sin or selfishness and error; we may 
 strengthen our belief in God, and our trust in Him ; 
 and learn more and more to look upon every duty 
 which He lays upon us, as His gift, given to us 
 because every duty well done in obedience to Him, 
 however humble it may be, bears us onward towards 
 Him and His Heaven. 
 
SPIRITUAL AND NATURAL FACULTIES. 121 
 
 XV. HOW THE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES REGARD THE 
 NATURAL FACULTIES. 
 
 The higher recognizes the lower, and all there is 
 of truth or of good in the lower. And then it seeks 
 to infuse into all this a new life, and set it on the 
 way from earth to heaven. It bids the lower facul 
 ties and affections stand firmly on the earth, doing 
 their whole work there ; but with new activity and 
 new success, because with a new heart and a new 
 soul, with new motives, new ends, new strength, 
 and new happiness. And it builds up a spiritual 
 character by this activity and exercise and conse 
 quent growth and development, of the spiritual fac 
 ulties through the natural faculties. 
 
 In this we have an illustration of the relation 
 between the higher and the lower, and of what the 
 higher does with and for the lower. It is scrupulous 
 to save all that is good and true below itself. It 
 does not quench the smoking flax nor break the 
 bruised reed. It does not say to the lower, Pass 
 away into silence and inaction, and make room for 
 me who am so much better than you. It ignores 
 nothing that the lower does for the comfort of life 
 or in art or philosophy or science. It accepts all 
 this, and seeks for it, and earnestly promotes it. 
 
122 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 For it knows that all the lower can do, anywhere and 
 everywhere, is but a means towards an end which 
 the higher cannot accomplish without the lower. 
 In the far future it sees a boundless advance in the 
 activity and fruitfulness of the lower faculties in all 
 their vast diversity of action. And in this advance 
 it sees new means and new methods for the accom 
 plishment of its own work, which stands to the work 
 of the lower faculties as the soul is to the body, as 
 eternity to time, as heaven to earth. It gladly rec 
 ognizes natural goodness, recognizes it as goodness, 
 and rejoices in the belief that it is, in its own way 
 and measure, a preparation for happiness hereafter. 
 " In my father s house are many mansions." 
 
 There is a possible danger in dwelling too exclu 
 sively upon the belief that we live from God. It 
 may tend to throw all our hope and all our duty 
 upon Him, leaving nothing for us to do. But this 
 danger is in these days very seldom incurred. It is 
 far more necessary to consider the other danger, for 
 that is actual and constant, the danger that our 
 sense of personality and freedom may exclude or 
 overpower our belief in our dependence upon God. 
 Safety from this peril is not to be found in weaken 
 ing our sense of personality and freedom ; for that 
 cannot be too strong. Let this be doubted, let this 
 sense grow obscure and uncertain, and in precisely 
 
SPIRITUAL AND NATURAL FACULTIES. 123 
 
 the same measure all sense of duty and responsi 
 bility will become obscure and uncertain. And it 
 ought to become so, because duty and responsibility 
 rest most really and absolutely upon the fact that 
 we possess our life, and all that constitutes our life, 
 as our own, in every just sense of that phrase and 
 under every aspect of the truth it expresses. 
 
 There is, perhaps inevitably, a tendency among 
 thoughtful minds to consider the perfect sover 
 eignty of God as implying some want of actual free 
 agency with man. They know that freedom and 
 duty must have an existence of some sort, but are 
 disposed to regard these as so far inconsistent with 
 divine omnipotence and omniscience, that our con 
 sciousness of them seems to be not so much the true 
 consciousness of a positive fact, as a permitted illu 
 sion, permitted to us and good for us, that by it 
 we may be induced to bring our conduct into con 
 formity with divine law. But this consciousness is 
 not a permitted illusion. It is a consciousness of 
 the fact upon which rest heaven and earth. Our 
 life is our own. It is not from ourselves : it is all, 
 always, and instantly, from God and given to us ; 
 but it is given us to be our own, and to constitute 
 our selfhood. This giving of life from God to 
 become most actually our own is the foundation 
 upon which rests all the work of God, in the crea- 
 
124 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 tion, preservation, and government of the uni 
 verse, natural and spiritual, and of all things 
 therein. 
 
 Geology and all the sciences which tell us of the 
 vast periods consumed in the growth and develop 
 ment of the material universe ; history and ethnol 
 ogy, and whatever speaks to us of the growth and 
 development of the human race through the im 
 measurable past, all help us to see the infinite 
 patience of the Lord. To see it ; but do they help 
 us to understand it, to know why the Omnipotent 
 accomplishes only very slowly, with long delay, and 
 with a long series of short steps of progress, results 
 which it would seem that an almighty fiat might 
 have brought into being at once ? No. To under 
 stand this at all, we must cast upon it the light of 
 the great truths, that the end of creation is a con 
 stantly growing heaven of the human race, and that 
 men can be prepared for heaven only in their free 
 dom, only by their voluntary co-operation with their 
 Father s working. The day may come when this 
 truth, taken in connection with the correspondence 
 of all things of the material worlds with all things 
 of the spirit, may solve the mystery of those un 
 numbered ages during which earth, this and other 
 earths, were and are prepared to be the dwelling- 
 places of human beings. 
 
SPIRITUAL AND NATURAL FACULTIES. 125 
 
 Even now we may catch a glimpse of the truth 
 which explains the slow and gradual advance of 
 man from the rudest beginnings to the present hour, 
 and his extreme imperfection at this hour, and his 
 utter inferiority, as yet, to any true and high stand 
 ard of excellence. For we may see that all the 
 advances of mankind, all the steps of their prog 
 ress, all the accumulated good of this progress, con 
 stitute a work in which man does his part, in the 
 freedom which God gives him that he may use the 
 constantly inflowing life of God, in doing this work 
 as of himself. 
 
 If we can see this truth distinctly, and accept it 
 unreservedly, we shall see that, were not man s life 
 his own, he could not love God in perfect freedom 
 and by his own choice. We shall see that this gift 
 of life to be our ow is that which lifts man above 
 the brutes, and makes man to be the summit and 
 crown of creation, and builds him into God s own 
 image and likeness, and makes it possible for him to 
 have that pure and perfect love of God, which gives 
 him the capacity of receiving that highest happiness 
 of which created beings can be capable. And if we 
 admit that it must be the desire of infinite love to 
 create beings to whom it may be possible for Him to 
 give this happiness, then we shall see that God could 
 not but give life to man to be his own; that he 
 
126 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 cannot withhold or qualify this gift, or disregard it in 
 the slightest degree in any part of his government 
 of man. And man has the power of continuing or 
 becoming bad, because, if this power were taken 
 from him, with it he would lose the power of be 
 coming good. 
 
 Then we shall be no longer troubled to account 
 for the existence of evil. We shall not be able, and 
 we shall make no effort to fathom the mystery of 
 the infinite; but so much as this we know. Man 
 must be free; not in name only or in appearance 
 only, but most actually and most absolutely ; and it 
 is just so that he is free, because life, and freedom 
 as an element of life, are given to him to be his own. 
 That is not freedom which is limited or controlled 
 in its exercise or in the direction it would pursue. 
 Therefore, freedom to do good implies of necessity 
 freedom to do evil ; or, in other words, if evil could 
 not be done, good must be done, and what must be 
 done cannot be done in freedom. And because this 
 freedom is most real it may be abused; and it is 
 abused. Hence moral evil. And if the externals 
 and surroundings of man are made for him they 
 must be in adaptation to him, and must be what 
 he makes it necessary that they should be that this 
 adaptation may be preserved. And thus moral evil 
 calls physical evil into being. 
 
 
THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. 127 
 
 XVI. OF THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. 
 
 And what is there in this sense of absolute and 
 constant freedom to weaken our sense of dependence 
 upon God ? Nothing, providing we hold as firmly 
 to the other truth, that every thing whatever of our 
 life comes from God, and is continually His gift ; 
 always and at every instant the gift of infinite love 
 and infinite wisdom, always so measured and so 
 modified as our highest interests require. 
 
 It may be true that one may believe that his life 
 is incessantly given him of God, and is given him to 
 be his own ; and nevertheless so far regard himself 
 as independent of God, as to be incapable of humility 
 and exposed to the fearful danger of self-sufficiency. 
 This may happen thus. If one believed God gave 
 to him at birth life from Himself, to be for ever his 
 own, it is easy to see how he might come to feel that 
 this life, whatever its origin, when once his own, 
 made him as independent and self-sufficing as if his 
 life were self-originating. And even if he came 
 nearer to the truth, and believed that this life was 
 not given him at once and for eternity, but always 
 and at every moment, he might still feel that when 
 thus given, if given to be his own, it made him 
 equally independent and self-sufficing as if given at 
 the beginning. It is, then, to guard against this 
 
128 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 error and this danger, that a third truth comes in. 
 The first two give the facts, that human life is divine 
 life given to man, and that it is so given to him that 
 it becomes in him his own life. The third gives the 
 reason for this. It is that man may in the exercise 
 of his freedom become prepared for happiness. But, 
 that this end may be reached, it is not enough that 
 divine life be given to man, to be his own. But if "is 
 constantly so given and constantly so modified in its 
 influence, and all external things are so arranged, 
 that all that is possible may be done for man, to lead 
 him, guide him, and induce him to exercise his free 
 dom in such wise as to approach the end for which 
 this- freedom is given. 
 
 Divine life is, in itself, perfect love and perfect 
 wisdom. And they are with us always. They do 
 not leave the man to whom they have given and in 
 whom they preserve existence. From the first mo 
 ment of that existence they are doing, and never 
 cease to do all that Omnipotence can do, to help him 
 to happiness. Whatever is, is under divine govern 
 ment, the greatest and the smallest alike ; for all are 
 so perfectly. Nothing can happen under this gov 
 ernment but for an end: this end, as it is that which 
 infinite love seeks, must be the highest happiness of 
 the creatures it has caused to be. Therefore we 
 may know that every event, whether it be of history 
 
THE PROVIDENCE OF G 
 
 on the largest scale, or of the moment 
 the individual, must happen for his hi 
 and this means his eternal good. This highest and 
 eternal good requires that his freedom be always 
 given, always respected. Whatever happens must 
 happen for his highest good, and because it is suited 
 to produce that good. But it can produce that 
 good, or any good, only .so far as he is willing that 
 it should. 
 
 Here we find the limit, and the only limit, to what 
 God can do for man. It is the limit imposed by His 
 love and wisdom upon His omnipotence. Any thing 
 and every thing is always done to help man to 
 choose right and not wrong, in his own freedom. 
 More God cannot do, because He cannot cease to 
 be perfect love and perfect wisdom. 
 
 But is this freedom never to be taken away when 
 the hour of happiness comes : is it not to be con 
 trolled for the sake of that happiness, and to prevent 
 its loss ? The answer is, Never. And if the question 
 then is asked, What security can there be in the hap 
 piness of heaven, what certainty that it will not 
 fall before the same dangers which imperil and im 
 pair our happiness on earth ? the answer to this ques 
 tion can have no meaning, unless it gives a glimpse, 
 if even that be possible, of the very essence of 
 heavenly happiness. 
 
