Ah Love! could you and I with Him con- To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things It is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Supernaturalism, that the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet the refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what [10 not; yet still did he courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, world embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering; but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have all [20 melted away; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of Holies lies disclosed. This stupendous Section we, after Would not we shatter it to bits-and long painful meditation, have found not then to be unintelligible; but, on the conRe-mould it nearer to the Heart's desire! trary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and 395 1 the end. all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, [30 by judicious selection and adjustment, shall study to do ours: "Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," thus quietly begins the Professor; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile, the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried with him an air-pump and [40 vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and magical 'Open sesame!' every time I please to pay twopence and open for him an impassable Schlagbaum, or shut Turnpike? "But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?' ask several. Whom I answer by this [56 new question: what are the Laws of Nature? To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been, brought to bear on us with its Material Force. "But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?' cries an [60 illuminated class: 'Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move by unalterable rules?' Probable enough, good friends: nay, I, too, must believe that the God, whom ancient inspired men assert to be 'without variableness or shadow of turning,' does indeed never change; that Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be prevented from calling a Machine, [70 does move by the most unalterable rules. And now of you too I make the old inquiry: What those same unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be? "They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the accumulated records of man's Experience?-Was man with his Experience present at the Crea tion, then, to see how it all went on? [80 Have any deepest scientific individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and gauged everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that they read His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say, This stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas! not in anywise! These scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are; have seen some [90 handbreadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is infinite, without bottom as without shore. "System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries, and measured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our [100 little fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Mon- [110 soons, and Moon's Eclipses,-by all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (unmiraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of Providence through Æons of Æons. "We speak of the Volume of Na- [120 ture: and truly a Volume it is,-whose Author and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? . . "Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means [130 we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. . . "But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand funda- [140 mental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it,-lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; [150 you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through. then, or only past; is the Future nonextant or only future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth- [190 blinded summonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both are. Pierce through the Time-Element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all [200 ages, have devoutly read it there: that Time and Space are not God, but creations of God; that with God as it is a universal HERE, so is it an everlasting Now. "And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY?-O Heaven! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left behind us there, which rises in the distance, like [210 a pale, mournfully receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone,-but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously with God!-Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and [220 forever. This, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayst ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not. "Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo, and [160 make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side of the street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, make Timeannihilating! Of both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen, but chiefly of this latter. To clap-on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were [170 Anywhere, straightway to be There! Next to clap-on your other felt, and simply "That the Thought-forms, Space and by wishing that you were Anywhen, Time, wherein, once for all, we are sent straightway to be Then! This were in- into this Earth to live, should condition deed the grander: shooting at will from and determine our whole Practical reasonthe Fire-Creation of the World to its ings, conceptions, and imagings or [230 Fire-Consummation; here historically pres-imaginings, seems altogether fit, just, ent in the First Century, conversing face and unavoidable. But that they should, to face with Paul and Seneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, con- [180 versing also face to face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth of that late Time! "Or thinkest thou, it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past annihilated, furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit Space and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay, even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities: and con sider, then, with thyself how their [240 thin disguises hide from us the brightest God-effulgences! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand, and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that [250 the true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught therewith? Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding stupefactions, which Space practices on us. "Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti-magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. [260 Had we but the Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves in a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and feats of Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we have not such a Hat; and man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without one. "Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the [270 walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to dance along from the Stein-bruch (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses, and noble streets? Was it not the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past [280 centuries, by the divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing man? Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold accomplishments, and rich symphonies, through all our hearts; and modulates, and divinely [290 leads them. Is that a wonder, which happens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happening in two million? Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever done. "Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far-distant Mover: [300 The stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh, could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, [310 were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish. "Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic Ghost? [320 The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the churchvaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as [330 heart could wish; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air, and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact; we [340 start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful and feeble, [350 and fearful; or uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,-till the scent of the morning-air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts, at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon [360 too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made night hideous, flitted away?-Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million walking the Earth openly at noontide; some halfhundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. [370 giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:-and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a Vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and [410 flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and [420 are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped-in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But whence?-O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God. 'We are such stuff As Dreams are made on, and our little Is rounded with a sleep! style. From PAST AND PRESENT [430 "O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadowsystem gathered round our ME; wherein through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the [380 Flesh. That warrior on his strong warhorse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart; but warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the Earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow theur. [390 actually and earnestly works: in Idleness A little while ago they were not; a little while and they are not, their very ashes are not. even Book III, Chapter XI For there is a perennial nobleness, and en sacredness, in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, mean, is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get Work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's ap- [10 pointments and regulations, which are truth. The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. "Know thyself": long enough has that poor "self" of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never |