130 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 We live here to prepare for heaven. This prepar 
 ation is made only in and by and through our free 
 dom. And this preparation is effectual when such 
 a character is built up within us, that, while our free 
 dom will always be perfect, we shall always exercise 
 our freedom in choosing good. Not because we 
 must, but because we will. And this is heavenly 
 happiness. Even there may be alternations of state; 
 for freedom is there, or it would not be heaven. 
 Even there selfishness may grow too strong, and 
 threaten to cast its chill and darkness on the love 
 of God and of the neighbor. Even there it may be 
 necessary that we be reminded that two w r ays are 
 open before us, and only one of them is our Father s 
 way. But they who are . there are there because 
 they are so reborn into newness of heart and life, 
 and their character is governed and determined by 
 such principles and motives, that it is only necessary 
 for them to see these two ways, to make it certain 
 that they choose the better. 
 
 This, then, may be the conception of the highest 
 man, of him who has grown into the full stature of 
 a man ; that is, of an angel. His consciousness and 
 certainty that his life is in very fact and truth his own 
 are strong, but far stronger is his gratitude towards 
 the infinite love which made it possible for him to 
 resist and overcome his proclivities to sin and selfish- 
 
REVELATION. 131 
 
 i^ess and degradation. And at the very foundation 
 of every thought and affection lies the certainty that 
 each and every one of them, and all that he has and 
 all that he is, flows to him constantly from this con 
 stant love. He is there the instrument of God, the 
 hand of God, but yet a person and himself. He is 
 the living instrument, who, in the freedom and the 
 strength given to him to be his own, accepts and 
 uses all his means and capacities for doing his Fa 
 ther s work. We can neither imagine his grateful 
 joy when he remembers that he is so constituted, 
 so led, and so supported, to the very end that he 
 may be capable of receiving this happiness from his 
 Father s Love, nor his shuddering horror at the 
 thought of being deserted by his Father and left 
 to himself. 
 
 XVII. REVELATION. 
 
 Revelation has already been defined, or rather 
 described, as Truth taught by the Lord directly to 
 mankind. What is meant by this word " directly " ? 
 We know what sensation is, and we know, though 
 not so precisely, what the mind can acquire by 
 thought about sensations. The acquisitions thus 
 made may be very large and diversified; perhaps, 
 within their own scope, unlimited in extent and 
 
THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 variety. But there is a limit which they cannot 
 pass; for they can never go beyond things apper 
 taining to this material universe, and to the life of 
 man while he is in the material body. For thoughts 
 and ideas which transcend this limit, knowledge 
 must come to us by other means than by sensation. 
 All thoughts come to us from God, because all 
 thought and all life come from Him. But all of 
 those which I call natural thoughts and ideas come 
 to us by the instrumentality of the material universe, 
 and of those faculties which are adapted to make 
 the utmost possible use of this, universe. The 
 knowledge which we have of spiritual things can 
 not come to us by this instrumentality. It comes 
 directly. It comes by Revelation. 
 
 There are many, perhaps indefinitely various ways 
 in which it may be given to man. If we remember 
 that Revelation is a giving by the Infinite of knowl 
 edge concerning infinite things to finite beings, 
 and that nothing can be given that cannot be re 
 ceived, and that ages and races differ indefinitely 
 in their capacity of reception, we may be sure of 
 two things : one, that Revelation must be multiform ; 
 the other, that it must be progressive. It must be 
 multiform, because it must be adapted in form and 
 manner to the varied receptivity of ages and races. 
 It must be progressive, because that truth is always 
 
REVELATION. % 133 
 
 given, and only that which can be usefully given. 
 And the purpose and the effect upon human charac 
 ter of the spiritual truth given by Revelation must 
 always be to enlarge human receptivity for spiritual 
 truth. 
 
 Between sensation as the foundation of all action 
 of the natural faculties and Revelation as the foun 
 dation of all action of the spiritual faculties, there 
 are many points of analogy. 
 
 Sensation teaches at first simple things, easily 
 received ; and, as the senses grow in power by exer 
 cise, the instruction they give grows in extent and 
 in definiteness. But always what it teaches must be 
 received rationally, and can only yield its best fruits 
 when the faculties fitted to deal with it do their 
 work wisely, and advance, step by step, in the con 
 clusions they draw from what the senses present 
 to them. 
 
 So Revelation, which began we believe when man 
 began, has been received in a vast variety of ways 
 and of forms, but has been on the whole advancing 
 and progressive. So, too, it has always been given 
 to the spiritual faculties; for, if man had not pos 
 sessed these faculties, Revelation could neither have 
 been given to him nor received by him. Moreover, 
 it became what these faculties by their wise or their 
 unwise action upon revelation made of it. And 
 
134 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 when these faculties became perverted, their com 
 prehension of the truths of revelation became per 
 verted, and their presentation of them distorted. 
 For the spiritual faculties, when perverted, are just 
 as capable of spiritual error and falsehood as they 
 are of seeing and stating spiritual truth, when they 
 are not perverted. 
 
 XVIII. THE SUCCESSION OF REVELATIONS. 
 
 Diversified as have been the forms and methods 
 as well as the measures of revelation of spiritual 
 truth, they have been alike in one respect. They 
 have always been given through some use of the 
 natural faculties. They have always been given for 
 the spiritual faculties to lay hold of and profit by. 
 They have always been used, and they have always 
 been abused. So far as they have been used, they 
 have developed and invigorated the spiritual facul 
 ties of man, and raised them into the possibility of 
 apprehending higher and further revelation ; and 
 then this has been given. So far as they have been 
 abused, their truths have become perverted into fal 
 sities; and they have been corrupted until they 
 became the apparent causes of, or incitements to, 
 or excuses for, every kind and every degree of 
 wrong-doing. 
 
THE SUCCESSION OF REVELATIONS. 135 
 
 Over all this Divine Providence has watched; 
 always respecting the spiritual freedom of man s 
 ownhood, always preserving it by equilibrating the 
 spiritual influences which come to him, and always 
 doing for man all that the maintenance of this 
 freedom permitted. So far as the gifts of revelation 
 have been perverted and abused, the evil results of 
 this abuse have been mitigated and counteracted, 
 until they passed away to return no more. And, so 
 far as the gifts of revelation have been rightly used, 
 the good results of this use have remained as abiding 
 means of improving human character. Hence there 
 has been an advance by waves which sometimes 
 seemed to retreat, but on the whole did advance 
 in the condition of mankind ; a gradual growth in 
 the capacity of receiving revelation and making a 
 good use of it ; and with this an advance, in suc 
 cessive steps, of the revelations which give men 
 spiritual truth. 
 
 Then, as the human race advanced under the in 
 fluence of revelation, and as the truths revealed were 
 higher, their perversions even into entire falsities 
 grew less dreadful; and the wrong-doing perpe 
 trated under the name of religion, although still the 
 worst of wrong-doing, was mitigated in its char 
 acter. Many ages have passed away since any 
 religion could be so falsified as to persuade its fol- 
 
136 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 lowers that they pleased their Gods when they cast 
 their children into a huge brazen figure, flaming 
 with heat. And many ages have passed since any 
 religion could impel its votaries to the public prac 
 tice of unutterable lust and cruelty. Those things 
 have passed away, not to return. 
 
 Not to return in those forms. But a perversion 
 of Christian doctrine and motive led to the infernal 
 and indescribable cruelties practised upon the Wal- 
 denses, and in the Netherlands, and by the Inqui 
 sition generally, and not by that alone. And the 
 " faith alone " of Calvin and Luther hastened into 
 premature ripeness, and bore its fruits, and by its 
 fruits showed what it was, in the abominations of 
 antinomianism in Munster. But all that too has 
 passed away, not to return. 
 
 From the beginning of human existence there 
 have been revelations. For man has always been 
 immortal, has always lived on earth to prepare here 
 for a happy immortality, and could never make 
 this preparation but by the use of spiritual faculties 
 given to him for this end ; and these faculties could 
 have no foundation to rest upon, no beginning to 
 proceed from, and no activity whatever, except by 
 making use of what was given to them by revela 
 tion. For the natural faculties alone could not offer 
 to them even a suggestion, or impart to them the 
 first movement of spiritual life. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 137 
 
 These revelations have been exceedingly diverse 
 in way and manner, and form and measure ; for in 
 many ways and by various means have truths con 
 cerning God and the spiritual world come down to 
 man from God through the heavens. And this 
 descent of truth has always been a revelation. 
 There are four of these of which I would speak 
 more particularly. 
 
 In ages far before historic times, there was a 
 church founded among men. They who were its 
 members differed, I believe, exceedingly from our 
 selves in constitution and in character. Revelations 
 were made to them in accordance with their pecu 
 liar constitution and character. What these were, 
 I can describe only by saying something of the cor 
 respondence between the world of spirit and the 
 world of matter. 
 
 XIX. CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 God creates from Himself, by effluence from 
 Himself. What He thus creates is nearer to Him, 
 or farther from Him. What He thus creates nearest 
 to Himself (we may call it, if it will help our under 
 standing of the case, the sphere of being), this nearest 
 sphere is the instrument by which He thus creates 
 the next ; and so on successively until the last and 
 

 138 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 lowest, earth, this and other earths, are so created. 
 Between each sphere thus created, and that above 
 it by which as an instrument, it is created, there is 
 perfect correspondence. Each therefore corresponds 
 to all, and all to their Creator. 
 
 A volume would not suffice to exhibit either the 
 laws or the facts of this correspondence in detail. 
 It may be impossible for me to say any thing intelli 
 gible about it, in a page or two. But I must make 
 the attempt. This correspondence has been the 
 foundation of all human speech ; for in all languages 
 words have expressed things above the senses only 
 by rising into that meaning from their original 
 lower sensuous meaning. It has given to poetry all 
 the force and beauty it has ever had; and by 
 means of poetry, and because recognized when so 
 used as a fanciful and pleasing unreality, even by 
 this use of this correspondence thoughts have been 
 suggested and motives prompted by poetry, which 
 otherwise the world might not have known. But 
 the time has come for the recognition of it as a uni 
 versal fact, and the study of it as a science ; and as 
 a science which must lie at the foundation of all 
 philosophical religion. I would therefore, if I could, 
 offer to my readers a sketch, which must be brief 
 and scanty and utterly imperfect, of some of the ele 
 mentary principles and conclusions of this science. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 139 
 
 Whatever belongs to man, and is not of his body, 
 may be referred either to what he loves, desires, or 
 feels, or else to what he thinks, intends, and believes ; 
 in other words, all things of the world within man 
 refer either to the Will, or else to the Understand 
 ing. So all things of the world without man, which 
 by correspondence represent the things within man, 
 refer either to the things of the will or to those of 
 the understanding. 
 
 The infinite love of God flows into the human 
 will, and there constitutes whatever of affection the 
 man has. This love flows down below the world of 
 spirit into the world of matter. The primal and 
 most general form which it takes there is Heat 
 Already science is rapidly advancing towards the 
 conclusion that all the forces of nature are but forms 
 and modifications of one force, which, in nature, may 
 best be called Heat. It will reach this conclusion, 
 but will not stop there ; for natural science will be 
 led by spiritual science to know that Heat is but the 
 form which Divine Love puts on, when it comes 
 down into nature and operates there. And there 
 are indefinitely diversified forms and effects of heat 
 in the world without man, and indefinitely diver 
 sified forms and effects of love in the world within 
 man ; and these correspond, all to all, each to each, 
 with precise and scientific exactness. 
 
140 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 What is said of the relation between Love and 
 Heat may be applied, with little change, to the rela 
 tion between Wisdom and Light. This word wisdom 
 I must take to express every thing which, proceed 
 ing from its infinite source in the Divine Being, 
 fills and animates every thing of the understanding, 
 or of the intellectual side of his nature, in man. 
 And whatever light is or does in external nature, 
 that this influent wisdom does in the realms of 
 thought; and these two correspond, all to all, and 
 each to each, with precise and scientific exactness. 
 
 XX. THE TEST OF CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 These details might be carried indefinitely farther ; 
 but what has been said will suffice, at least for a 
 sample. It will suggest this view to some readers. 
 There is a sort of resemblance or analogy between 
 heat and affection, and between light and truth, which 
 common language continually expresses. Sweden- 
 borg, not content with this in its common-sense form 
 and measure, lays hold of it as a foundation on 
 which his strong scientific tendency leads him, and 
 his vivid imagination enables him, to build up a sort* 
 of system which he calls a science. But passing, 
 beyond the bounds of a moderate, common-sense 
 use of an obvious analogy, he plunges into folly and 
 
TEST OF CORRESPONDENCE. 141 
 
 mysticism. So some readers will think ; so perhaps 
 they cannot but think. But to others it may occur 
 as worth inquiry, whether it is not possible that 
 these simple, common-sense notions are but the dim 
 recognitions of a greater truth, and are themselves 
 true only because they are the most obvious applica 
 tions of what is in fact a universal law. And that 
 Swedenborg, the eminent mathematician and scien 
 tist which all men called him once, has succeeded 
 in learning and in teaching the principles of a true 
 science. 
 
 It ought to be plain, but I fear it is not, that the 
 science itself offers the only test of its own truth. 
 If, when patiently and honestly studied, it offers no 
 fruits to the student, there is for him the end of it. 
 But if, when carefully examined in its principles and 
 in the application of them to the facts of mind and 
 nature, it is seen to solve many difficult questions, 
 and to throw a strong light into dark corners of 
 both worlds, and reveal unsuspected treasures in 
 them, surely it may be deemed a science, and one 
 of much value. It will indeed cover the whole of 
 both worlds, and reconcile them. It will make the 
 outer world the mirror, the expression of that which 
 is within. And it will teach us to find words and 
 figures to express truths of the inner world, which 
 would otherwise be unexpressed and inexpressible. 
 
142 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 XXI. THE ANCIENT CHURCHES. 
 
 The most ancient church above spoken of learned 
 spiritual truth through these correspondences. It 
 was common among them to have their spiritual 
 senses open, and they lived in a communication with 
 the spiritual world which was afterwards lost. They 
 heard persons speak, and saw persons and things, 
 who were only in that world. They saw the corre 
 spondence of natural things with spiritual things, 
 and in natural things saw the spiritual things to 
 which they corresponded and which they therefore 
 represented. 
 
 This was the infancy not of the human race, but 
 of churches among men. When this state passed 
 away, the knowledge of correspondence remained, 
 not as matter of perception, but by memory and 
 tradition ; and as the ages passed this became obscure 
 and perverted ; but it was never wholly lost among 
 men, and has been the permanent foundation of 
 spiritual beliefs which have always prevailed among 
 the nations, and have had an immense diversity of 
 aspect and of character. 
 
 In a subsequent age, distant from the beginning, 
 but so distant from our own times that history has 
 but dim intimations of it, these traditions of corre- 
 
THE BIBLE. 143 
 
 spondences were gathered into form. It may have 
 become later a written Word, but at first we have 
 no reason to believe that writing was known. It 
 was then delivered over to memory and systematic 
 tradition. Modern inquiries into the remains of an 
 tiquity bear interesting testimony to the systematic, 
 faithful, and successful efforts to preserve the accu 
 racy of tradition, by means of a body of men thor 
 oughly trained in the art of accurately remembering, 
 preserving, and teaching truths held sacred. 
 
 XXH. THE BIBLE. 
 
 We have grouped all these modes of revelation 
 together, regarding them as substantially one. And 
 now I come to the second. It was that which gave 
 us what we call the Old Testament. 
 
 The Wisdom of God took possession, so to speak, 
 of the writers of the books which compose that 
 Book, took possession of their pens, and of their 
 hands which held those pens, and of their minds 
 and memories, and of the thoughts they had and 
 the words they had. Through these it made a Rev 
 elation of itself, as perfect as the instruments it must 
 employ permitted. And it is divine throughout. 
 In its letter it comes down to men in all states and 
 conditions to do for them the good for which all 
 
144 THE LNTINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 revelation is given, to lift them above a merely 
 natural condition, and into one which may be recep 
 tive of spiritual and abiding happiness. 
 
 To natural men, and to men in the lowest degra 
 dation of sin and darkness, it comes on its errand of 
 mercy ; and it says to them all that can be said to 
 such as they are, in the literal sense. But it comes 
 also to men in higher, and in all higher, even the 
 highest states, on the same errand. It teaches them 
 what they are in their own selfhood, marred and 
 degraded as that is, and the absolute antagon 
 ism between this and good and happiness and God, 
 and by what means they may escape from sin and 
 suffering, and depart from it farther and farther for 
 ever and for ever. This it does in much of the 
 literal sense, and throughout in the spiritual sense 
 which pervades the whole Word. 
 
 It was for this purpose, that the literal sense 
 might be by correspondence an adequate expres 
 sion of the spiritual sense, that the Wisdom of 
 God took possession of the writers, and suspended 
 for a time their personality and freedom. A part 
 of the earlier Word above mentioned, which was 
 composed in distant ages wholly by correspondence, 
 and was without literal truth, was placed as an intro 
 duction to this Word, and extends into the eleventh 
 chapter of Genesis. Under the form of the creation 
 
THE BIBLE. 145 
 
 of the external universe is told the story of man s 
 internal creation, of the birth and growth of his 
 spiritual nature, or of his regeneration. 
 
 The remainder of that Word consists of religious 
 songs, of prophecies, and of the history of the 
 Jewish nation. That this history might, in its letter, 
 be an adequate expression of spiritual truth, the 
 Jews were led through their strange and eventful 
 history, in such wise that the mere narration of* 
 those events suffices for the most part as the form 
 of spiritual truth. Not always, however: in some 
 instances taken altogether, only a very few 
 this was impossible, and statements were made not 
 historically accurate, because it was necessary so to 
 give spiritual truth under natural forms. The im 
 possibilities lately so much commented upon by 
 Colenso and others are instances of this. 
 
 The Jews were a chosen people, chosen not for 
 their goodness, but for their peculiar character. 
 They were chosen as the most merely natural people 
 then or ever existing. Hence in the literal sense 
 there is little reference to another life, and they 
 could learn little of another life. Their God was 
 presented to them as one of terror, of vindictive 
 wrath; and pestilence, famine, and war were the 
 instruments he loved to employ. Such at least 
 is the aspect of the presentation of God to them 
 10 
 
146 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 in a large part of the literal sense of the Old Tes 
 tament. 
 
 And that is the aspect of the Word of God how 
 ever uttered, or of Divine Truth, to all in whom the 
 Jewish nature predominates ; and this means to all 
 merely natural men who arc down at the bottom of 
 the scale, and to this nature wherever it exists, and 
 therefore to all men until they rise high enough to 
 see this Truth under another aspect. It is to them 
 who are in this low condition, commandment, coer 
 cive law : " Thou shalt not." It puts on this aspect 
 that it may reach and help them ; for " The fear of 
 the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom." But obe 
 dience to the law gradually improves the character, 
 and opens the mind to see it under a different 
 aspect. The commandments become laws of love, 
 and these laws become promises of a state in which 
 law no longer needs to be coercive. Obedience will 
 still be rendered, no longer by fear, but by gratitude 
 for the goodness which gives these laws as guides to 
 happiness. 
 
 THE FIRST CHRISTIAN REVELATION 
 
 The Bible is the expression of Infinite Wisdom : 
 in its letter it is the lowest expression. But as char 
 acter advances, as with regeneration a new spirit is 
 
FIRST CHRISTIAN REVELATION. 147 
 
 born within us, we become capable of seeing higher 
 senses to this Word ; and above the highest angels 
 who rejoice in the brightest sunshine of heaven, 
 there still rises infinite wisdom, the Word that in 
 the beginning was with God and was God. 
 
 And then, in the fulness of time, this Infinite and 
 Divine Word came down to earth in a new way. 
 Assuming from Mary a human nature, He stood 
 upon earth, a man among men. 
 
 I am sure that I had better not attempt to give, in 
 the brief space I could here devote to it, any state 
 ment of what I should call the Doctrine of the 
 Lord : not because it would be feeble and imperfect ; 
 for that any statement I could make of this tran 
 scendent doctrine, any explanation I could offer of 
 this transcendent Fact, would be, but because it 
 would be so imperfect as to be unintelligible, unless 
 I gave to it an altogether disproportioned space of 
 this little essay. Let me, then, go at once to the 
 character of this, the first Christian revelation. It 
 is made by the Gospels and by the book which 
 bears the name of Revelation. They, like the books 
 of the Old Testament, were written by Inspiration, 
 and in accordance with the correspondence between 
 spiritual things and natural things. In their literal 
 sense the Divine Wisdom is in its fulness and its 
 power ; and this sense will remain for ever, the lowest 
 
148 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 steps of the ladder which resting upon earth rises 
 to heaven, and through heaven to its source. 
 
 Among the words recorded of our Lord is the 
 promise that He will come again " in the clouds of 
 heaven." He, the Infinite, who came to earth in the 
 human nature which he assumed, will come again 
 to earth, and this time He will come " in the clouds 
 of heaven." What does this mean, and what can be 
 this coming? The science of correspondence may 
 give us the answer to this question. If it cannot, 
 nothing else can. 
 
 XXIV. THE SECOND CHRISTIAN REVELATION. 
 
 All things of the external world correspond either 
 to what is of the will or what is of the understand 
 ing, because these two constitute the world within. 
 This has been said already. I add now that water 
 corresponds to what I may call truth, having no 
 word of wider meaning, but intending to include 
 all things of the understanding which belong to 
 actual life, as water does to the earth. Clouds are 
 water lifted up frojn the earth by the sun, to the 
 intent that it may fall down again to fertilize the 
 fields and support life. By inspiration, infinite 
 wisdom lifted up from the earth thoughts, knowl 
 edges, words, and facts which belopged there, and 
 
SECOND CHRISTIAN REVELATION. 149 
 
 used them as its instrument or means, by which 
 this truth might descend upon the fields of spir 
 itual life, and fertilize them and support spiritual 
 life. Hence clouds correspond to and represent the 
 letter, or literal sense, of this Word ; and they bear 
 this meaning throughout the Scriptures. When our 
 Lord declared that His second coming should be 
 in the clouds of heaven, he declared that it should 
 be in the literal sense of His Word. He has so 
 come. He has come in and by a revelation of that 
 spiritual sense of Scripture which lies within the 
 literal sense. 
 
 This revelation He made through his servant, his 
 agent for this purpose, Emanuel Swedenborg. The 
 general facts of this man s life are now well known. 
 I need refer to them but very briefly. He was the 
 son of a Swedish Bishop of high repute, and was 
 born in 1688. Educated as well as was then pos 
 sible, possessing remarkable intellectual power, with 
 an earnest thirst for knowledge and habits of de 
 voted industry, he acquired in early life a high 
 position among scientific men, and produced succes 
 sively works of science and philosophy which have 
 always been acknowledged as having great merit. 
 About the year 1745, when fifty-seven years old, his 
 spiritual senses were opened, and, abandoning nat 
 ural science, he devoted himself for the remainder of 
 
150 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 his life, twenty-seven years, to the acquirement aiid 
 promulgation of spiritual science, of the science 
 of religion. 
 
 His spiritual senses were opened. The material 
 body is formed of material substance. It has al 
 ready been said, that there is but one substance, 
 and that is Divine. Flowing forth from the Infinite, 
 and reaching its lowest place, there, through its 
 adaptation to the mind and the senses, and through 
 the agency of the mind and the senses, it becomes 
 matter, and of this the body and the bodily organs 
 of sense are formed. But within the material body 
 is the soul; and this too is an organism, living in 
 and acting through a spiritual body, which, with its 
 sensories, is formed of spiritual substance ; and this 
 is the same substance from the Divine, in a higher 
 form. These two forms or modes of substance cor 
 respond together. Therefore it is that the spiritual 
 body fills and animates the material body, and lives 
 in it and acts through it ; for whenever we see, or 
 hear, or feel, it is our spiritual body which sees and 
 hears and feels through the material body; which 
 loses all life and sense when the spiritual body leaves 
 it at death. 
 
 This material body has two functions. By one, it 
 is the instrument by which the senses of the spiritual 
 body may have, through the material senses, cogni- 
 
SECOND CHRISTIAN REVELATION. 151 
 
 zance of the things of this world. By the other, 
 while it clothes the spiritual body with the material 
 body, it is a barrier between the senses of the spir 
 itual body and the things of the spiritual world. 
 That is to say, while we live in a material body we 
 are cognizant of the material world. But because the 
 material body is in the way, we are not then cognizant 
 of the spiritual world. The material body loses both 
 of these functions at death, because it then ceases to 
 clothe the spiritual body. Thereafter the spiritual 
 body through its sensories has cognizance of the 
 things of the spiritual world, and has no longer any 
 cognizance of the things of the material world. 
 Either of these functions of matter may be sus 
 pended during life in this world. The material 
 body by sleep, or disease, may cease to be an in 
 strument through which the spiritual senses take 
 cognizance of the things of the material world. 
 And also it may happen, that the material body 
 ceases to be a barrier, preventing the spiritual senses 
 from taking cognizance of things of the spiritual 
 world. Either of these functions may be suspended 
 partially or entirely. The cause which prevents the 
 material body from being an adequate instrument 
 of the spiritual body may operate upon some only 
 of the senses or of the limbs, and its operation may 
 be complete or imperfect. Just so, if the barrier be 
 
152 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 removed, this removal may be partial or entire, it 
 may be complete or imperfect. Only one sense, or 
 only two, of the spiritual body may be enabled to 
 take cognizance of the things of the spiritual world, 
 as sight or hearing or touch only; and they may 
 have this cognizance dimly and imperfectly, or 
 clearly and perfectly. In Swedenborg s case the bar 
 rier was entirely removed ; almost as perfectly as it 
 is removed by death. He was in the spiritual world, 
 not always or continuously during these twenty- 
 seven years, but nearly so; a spirit among spirits, 
 almost as completely as when he finally left the 
 material body. 
 
 If the main purpose of this revelation was that 
 our Lord might come " in the clouds of heaven," or 
 that he might come and disclose that infinite wis 
 dom which lies within the letter of His Word, the 
 question may be asked why, for this purpose, the 
 spiritual senses of Swedenborg were opened. The 
 answer to this question must come from the science 
 of Correspondences. 
 
 fe 
 
 XXV. A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THIS MATERIAL 
 WORLD AND THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. 
 
 This correspondence is, in the most general form, 
 a correspondence between the spiritual and the nat- 
 
MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL WORLDS DIFFERENT. 153 
 
 ural. Hence this lower outer world corresponds to 
 the world within man. But this correspondence is 
 general only, and not specific ; it is a correspondence 
 of the external universe to man s internal, but not 
 an exact correspondence of the external world sur 
 rounding each individual to his internal. The 
 external world is, so to speak, the common resultant 
 of all the forces which form the whole world within 
 men, and they give to the world without him its 
 form and aspect and correspondence. To this ex 
 tent, therefore, it is a mirror and exposition of the 
 internal world ; and this it is in all its forms and 
 all their changes, in all its laws and their effects. 
 
 Far more than this is true of the spiritual external 
 world ; or of the world of which every one has cog 
 nizance after death, and they who still live here 
 have cognizance in the degree in which their spir 
 itual senses are open. In that world this corre 
 spondence is not general only, but most special and 
 specific. There, every thing immediately around a 
 man is in exact correspondence with that which is 
 in his affections or his thoughts. 
 
 The reason of this difference is this. We live 
 in this world to change our characters, to change 
 them for the better, radically ; and we can do this 
 only by effort and struggle. Hence we need and 
 have an external world, which being vested, so to 
 
154 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 speak, or ultimated in a stubborn and indurated 
 matter, resists us. We wish it something else than 
 it is, for it does not respond to our feelings or desires. 
 But it does not yield to us. It reacts against us. 
 Sometimes we cannot even hope to make it respon 
 sive to our desires, and we make no effort. Some 
 times we may hope to do this, and we strive to do 
 it, and our efforts are more or less successful. This 
 man, for example, finds his external circumstances 
 painfully opposed to his wishes. He wishes to be 
 elsewhere than where he is, or to be richer, or more 
 healthy ; and, if he thinks success possible, he labors 
 to produce the change. But whether his labors 
 effect this or not depends upon whether it is best 
 for him that they should. Seldom are they per 
 fectly successful ; or, if they are, disappointment 
 and unsatisfied desire are sure to come in some 
 other directions. All this is because these external 
 circumstances which oppose his desires so much are 
 just the instruments by which Infinite Love gives 
 him the lessons he needs, and subjects him to the 
 discipline he requires, in order that he may, by a 
 radical change in his desires, that is, in his char 
 acter, become capable of true and permanent 
 happiness. 
 
 It is not so in the other world. We live here, 
 in time, to determine our characters, to deter- 
 
MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL WORLDS DIFFERENT. 155 
 
 mine them for eternity. We die when they are 
 so determined. Whether we do or do not profit 
 by the lessons or the discipline of love, depends 
 upon ourselves. But when the perfect wisdom 
 which is one with that perfect love sees that we 
 have reached the point where it is better that this 
 conflict shall cease, it does cease : the man dies ; 
 that is, he leaves this material world and goes into 
 the spiritual world; that is, again, he loses all 
 sensuous perception or cognizance of the things of 
 this material world, and comes into a perfect sen 
 suous perception and cognizance of the things of 
 the spiritual world. 
 
 At once the scene is changed, and the law is 
 changed which determines the relation of the 
 external world to the internal. The character is 
 determined. The man no longer needs a world 
 outside of him which shall react forcibly against his 
 inner man, and he has no such world. The external 
 world now acts only for and with the internal world, 
 and does not react forcibly against it. It is needed 
 only for the manifestation, the exercise and develop 
 ment of character, and not for its radical change; 
 because the time when that was possible has passed 
 by ; or, rather, because that could take place only in 
 time. Therefore it is perfectly responsive to the 
 inner world ; not only in general and as a whole, but 
 
156 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 specifically and particularly. And therefore each 
 and every man finds in all about him, which is not 
 him, a ready instrument for, and an exact represen 
 tation of all that is in him. 
 
 This is true in its whole extent and without quali 
 fication, only in heaven ; that is, only with those in 
 whom character is determined to goodness. Few, 
 however, go thither from this world at once, and 
 without needing some discipline to liberate their 
 goodness from its enemies within them. They need 
 a discipline suited to this purpose. And those who 
 do not use aright the means of salvation given them 
 go not up to heaven. To spirits in the early stages 
 after death, and to the spiritually dead, the external 
 spiritual world still responds to their internal spe 
 cifically and precisely ; but now to their states and 
 their needs, and not always to their wishes. 
 
 XXVI. SWEDENBORG. 
 
 Now let it be remembered that, by the laws of 
 correspondence, whatever appears outwardly and 
 objectively represents and mirrors something within 
 the soul ; and then that the Scriptures were written 
 in exact conformity with the laws of correspondence ; 
 and it may be seen why it was necessary that he 
 whose mission it was to learn the laws of this new 
 
SWEDENBOKG. 157 
 
 science and apply them to the letter of Scripture, 
 and teach men how to do so, found in this opening 
 of his spiritual senses a most potent instrument for 
 the instruction which he needed in the nature and 
 working of correspondence. Nor is this all. Thus 
 intromitted into the spiritual world while still living 
 in the natural world, and able to go there and hear 
 and see and learn, and then to return hither and 
 put into an abiding form the information he thus 
 acquired, he was also able to present this infor 
 mation to men on earth in intelligible forms, by 
 the help of the illustration afforded by these cor 
 respondences. So he could make us see and feel 
 what goodness was and what it led to, and what 
 evil was and what it led to, as we could not other 
 wise. 
 
 This man brought to the service assigned him his 
 vigorous powers, highly cultivated, exercised, and 
 disciplined; and he received instruction and infor 
 mation by means never employed as to any othei 
 man, in any thing approaching the same degree. 
 But he was not inspired. Between the Word of 
 God and his writings there is the infinite distance 
 which separates that Word from all human work. 
 As well as he could, and we may believe as well 
 as any man could, he understood what he was thus 
 taught, and gives to us. And we may well believe, 
 
158 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 too, that, strong as he was, cultivated and pre 
 pared and taught as he was, and employed as he 
 was, he was guarded against important error. But 
 between all this and the inspiration and authority 
 which belong to the Word, there is an infinite dif 
 ference and an infinite distance. 
 
 It may be asked whether Swedenborg has given 
 us a full, explicit, and precise spiritual sense of the 
 Holy Scriptures throughout the Word. And, if not, 
 how can what he gives us be called a Revelation of 
 this spiritual sense of the Scriptures ? 
 
 He has made no such Revelation. But he has 
 declared the existence of the science of correspond 
 ence. He has taught the principles of this science 
 and the laws of being on which it rests. He has dis 
 closed the spiritual sense of a part of the Scriptures. 
 
 If this be all, it may be called a most imperfect 
 Revelation. It certainly is so in one sense ; and in 
 the same sense every Revelation of the Infinite to 
 the finite must be so. But as a Revelation it is 
 complete and sufficient for its purpose. Like every 
 other that has been made, or ever will be made, it is 
 delivered to man, to be made use of by him. He 
 gives us the laws and principles of this science, and 
 applications of them which show that there is such 
 a science, and how its laws and principles may be 
 applied. 
 
SWEDENBOKG. 159 
 
 It remains for us and for all future generations to 
 do our and their part. We may accept the Revela 
 tion or reject it. We may study these laws and 
 principles, and endeavor to comprehend them clearly, 
 and make farther and wider applications of them, or 
 we may refuse to do this. We may undertake this- 
 work, and do much or little of it, and we may do 
 that well or ill. 
 
 All this is given up to our freedom, our choice, our 
 action. But if we look into this Revelation until 
 we discern evidence of its truth, and then endeavor 
 to see these truths yet more clearly, and make them 
 our own by honest and earnest study of them, not 
 only for knowledge, but for life, for all who do this 
 the Word of God will become the Sun of our souls, 
 pouring its heat and its light into our winter and 
 our midnight. 
 
 If such a man as Swedenborg tells us such new 
 and important truth, why is it not more rapidly and 
 more widely received ? My answer is, it cannot, and 
 never can be, received by any but those who are 
 favorably disposed towards it. 
 
 I know perfectly well how readers who are not of 
 the New Church, if I have any such, would under 
 stand this statement, and what would be their an 
 swer. They would say to me, Of course it is just as 
 you say. This good and very able man did perceive 
 
160 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 and has expressed some important truths in religious 
 philosophy; and some of these all which could 
 stand the test of rational investigation have been 
 widely received, and do now exert much influence 
 on the best religious thought. But he was an im 
 aginative man, devoted to his abstruse studies, lead 
 ing a secluded life, and not protected from the 
 vagaries of enthusiasm and the delusions of imagi 
 nation, either by domestic ties and cares, or by the 
 work and responsibility of professional or official life. 
 
 This last he held until he threw it aside at the a-e 
 
 
 
 of fifty-nine, and with it he threw aside that which 
 had been the barrier between him and mere illusion. 
 Then in his seclusion, concentrating all his powers 
 in one direction and indulging all the tendencies of 
 his character, his subjective notions became to him 
 at last as objective things. His profound conviction 
 and his vivid imagination enabled him to impart to 
 his account of these things much fascination for 
 persons who are like him, imaginative and enthu 
 siastic. His own convictions he gives to them. 
 They believe in him. And only such persons can 
 believe in him. 
 
 Why would this answer be made to me ? Is it 
 because what he has said of super-natural things, or 
 what he has related from his spiritual experience, is 
 in itself irrational ? Not in the least. Certainly I 
 
SWEDENBORG. 161 
 
 have never known or heard of any one who had 
 investigated these things sufficiently to form a defi 
 nite and well grounded opinion of them, and who 
 formed that opinion. It is because saying any thing 
 whatever of super-natural facts, or speaking of spir 
 itual experience, seems in itself irrational, contrary 
 to reason. And it is entirely contrary to merely 
 natural reason, so contrary, that, when this reason 
 is listened to as a competent judge of these questions, 
 it cannot hut be deemed irrational. And we live in 
 days when the spiritual faculties have little power 
 or authority, while the natural faculties have vast 
 power and almost complete authority. The expla 
 nation of Swedenborg s state and condition, which I 
 have supposed to be made by those who do not re 
 ceive his narrations of spiritual facts and events as 
 true, is exceedingly plausible. It is indeed entirely 
 satisfactory to those whose habits of thought and 
 faith make it impossible for them to believe any 
 definite statements concerning spiritual existences, 
 although they are able to receive some, perhaps 
 much, of the new truth taught by him. It is well 
 for them that so plausible an explanation can be 
 made; for otherwise they would be compelled to 
 reject him altogether, and thus lose what they now 
 gain and may profit by. 
 
 But they who believe these statements of Sweden- 
 11 
 
162 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 borg do not regard them as isolated and independent 
 facts. They constitute a material part of a system 
 of truth which is most comprehensive and reaches 
 to the inmost depths of thought. They are in har 
 mony with the principles of that system; and the 
 general facts he states might be inferred, without 
 his statement, from the principles and laws of that 
 system. And while these principles and laws ex 
 plain those facts, the facts in their turn illustrate 
 those laws and principles, and make plain to us their 
 meaning, working, and results. 
 
 In the light of that system, we see that there is 
 another world ; that there must be a world of spirit 
 and of eternity, to account for this world of matter 
 and of time. And we see, too, that the world of 
 spirit must be such a world as that which he de 
 scribes. Because his system is a whole, and between 
 all its parts there is harmony and congruity, all 
 support all; they illustrate and prove each other. 
 We believe in the laws of being which he teaches, 
 all the more because in his narratives of spiritual 
 existence we can see and understand how these 
 laws operate and what they effect. We believe his 
 narratives, the more because they so perfectly con 
 form to the laws of being which he states. Insanity 
 is not so coherent, and mere imagination not so 
 rational. In a word these narratives must be true 
 
SPIRITISM. 163 
 
 if those laws exist and operate, and those laws must 
 exist and operate if these narratives are true. Nor 
 is this reasoning in a vicious circle. How many of 
 the most important conclusions of natural science 
 have been reached and are now held, because the 
 proof of the facts on which they rest is strengthened 
 by their harmony with the laws which explain them, 
 and which in their turn they illustrate. 
 
 All this is nothing to habitual naturalistic belief, 
 which is the prevailing belief of the age. When I 
 say this, I may be referred to 
 
 
 
 XXVII. SPIRITISM. 
 
 It may be said that the rapid growth an d present 
 prevalence of Spiritism is a proof that I am mis 
 taken as to the character and tendency of the age, 
 because it proves that the spiritual faculties are not 
 only awake and active, but eager to seize, with 
 indiscriminating hunger, upon whatever is offered 
 them. To this I reply that Spiritism (I think this 
 is a more appropriate word than Spiritualism), so far 
 as I have been able, not without some effort, to un 
 derstand it, is the most purely natural belief that 
 has ever been held among men, and that its quick 
 and wide reception is a cogent proof of the present 
 feebleness and inaction of the spiritual faculties. 
 
164 
 
 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 I have used both the words "external" and "nat 
 ural" in preceding pages, but the last much more 
 frequently. They are, however, when used in this 
 connection, synonymous and interchangeable. The 
 peculiarity, I might almost say the definition, of the 
 natural faculties, is, that they are employed exclu 
 sively about the external world. There is in the 
 other life an external world just as much as there 
 is in this world. It is like this, but with a differ 
 ence. It is perfectly like this in this respect, that 
 there are faculties perfectly adapted to it. They 
 are the same which I have called natural faculties, 
 and have said to be adapted to this external world. 
 They belong to the body and to external life here ; 
 and because man has a body and external life there, 
 to which these external faculties are suited and are 
 necessary, he has these faculties there. They are 
 there, when subordinated to and wisely used by the 
 spiritual faculties, instruments of immeasurable value. 
 They are there, when they suppress the spiritual 
 faculties or rule over them, just as disastrous in 
 their influence and effect as they are here. And 
 those who go from this world with a purely natural 
 character retain it there, and find an external world 
 adapted to it, and continue to be for ever just as 
 natural as they were in this world. 
 
 Most true it is that, but for the spiritual faculties 
 
SPIRITISM. 165 
 
 which man possesses, he could not have the first 
 thought of life after death. But it is equally true 
 that the natural faculties may seize hold of this truth, 
 make it their own, use it or abuse it as their own. 
 The spiritual sensuous faculties necessarily awake at 
 death. If only this were needed for man s instruc 
 tion, if a knowledge that there was another world, 
 and that man had a body and sensories which would 
 make it a home for him, were all that was required 
 to make man wise, all men would be made wise by 
 death. But death, of itself, or an awakening after 
 death, does nothing to make men wiser or sillier, 
 better or worse. They rise in that world just what 
 they were in this world. They may reject every 
 supersensual truth, and every religious truth, and 
 exclude every religious affection, just as effectually 
 and thoroughly there as here. 
 
 The external or sensuous spiritual faculties may 
 be called spiritual in so far as they belong to the 
 spirit. But when they are not elevated by and gov 
 erned by the higher spiritual faculties, the man him 
 self is just as much an external man, or a merely 
 natural man, as he was before death substituted the 
 sensuous spiritual faculties for the sensuous natural 
 faculties which were open here. 
 
 Such persons are very numerous in the other 
 world- and they are drawn by the attraction of 
 
166 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 affinity to such persons here. And, when both par 
 ties have a certain impressibility of the spiritual sen- 
 sories, those who live here become mediums ; and 
 those who live there talk through them ; and, so far 
 as I have been able to learn, nearly all they say is 
 pure naturalism. They may personate for what I 
 know, they may be weak enough to believe that 
 they are departed friends of those who seek them, 
 or the great and good men whose names they take, 
 and whose authority they try to give to words which 
 such men could not utter unless their intellects were 
 wofully clouded. 
 
 It is among the peculiarities of the other world 
 which distinguish it from this, that there thoughts 
 and feelings are known ; that is, as a general thing, 
 they are perceptible and are seen to be what they are. 
 The good do not desire it to be otherwise : the bad 
 cannot prevent it. The spirits who come to the me 
 diums, and address themselves to those who seek 
 them, and may be supposed to be for the most part 
 like them, find little difficulty in knowing what is 
 passing in the visitors minds, and in making use of 
 it to make their communications such as will give 
 them possession and control of their visitors. But 
 good spirits would shrink from this with aversion 
 and dread. They know too well the value of free 
 dom to wish to impair it in others. These evil spirits 
 
, (UN: sasn 
 
 would, if they could, possess the vei 
 suppliants, and they do take possession of their minds. 
 They may, if they see that it would help them, sim 
 ulate enough of religion to answer their purpose. 
 But, for the most part, and I do not know enough 
 of their writings to justify me in speaking more 
 strongly, they teach only the falsities of natur 
 alism, and inspire only corresponding affections. 
 
 Each of the words " natural " and " spiritual " is 
 used in two senses. By natural we may mean the 
 faculties or qualities which belong to man by birth 
 and are adapted to earthly life, and are also adapted 
 to be instruments of higher faculties in the prepara 
 tion for a higher life, and in the enjoyment and use 
 of the external world in another life. And when we 
 speak of natural faculties we may mean this. Or 
 we may mean these faculties or qualities when they 
 are confined to external life, and, renouncing all 
 subordination to the higher faculties, either suppress 
 or pervert them; and then and thus they fill the 
 heart and life with worldliness and selfishness. 
 
 So we may mean by spiritual only what belongs 
 to man as a spirit, whether it be good or bad. Or 
 we may mean that condition which results from 
 the rightful employment of the higher faculties. 
 
 So far as the naturalism of these days is merely 
 the negation of any thing of life after death, spirit- 
 
168 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 ism opposes it, and finds no difficulty in the relations 
 of Swedenborg. But, so far as naturalism clings to 
 mere earthliness of character, or, to say the same 
 thing in other words, so far as it renounces God, and 
 with God all true religion, admitting none but what 
 is consistent with self- worship, it is utterly opposed 
 to the doctrines taught by Swedenborg. His doc 
 trines " give to God the glory " of all the goodness 
 which man has from Him ; for them our Lord and 
 Saviour is our God; to them the Scriptures are 
 the Word of God ; they command self-denial, and 
 purity of life, affection, and thought ; and they give 
 to the marriage relation sanctity, purity, and per 
 manence. To all this naturalism is antagonistic, 
 and the naturalism of spiritism almost entirely so. 
 I remember some spiritist writings among them 
 a book by an English lady, entitled " From Matter 
 to Spirit " which were certainly religious. But I 
 have met with very few of this kind. 
 
 The mere knowledge that there is another life is 
 not in itself of the slightest value. Indeed it may do 
 harm by taking off the fetters of fear from those who 
 would only abuse their recovered freedom. Hence 
 Divine Providence has permitted the grave to cast 
 such deep shadows over the whole earth. Nor have 
 former revelations made the certainty of a future 
 life by giving the ground and manner of its being 
 
WHO RECEIVE THE LATEST REVELATION. 169 
 
 as well as the fact of its being such that most 
 men were able to go farther than cling to a hope. 
 Spiritism is no revelation ; and, if it does more in 
 reference to the spiritual world, there is too much 
 of it which, if it comes thence and is not mere illu 
 sion, comes up from the depths of self-love and self- 
 worship, and drags its votaries thither. 
 
 XXVIH. WHO RECEIVE THE LATEST REVELATION. 
 
 Let me return to my remark that none can receive 
 the doctrines of Swedenborg who are not favorably 
 disposed towards them. There is not, there never 
 was, and never will be, any religious truth ever 
 given to man, which was not and will not be so 
 given that, while he who loves it may be convinced 
 of its truth on rational grounds, they who have no 
 love for it may reject it on grounds which seem 
 to them equally rational. 
 
 This is a most important law, or fact; and the 
 reason for it is not far to seek. We need but look 
 to the love of God. We need but remember that 
 Infinite Love must desire to do for man the best 
 that can be done, to give to man the best that can be 
 received. And surely it must not be difficult to see 
 that the best happiness that man can have must con 
 sist in his choice of all goodness in his own perfect 
 
170 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 freedom ; and therefore this freedom is an essential 
 element in the life given to man to be his own, and 
 cannot be wholly lost out of that life without his 
 ceasing to be human. Infinite wisdom is in God 
 one with infinite love; and in their perfect union 
 they make Him to be one God. Wisdom in action 
 becomes order ; and perfect wisdom becomes perfect 
 order, divine order: and it is this and this only 
 which imposes limits to Omnipotence; but these 
 limits are never passed. Hence, while all is done 
 that Omnipotence can do to lead men to choose 
 goodness instead of evil, truth instead of falsity, 
 nothing more is done by Omnipotence. Nothing 
 more can be done by Divine Omnipotence, for the 
 very reason that it is the omnipotence of perfect 
 love and perfect wisdom. 
 
 While in this truth we have the key to the whole 
 providence of God, in nothing is its explanation 
 clearer or more necessary than in the questions 
 which spring from the form and character of all rev 
 elations. Never was there one, and never can be, 
 which is not either received and rightly used, or 
 else rejected or perverted and falsified, just as he 
 to whom it is given CHOOSES. 
 
 To speak only of the Old Testament, its obscu 
 rity, and utter failure to compel a reception of 
 truths which they who choose to receive find to be 
 
WHO RECEIVE THE LATEST REVELATION. 171 
 
 inexpressible blessings, are thus accounted for. And 
 so of the Gospels. Their seeming contradictions, 
 indefinite statements, and mere hints and sugges 
 tions of profound truths, have, on the oneliand, led 
 to much doubt and denial, and, on the other, to all 
 manner of perversions of religious doctrines. But 
 they have never hindered those who came to them 
 as to wells of living waters, to be cleansed and healed, 
 and to learn the way of life. Our Lord spoke in 
 parables, and " without a parable spake he not unto 
 them." He himself gives the reason ibr this. And, 
 when this reason is understood, it is seen that it was 
 this infinite mercy which clothed the divine truth 
 he uttered in the clouds of parable ; and that from 
 the same mercy He has now come in these clouds. 
 But still they are clouds. And still clouds and 
 darkness must be about his throne. 
 
 This law will help us to understand many of the 
 peculiarities in the writings of Swedenborg, which 
 while wholly uninspired, and forming no part of and 
 no substitute for the Word of God are the instru 
 ments of the latest revelation. They make him a 
 hard author for many to read. They do not present 
 doctrine in a clear and analytic form, beginning 
 from elementary principles, advancing along a plain 
 and easy way, and leading the mind, as by a pleasant 
 journey, to results which cannot but be reached. 
 
172 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 It is the infinite desire of God to enlarge man s 
 freedom; to make it pure, perfect, constant. And 
 His successive revelations advance in this direction. 
 That given to the Jews was sustained by tremen 
 dous instruments, by plague, famine, war, and 
 captivity. But these were so adjusted, that even 
 they could not compel a constant and universal obe 
 dience, although they did promote and cause much 
 of that external obedience which alone was and is 
 possible to the Jewish character, in the Jews of old, 
 or in us. 
 
 Then came the first Christian revelation. This 
 was supported by miracles. But they were no 
 longer miracles of seeming wrath. They were mir 
 acles of love ; not more so in fact than the sanctions 
 of the Jewish law, but that the love from which they 
 flowed was manifest in them. They were miracles 
 not of coercion, but of conviction. And who needs 
 to be reminded how little power they have exerted 
 when they were opposed by the inertia of indiffer 
 ence, or, more actively, by the hostility of sin and 
 self-love? 
 
 Then comes the second, the consummating, Chris 
 tian revelation. And now not only are all miracles 
 withheld, but the means and method of this revela 
 tion are such, that, while it gives itself like sunlight 
 to the soul whose windows are opened, it is wholly 
 
THE WORD OF GOD CANNOT PASS AWAY. 173 
 
 unable to penetrate the barriers interposed by any 
 want of inclination for the good to which this truth 
 leads. And this is what I mean, when I say that 
 the truths of this revelation can be received only by 
 those who are favorably disposed towards them. 
 Never let it be forgotten that truth alone is only 
 like the light of the coldest winter day, that is 
 utterly incapable of awakening into life the dead 
 earth which it floods with brightness. Well is it 
 for them who seek truth for something else than 
 the good of life to which it leads, that their eyes 
 are holden. 
 
 XXIX. THE WORD OP GOD CANNOT PASS AWAY. 
 
 The word of God, and whatsoever belongs to it, 
 is infinite and eternal. Plague, famine, war, and cap 
 tivity are still the sanctions of -divine truth. But it 
 is now the pestilence which works within the- soul, 
 and smites that, if truth be rejected, with leprosy 
 and palsy and spiritual death. It is " a famine not 
 of bread nor a thirst for water, but for hearing the 
 words of God." It is war, our own war with the 
 enemies of our souls ; and it is captivity when they 
 have made us captive. 
 
 When our Lord said, "Believe me for the very 
 works sake," His words expressed, as all the words 
 
174 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 of Him who spake not as man speaks ever expressed, 
 an infinite and eternal truth. In these days, also, 
 we must believe for the very works sake, yes, for 
 the sake of the same miracles ; nor can we believe, 
 nor do we ever believe wholly and heartily in Him 
 by the power of whose Word they are wrought, on 
 any other ground. 
 
 But now we believe for the sake of these miracles 
 when their vestments of earth are cast off, and they 
 are transfigured into miracles of the spirit, mir 
 acles worked in our spirits by the Spirit of God. 
 Then we do indeed believe in Him ; for we are sure 
 that He has fed our famine with the bread of life, 
 and slaked our thirst with the water of life. He 
 has lifted us from the bed whereon the fever of 
 selfishness had laid us prostrate, and made us whole 
 that we might minister to Him ; He has healed our 
 sicknesses, He has strengthened our weakness, He 
 has opened our eyes and our ears, and we no longer 
 walk lamely along the paths of life : we are raised 
 from spiritual death to spiritual life. I say we are 
 raised, that we do all this, that we believe thus : I 
 mean only that this possibility is placed before us. 
 And, while we know that we have as yet only 
 touched the hem of His garment, we may perhaps 
 have reason to believe that some power has come 
 forth from Him. And, if it has, it fills us with un- 
 
FUTURE REVELATIONS. 175 
 
 clouded faith, a hope to which there is no limit, and 
 a humility which casts Self prostrate at His feet. 
 
 XXX. FUTURE REVELATIONS. 
 
 I have called this a consummating revelation. It 
 may be that many successive revelations may be 
 needed, and therefore given, to explain and complete 
 this. But there would seem to be a valid reason for 
 believing that no one will ever stand in the same 
 relation to this, which this holds to all by which it 
 has been preceded. 
 
 Infinite wisdom, and this is absolute and perfect 
 wisdom, expresses itself in the Holy Scriptures. 
 They are the Word of God. This infinite wisdom 
 is hidden under the letter. But it is all within the 
 letter. It is there not conventionally and arbitrarily, 
 but by the same law which governs the creation of 
 the universe and all the acts of infinite power. For 
 this law is the law of correspondence. By this law 
 the wisdom of God expresses itself in the works of 
 God. They are its image and its continent, and 
 they are its exponent to all who can discern their 
 meaning. This is true still more emphatically of 
 His Word. As a man s thoughts dwell in his words 
 and are clothed by them, and as we understand his 
 thoughts in the degree in which his words are their 
 
176 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 adequate expression and we understand them, pre 
 cisely so, but in an infinite degree, the whole wisdom 
 of God dwells in His Word and is clothed by it. 
 He has made the letter the adequate expression of 
 that wisdom. The only thing that remains is that 
 we should understand His word. 
 
 By this latest revelation He has given to men the 
 means of doing this. As yet we can do it only 
 in a very external way, and most imperfectly. But 
 He gave to his servant Swedenborg instruction 
 which enabled him to lay the foundations of the 
 science of religion and religious philosophy, by giv 
 ing to us their most important principles. These 
 principles are now within reach of the spiritual 
 faculties of man; and his natural faculties, if the 
 lower be subordinated to the higher, will all co 
 operate in the comprehension, application, and use 
 of these principles. 
 
 This progress must be gradual and slow, but it will 
 be eternal. The science of religion, like every true 
 science, must begin with its elements, and advance 
 with successive steps. This advance will never end. 
 As men grow wiser in their understanding of the 
 Word, it will be to them what it is now to men who 
 have become angels. It will become to men the 
 Word of God as that exists in the heavens. But 
 there two are all degrees of thig wisdom, and in 
 
HE COMES WITH POWEE. 177 
 
 each degree a constant advance. This advance, as 
 it is constant, so it will be eternal ; and yet it will 
 never ascend to its source, for that is the inmost of 
 the mind of God. And this must ever be infinitely 
 above the highest elevation to which created and 
 finite intellects can ascend. 
 
 XXXI. HE COMES WITH POWEK. 
 
 When our Lord said that He would at some future 
 time be seen to come in the clouds of heaven, He 
 also said that He would come " with power." 
 
 When has He not come with power ? The Crea 
 tor of all things, infinite, and therefore All in All, 
 All in all things always and everywhere, in what 
 grain of sand, in what blossom that opens under his 
 sunshine and his rain, in what insect that draws the 
 breath of life and of enjoyment, does He not come 
 with power? But He said, "They shall see the Son 
 of man coming in the clouds of heaven with great 
 power." This is the prophecy that is now fulfilled. 
 Men may now see this power which is put forth in 
 all that is, but has hitherto been hidden under a 
 veil that was always thick and but imperfectly trans 
 parent, and now is lifted. 
 
 There is still another and a higher meaning to 
 this prophecy, and this too has been fulfilled. 
 12 
 
178 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 The Word of God is His instrument. " All things 
 were made by Him." But most especially did this 
 Word, this infinite wisdom, take on the form of 
 human words, that as the written Word it might 
 come to men, to cleanse and purify and elevate 
 them, and lead them to happiness and to Himself 
 And how has this power of the Divine Word been 
 now increased? It has become more than it was, 
 in the measure in which spirit "is more than mat 
 ter, eternity more than time. It is as if the arm of 
 the Lord had been made bare. Still, however, as 
 in the past, so always the putting forth of this power 
 must be governed by that wisdom which is one with 
 the love that fills it. Still it must respect man s 
 freedom ; that freedom which it seeks to free from 
 all obstruction, to enlarge and to establish. Still, 
 men who crucify Him by denial, indifference, or dis 
 obedience, will continue to rend his outer garment 
 the literal sense of His Word into pieces, each 
 holding that fragment which his own depraved 
 character can most easily reduce to become its in 
 strument ; and still will the Lord withhold his inner 
 garment, one and without seam, from them who 
 would rend that also, or profane or pervert it, or 
 cast it idly away, as men would cast away a pearl 
 when they had no knowledge of its value and no 
 eyes for its beauty. 
 
HE COMES WITH POWER. 1.79 
 
 If this latest revelation be what it declares itself 
 to be, it must.be true that some reject it because it 
 is above their capacity or their desire for goodness. 
 But it is not true, it is very far indeed from true, 
 that none reject it and none are ignorant of it, but 
 those who are thus low in character. A very differ 
 ent reason may operate with the majority of those 
 who know nothing of this revelation, or who, know 
 ing something, reject what they know. This reason 
 is simply that it does not suit them. The blind man, 
 opening his eyes for the first time on a noon-day 
 sun, would not be more dazzled by the intolerable 
 light, than we should be were our eyes opened to 
 the wonderful adaptation to our needs of the means 
 provided for our salvation ; and the special and pre 
 cise adaptation of these means to the special and 
 precise needs and possibilities of every individual. 
 What each one requires, and can make use of to 
 help him on his upward path, must depend greatly 
 on his inherite d character, and on the circumstances 
 about him, and on all the habits of his education, 
 thought, and life. These must determine what is 
 best for him, both as to the spiritual truth presented 
 to him, and as to the manner of its presentation. 
 
 Hence we may explain the marvellous failure of 
 the vast efforts of Christian missionaries among the 
 neathen. Ages ago Catholic priests went among 
 
180 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 the same peoples, and " converted " them by thou 
 sands. But the conversion was almost wholly exter 
 nal, extending but little beyond name and ritual, and 
 reaching to forms only and not to faith. And such 
 a conversion might do some good, and could not do 
 much harm. But now the effort is to make the 
 heathen discard old doctrines and accept new ones. 
 And it is nothing less than wonderful that efforts 
 which are so earnest and so persistent should be so 
 ineffectual. There may be other reasons for this, 
 but there is reason enough in the simple fact that 
 the religion of the missionaries does not suit their 
 hearers, is not adapted to perform for them the 
 only use which religion can perform, that of lift 
 ing their thoughts and affections to our Father in 
 heaven, and to the truths and laws He has given 
 His children as the rules of life. 
 
 Very various are these systems of religious truth ; 
 for they need to be so, that they may be adapted to 
 the various states of those to whom they are given. 
 No Christian man can doubt that Christianity is, in 
 itself, better than heathenism, but it is better for 
 some and not for all ; and there is not and never was 
 a heathenism which, with all its follies and falsities, 
 had not in itself the means of salvation ; and it seems 
 only a reasonable inference from all we see and 
 learn, that this day as many persons find and use 
 
AND WITH GREAT GLORY. 181 
 
 these means, as there are those who find them ID 
 Christianity, and that they use them as effectually. 
 
 We who have faith in this latest revelation must 
 of course believe that it is in advance of all that 
 have come before it. But we do not think that we, 
 personally, are in advance of all that are outside our 
 boundaries; and God forbid that we should be so 
 blind as not to see in some of those who know 
 nothing of our doctrines, or, knowing them, can 
 not see their truth, purity, charity, living faith, 
 and excellence of motive and of conduct, before 
 which we bow with reverence, and in which we 
 would find examples and incentives. 
 
 XXXII. AND WITH GREAT GLORY. 
 
 Yes, with all glory ; for the glory of the whole 
 earth, of the whole universe, of matter and of spirit, 
 is now His. He " has taken to Himself his great 
 power, and reigns." He may now be seen to be the 
 king of all things, and, more, the life of all things. 
 His reign is a reign of love, not merely because it is 
 animated and governed by love, but because it is 
 love, His love, which creates all things for the 
 reception of itself, and flowing into them becomes 
 their life. 
 
 All valid and enduring advance in human charac- 
 
182 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 ter is an advance in the knowledge of God. So, too, 
 all advance in successive revelations lies in their 
 enlargement of the means of knowing Him. To 
 the Jews it was given to know that He was One 
 and sovereign. They were to be the custodians and 
 publishers of this transcendent truth. But for the 
 hardness of their hearts they were permitted to be 
 lieve that He was especially their God, and they 
 especially His people, and the objects of his favor. 
 When our Lord walked on earth, a man with men, 
 he revealed, both by His words and His acts, far 
 more of the true nature and actual working of the 
 Father within Him, that, seeing Him, they might 
 know the Father. And this latest revelation ex 
 plains His words and acts, and gives those central 
 truths concerning Him from which all light may 
 flow forth, and those organizing truths which will 
 some day build up in heavenly forms the structures 
 of human belief, concerning Him who may now be 
 known as our God, our Creator, our Redeemer, our 
 Lord and our Saviour. 
 
 Already the disciple that Jesus loved had said 
 that " God is Love." Beautiful the light, enduring 
 the strength, unspeakable the consolation, these 
 words have given where light and strength and con 
 solation were most needed, although none have 
 understood these words as meaning more than that 
 
AND WITH GREAT GLORY. 183 
 
 God was perfectly loving. But we know now what 
 is the essence of love : it is the desire to give of its 
 own to others, to give of itself, to give itself. This 
 desire is infinite in God. It leads him to create 
 those who may receive his gifts; to create them 
 with capacities of reception of every degree, and 
 then to fill those capacities with Himself. 
 
 He gives to all men, always, all the truth and all 
 the good aflections, yea, all the life and being, that 
 they have. His is a divine giving, and therefore a 
 most actual and perfect giving. It is so complete 
 and perfect, that man can own nothing so perfectly 
 as he owns himself; and he owns most that which 
 most essentially constitutes himself. How feeble is 
 his hold upon natural possessions! They are his 
 but for a moment, and even then but imperfectly 
 his. But his spiritual possessions, the thoughts of his 
 understanding and the afiections of his will and 
 his very life, are perfectly his own. And yet all the 
 while they flow into him from the Father of his be 
 ing, by a constant flow and as a constant gift. His 
 life is thus his own, constituting him himself, be 
 cause the infinite desire of God to give Himself to 
 man leads Him to make man such that he possesses 
 the power of receiving the divine life, and holding it 
 as his own. Because this human life is thus, most 
 really and permanently, his own, he is not a lesser 
 
184 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 God, he is not a part of God : he is a man, he is him 
 self; and he never can be lost in God, never can be 
 merged in the Divine Being, never can lose his own 
 identity. The doctrine of final absorption into God 
 prevailed in some of the old religions after they 
 had become perverted, and lingers in them still as 
 they linger upon earth. And on examination we 
 should see evidence of its greater prevalence among 
 Christians in past and present ages than would at 
 first be supposed. But it is totally false. Man never 
 can be united (made one) with God : but he can be 
 conjoined with Him, this conjunction being of two, 
 each of whom has his own separate identity. 
 
 Thus the infinite All-Father has a boundless uni 
 verse of creatures to whom He may give Himself, 
 and thus satisfy the infinite desire of His infinite 
 love. And then this love labors infinitely to make 
 this reception of Himself larger, more entire and 
 perfect. All below man can have but a reception 
 of the divine life limited in each, at once and from 
 the beginning without change, by the limitations 
 of his nature. Not so with man. His reception 
 may grow for ever, more perfect, more pure, more 
 unperverted ; because there is given to him, in the 
 life given him to be his own, the capacity of grad 
 ually putting away from him all that resists the 
 reception of divine life, or that causes the perver 
 sion of it when received. 
 
AND WITH GREAT GLOEY. 185 
 
 And now we may see what is the constant end of 
 Divine Providence in all its working. It is to make 
 the conjunction of man with Himself more perfect ; 
 and that it may be more perfect, to help man to put 
 away from himself all that opposes or impairs this 
 conjunction. And because this can be done by man 
 only as the self-love of his inherited nature is re 
 sisted and put away by the exertion of the strength 
 given him to be his own, therefore is it the perpetual 
 effort of Divine Providence to strengthen man s 
 Ownhood of his life, and to vivify that Ownhood, 
 that human life, with good from Himself, that 
 through it man may become more and more per 
 fectly conjoined with God. 
 
 No one can know better than I do how poor and 
 dim a presentation of a great truth my words must 
 give. But I write them in the hope that they may 
 suggest to some minds what may expand in their 
 minds into a truth, and, germinating there, grow and 
 scatter seed-truth widely abroad. I am sure only of 
 this: The latest revelation offers truths and prin 
 ciples which promise to give to man a knowledge of 
 the laws of his being and of his relation to God, 
 of the relation of the Infinite to the Finite. It 
 gives new motives for seeking, as well as new means 
 for finding truth, when that is sought to make us 
 better; a new guidance in the darkest and most dif- 
 
186 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 ficult paths of life, new comfort in its desolations, 
 new strength in our weakness. It breaks the seals 
 of the Book, written within and without and sealed 
 with seven seals, which no man has hitherto been 
 able to open. And therefore I believe that it will 
 gradually, it may be very slowly, so utterly does 
 it oppose man s unregenerate nature, but it will 
 surely advance in its power and in its influence, 
 until, in its own time, it becomes what the sun is in 
 unclouded noon. And the sign and the effect of its 
 establishment in the hearts of men will be, that 
 the whole earth will be filled with the glory of 
 the Lord. 
 
 Cambridge : Press of John Wilson and Son. 
 
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 presentation of a great truth my words must give. But I write them in the hope 
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 and, germinating there, grow and scatter seed-truth widely abroad. I am sure 
 only of this : The latest revelation offers truths and principles which promise to 
 give to man a knowledge of the laws of his being and of his relation to God, of 
 the relation of the Infinite to the Finite. . . . And therefore I believe that it will 
 gradually, it may be very slowly, so utterly does it oppose man s regenerate 
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 Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. BOSTON 
 
MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE TO-MORROW OF DEATH ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE FUTURE LIFE ACCORDING 
 TO SCIENCE. 
 
 By LOUIS FIGUIER. 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, BY S. R. CROCKER, i vol. i6mo. $1.75. 
 
 From the Literary World. 
 
 As its striking, if somewhat sensational title indicates, the book deals with the 
 question of the future life, and purports to present "a complete theory of Nature, 
 a true philosophy of the Universe." It is based on the ascertained facts of science 
 which the author marshals in such a multitude, and with such skill, as must com 
 mand the admiration of those who dismiss his theory with a sneer. We doubt if 
 the marvels of astronomy have ever had so impressive a presentation in popular 
 form as they have here. . . . 
 
 The opening chapters of the book treat of the three elements which compose 
 man, body, soul, and life. The first is not destroyed by death, but simply changes 
 its form ; the last is a force, like light and heat, a mere state of bodies ; the soul 
 is indestructible and immortal. After death, according to M. Figuier, the soul be 
 comes incarnated in a new body, and makes part of a new being next superior to 
 man in the scale of living existences, the superhuman. This being lives in the 
 e .her which surrounds the earth and the other planets, where, endowed with senses 
 and faculties like ours, infinitely improved, and many others that we know nothing 
 of, he leads a life whose spiritual delights it is impossible for us to imagine. . . . 
 Those who enjoy speculations about the future life will find in this book fresh and 
 pleasant food for their imaginations ; and, to those who delight in the revelations 
 of science as to the mysteries that obscure the origin and the destiny of man, these 
 pages offer a gallery of novel and really marvellous views. We may, perhaps, ex 
 press our opinion of "The To-Morrow of Death " at once comprehensively and 
 concisely, by saying that to every mind that welcomes light on these grave ques 
 tions, from whatever quarter and in whatever shape it may come, regardless of 
 precedents and authorities, this work will yield exquisite pleasure. It will shock 
 some readers, and amaze many ; but it will fascinate and impress all. 
 
 Sold fvery-where. Mailed, f>ost-paid, by the Publishers , 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON 
 
MARGARET. 
 
 By SYLVESTER JUDD. One volume. Price $1.50. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM SOME NOTABLE REVIEWS. 
 
 From the Southern Quarterly Review. 
 
 " This book, more than any other that we have read, leads us to believe in the 
 possibility of a distinctive American Literature. ... It bears the impress of New 
 England upon all its features. It will be called the Yankee novel, and rightly ; for 
 nowhere else have we seen the thought, dialect, and customs of a New England 
 Village, so well and faithfully represented. . . . More significant to our mind than 
 any book that has yet appeared in our country. To us it seems to be a prophecy 
 of the future. It contemplates the tendencies of American life and character 
 Nowhere else have we seen, so well written out, the very feelings which our rivers 
 and woods and mountains are calculated to awaken. . . . We predict the time whea 
 Margaret will be one of the Antiquary s text-books. It contains a whole magazina 
 of curious relics and habits. ... as a record of great ideas and pure sentiments, w 
 place it among the few great books of the age." 
 
 Front the North A merican Review. 
 
 " We know not where any could go to find more exact and pleasing descriptions 
 of the scenery of New England, or of the vegetable and animal forms which give it & 
 life. ... As a representation of manners as they were, and in many respects are 
 still, in New England, this book is of great value." 
 
 From the London Athen&um. 
 
 " This book, though published some time since in America, has only recently 
 become known here by a few stray copies that have found their way over. Its 
 leading idea is so well worked out, that, with all its faults of detail, it strikes us as 
 deserving a wider circulation. . . . The book bears the impress of a new country, 
 and is full of rough, uncivilized, but vigorous life. The leading idea which it seems 
 intended to expound is, that the surest way to degrade men is to make themselves 
 degraded ; that so long as that belief does not poison the sources of experience, 
 4 all things even the sins, follies, mistakes, so rife among men can be made 
 to work together for good. This doctrine, startling as it may sound at first, is 
 wrought out with a fine knowledge of human nature." 
 
 From the A nti-Slavery Standard. 
 
 "A remarkable book, with much good common sense in it, full of deep thought, 
 pervaded throughout with strong religious feeling, a ful^ conception of the essence of 
 Christianity, a tender compassion for the present condition of man, and an abiding 
 hope through love of what his destiny may be. ... But all who, like Margaret, 
 dream dreams, and see visions, and look for that time to come when man shall 
 have worked out his own salvation," and peace shall reign on earth, and good-will 
 tc men, will, if they can pardon the faults of the book for its merit, read it with 
 avidity and pleasure." 
 
 From the Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 
 " This is quite a remarkable book, reminding you of Southey s Doctor, per 
 haps, more than of any other book. . . . Margaret is a most angelic being, who 
 loves everybody and whom everybody loves, and whose sweet influence is felt 
 wheiever she appears. She has visions of ideal beauty, and her waking eyes se 
 beauty and joy in every thing." 
 
 From the Christian Register. 
 
 " This is a remarkable book. Its scene is laid in New England, and its period 
 ome half century ago. Its materials are drawn from the most familiar element" 
 of every-day life. Its merits are so peculiar, and there is so mueh that is origina." 
 and rich in its contents, that, sooner or later, it will be appreciated. It is impossi 
 ble to predict with assurance the fate of a book, but we shall be much mistaken 
 if Margaret does not in due season work its way to a degree of admiration seldooi 
 attained by a work of its class." 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed, Prepaid, on receipt of Price, 
 by the Publishers. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. 
 
ARTHUR HELPS S WRITINGS. 
 
 1. REALMAH. A Story. Price $2.00. 
 
 2. CASIMIR MAREMMA. A Novel. Price $2.00. 
 
 3. COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. Price $1.50. 
 
 4. ESSAYS WRITTEN IN THE INTERVALS OF BUS 
 
 INESS. Price $1.50. 
 
 <?. BREVIA Short Essays and Aphorisms. Price $1.50. 
 From the London Review. 
 
 "The tale (REALMAH) is a comparatively brief one, intersected by the 
 conversations of a variety of able personages, with most of whose names 
 and characters we are already familiar through Friends in Council. 
 Looking at it in connection with the social and political lessons that are 
 wrapt up in it, we may fairly attribute to it a higher value than could pos 
 sibly attach to a common piece of fiction." 
 
 From a Notice by Miss E. M. Converse. 
 
 "There are many reasons why we like this irregular book (Rcalmah). in 
 which we should find the dialogue tedious without the story; the story dull 
 without the dialogue; and the whole unmeaning, unless we discerned the 
 purpose of the author underlying the lines, and interweaving, now here, 
 now there, a criticism, a suggestion, an aphorism ? a quaint illustration, an 
 exhortation, a metaphysical deduction, or a moral inference. 
 
 " We like a book in which we are not bound to read consecutively, whose 
 leaves we can turn at pleasure and find on every page something to amuse, 
 interest, and instruct. It is like a charming walk in the woods in early 
 summer, where we are attracted now to a lowly flower half hidden under 
 soft moss ; now to a shrub brilliant with showy blossoms ; now to the gran 
 deur of a spreading tree; now to a bit o*" leecy cloud ; and now to the blue 
 of the overarching sky. 
 
 From a Notice by Miss If. W. Preston. 
 
 " It must be because the reading world is unregenerate that Arthur Helps 
 is not a general favorite. Somebody once said (was it Ruskin, at whose 
 imperious order so many of us read Friends in Council, a dozen years 
 ago?) that appreciation of Helps is a sure test of culture. Not so much 
 that, one may suggest, as of a certain native fineness and excellence of 
 mind. The impression prevails among some of those who do not read him, 
 that Helps is a hard writer. Nothing could be more erroneous. His man 
 ner is simplicity itself; his speech always winning, and of a silvery dis 
 tinctness. There are hosts of ravenous readers, lively and capable, who, 
 if their vague prejudice were removed, would exceedingly enjoy the gentle 
 wit, the unassuming wisdom, and the refreshing originality of the author 
 in question. There are men and women, mostly young, with souls that 
 sometimes weary of the serials, who need nothing so much as a persuasive 
 ieuide to the study of worthier and more enduring literature. For most of 
 J;hose who read novels with avidity are capable of reading something else 
 with avidity, if they only knew it. And such a guide, and pleasantest of all 
 such guides, is Arthur Helps. * * Yet Casimir Maremma is a charming 
 book, and, better still, invigorating. Try it. You are going into the country 
 for the summer months that remain. Have Casimir with you, and have 
 Realmnh, too. The former is the pleasanter book, the latter the more pow 
 erful. But if you like one you will like the other. At the least you will rise 
 from their perusal with a ^r.iteful sense of having been received for a time 
 into a select and happy circle, where intellectual breeding is perfect, and the 
 struggle for brilliancy unknown. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of adver 
 tised price, by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Bosxox. 
 
PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY. 
 
 BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 
 
 Author of " Uncle Tottfs Cabin? u The Minister^ 
 Wooing? &*c. 
 
 With Illustrations, i vol. i6mo. Price $1.50. 
 
 This vivid and pointed novel of modern society presents to us in a story 
 which will not be called exaggerated, some of those phases of life around us which 
 are none the less dangerous because they are called contemptible. The extrava 
 gance of the newly rich, who have never learned the use of money, and the failure 
 of the substitutes by which people who live by sensation try to supply the place 
 of honor and religion, have never been portrayed more precisely. At the same 
 time Mrs. Stowe does justice to that sex which is not enough remembered in the 
 discussion of the wrongs of Woman. For she describes, as no one else can de 
 scribe, the tyranny under which a loyal and chivalrous gentleman suffers most 
 terribly. The pen, which more than any other quickened the public heart till the 
 black slavery of centuries was broken, will render a service not less considerable, 
 if it so wake the conscience of men and women that pink and white tyranny of 
 women over men shall be impossible. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 
 
 BOSTON 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 THE GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF THE DAY. 
 
 ECCE HOMO. 
 ECCE DEUS. 
 
 Although It \s now two years since the publication of " Ecce Homo," and one 
 rear since " Ecce Deus " appeared, the sale of these extraordinary and remarkable 
 books continues quite as large as ever. Some of the ablest and most cultivated 
 minds in the world have been devoted to a critical analysis of them. 
 
 The foremost man in England, the Right Honorable W. E. Gladstone, has just 
 published a book devoted entirely to a review of " Ecce Homo," in which he uses 
 the following language : 
 
 " To me it appears that each page of the book breathes out, as it proceed*, what 
 we may call an air, which grows musical by degrees, and which, becoming more 
 distinct even as it swells, takes form, as in due time we find, in the articulate con 
 clusion, Surely, this is the Son of God ; surely, this is the King of Heaven. " 
 
 Of " Ecce Deus," which may be considered the complement of " Ecce Homo, 
 there are almost as many admirers, the sale of both books being nearly alike. 
 
 Both volumes bound uniformly Sold separately. Price of each, $1.60. 
 
 Prof. Ingraham s Works. 
 
 THE PRINCE OP THE HOUSE OP DAVID; or, Three 
 
 Years in the Holy City. 
 
 THE PILLAR OP FIRE ; or, Israel in Bondage. 
 THE THRONE OP DAVID ; from the Consecration cf the Shepherd 
 
 of Bethlehem to the Rebellion of Prince Absalom. 
 
 The extraordinary interest evinced in these books, from the date of their pub 
 lication to the present time, has in no wise abated. The demand for them is still 
 is large as ever. 
 
 In three volumes, 12mo, cloth, gilt, with illustrations. Sold separately. Price 
 of each, $2.00. 
 
 The Heaven Series. 
 
 HEAVEN OTJR HOME. We have no Saviour but Jesus, and no Home 
 
 but Heaven. 
 MEET FOR HEAVEN. A State of Grace upon Earth the only Prep*. 
 
 ration for a State of Glory in Heaven. 
 LIFE IN HEAVEN. There Faith is changed into Sight, and Hope is 
 
 passed into Blissful Fruition. 
 F r om Rev. Samuel L. Tattle, Assistant Secretary of the American Bible Soeitty 
 
 " I wish that every Christian person could have the perusal of these writings. 
 I can never be sufficiently thankful to him who wrote them for the service that he 
 has rendered to me and all others. They have given/ortn and mbstancr to every 
 thing revealed in the Scriptures respecting our heavenly home of /ore, and they 
 have done not a little to invest it with the most powerful attractions to my heart. 
 Since I hive enjoyed the privilege of following the thought of their author, I have 
 felt that there was a realitv in all these things which I have never felt before ; and 
 I find myself often thanking God for putting it into the heart of a poor worm of 
 the dust to spread such glorious representations before our race, all of whom 
 stand in need of such a IVM ." 
 
 In three volumes, 16mo. Sold separately Price of earh, $1 25. 
 
 Hailed, post-paid, to any address, on receipt of the price by the publish*** 
 10 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 FEB 1 1933 
 

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY