The Universe a Vast Electric Organism

"The spirit is an evolution of planetary life and cannot be destroyed, and it is natural that its mental attachments to the planet should bring it in contact with the mental development generated there. The spirit would have the power of thought and consecutive reasoning as much after its transition from mortal life as before, but it would lack the power of expression through ordinary channels. It would, however, have the power of inductive electric transfer of thought, and, coming in contact with a spirit embodied, this power of induction would excite the elements in the spirit embodied to equilibrium of mentality, which would give rise to a similarity of thought in both." And here lies the foundation of the doctrine of inspiration which is a process of mental action whereby the mind in the body is raised to a perception and expression of ideas beyond its own range of thought as generated by the physical senses. The result is the upbuilding of the brain organ and the uplifting of the mentality to the purely spiritual plane, and man has thus, by the aid of the spiritual powers, made another stride forward in the domain of spiritual evolution. And man is a spiritualized being with brain organs adapted to the expression of ideas that respond to the spiritual state of life.

It is sometimes assumed that a man cannot be a Christian and a man of science; yet there have been many men of science, from Newton to Lord Kelvin, who were devout Christians. It is also assumed in some quarters that an educated man cannot believe in miracles, or answers to prayer, or special providences. But this is not a fair assumption even from a scientific standpoint. Science affirms the universality of energy and law; Christian theology accepts this fundamental postulate of science and says it is the result of universal spirit and will, or Infinite Mind and volition, which is back of universal energy and law. Energy is spirit and will at work; law is the mode of work. Energy and law are derivative, spirit and will is the primary and ultimate force of the universe.

But says the unbelieving scientist, "I accept energy and law as facts, but do not see that spirit and will are facts." Christianity replies: "You mean by 'see,' mental sight; for in the physical sense you can no more see energy and law than you can see spirit and will, or mind and volition.

"The fact is, science is a search for the invisible or supersensible—for that which lies beyond sense and vision. You call it energy and law, which we say is a result and not a cause, and point to spirit and will, which is the primitive, ultimate, first cause of universal energy and law.

"Would you feel it a just description of yourself if you were described as nothing but a system of energy and law. Energy is action according to law. But there is psychical energy as well as physical energy, or 'a double faced' unity—psychical on one side and physical on the other. Thought, feeling, volition are all species of energy subject to laws of their own. And, what is most wonderful, while they are invisible and intangible they control all physical energy in man and all animal organisms, just as universal spirit and will or volition control all energy and law in the physical universe. Then, is universal energy and law psychical or physical? If it is intelligent and works according to design and purpose with beneficent uniformity it must be psychical, and all physical energy and law is but a manifestation of spiritual energy and purpose."

Then says the scientist, "there may be intelligence without physical organism, and man may be in constant contact with the spiritual world. But I am an organized being and cannot imagine how unorganized beings could communicate with me even if they wished to do so. I cannot imagine it as possible that I could know God, who is a spirit."

But Christianity answers, "suppose you are not matter only, but that you are a spirit also, and a spiritual atom of that universal spirit which controls the universe, then could not spirit communicate with spirit? Thus, you say, all science is founded on energy and law, which necessitates spiritual intelligence and will for its foundation, and consciousness for its evidence. Thought, feeling volition are forms of psychical energy. We are conscious that we think, feel, will; and as consciousness is a mental or spiritual perception, man must be a spiritual being. Then we are not far from Theism—for God is a spirit. Besides energy and law we have consciousness and spirit, and no force without will. Law is simply the mode in which will works. Law stands for the regular and steadfast operation of will, as opposed to variable or capricious action. The uniformity of nature is rooted in the faithfulness of God, which sustains the steadfast operation of natural law."

Then says the scientist, "there could be no miracles, or answers to prayer, or special providences, for these imply interference with law, which would mean inconsistency on God's part and confusion on ours."

But Christianity answers, "interference with law is of continual occurrence. You cannot stand up or walk, or so much as raise your hand without interfering with the law of gravitation or attraction. We can modify or direct the action of forces without violating their laws. Violation of God's laws on God's part would mean inconstancy. Direction of his own energy to any point He wills—as in evolution, for example—is no violation of law; neither are what are termed miracles, special providences and answers to prayer violations of law, but evolutions in accordance with law, as law stands for God's mode of working in the control of the universe."

Then says the scientist, "I cannot reconcile the two ideas of 'infinity' and 'personality.' Personality implies limitation; infinity asserts absence of limitation, a being cannot be at once limited and unlimited."

"But why should we suppose personality to involve limitation?" says Christian theology. "Even in man the essential idea of personality is not limitation. Personality in philosophy and theology refers not to the body but to consciousness and will. What difficulty is there in believing that the Infinite God is infinitely conscious and volitional and therefore personal."

There is a mighty force in the material metaphors of the Bible, but these all stand for spiritual realities, and its fundamental postulate is "God is a Spirit," and "God is Love." As man is a spiritual atom of deity. God has spiritual contact and influence with his spiritual children and they are "moved by the Spirit," and "born of the Spirit," as they accept and obey that spiritual influence which leads to righteousness and truth. Religion cannot exist without spirituality and the religious concept. God has so constituted the human soul. Without religion the soul could not dream of heaven nor feel the sweet whisperings of faith and hope. Neither could the heart thrill with spiritual joy and truth. Without religion the heaven-bound spirit could not soar to the altitudes of celestial bliss.

Without religion and ideality there would have been no gems of art or literature, no beautiful pictures, no living statuary, no lofty temples or inspiring thoughts. The grandeur of Shakespeare, the sublimity of Milton, the poetry of Byron, Burns, Tennyson and Longfellow, the romances of Scott, Dickens and Hawthorne, the noble architecture of Michael Angelo, the statuary of Phideas, Praxatelles and Canova, and the pictures of Raphael, Murello, and Reuben had never been known. Ideality is the father of beauty and the inspiration of all genius, goodness and nobility and the twin brother of religious hope and faith.

Without religion ideality would be a mockery and a dream, hope would be a delusion and a snare, inspiration would wither, like Jonas' gourd, in a night, and the mildew of selfish materialism would convert the verdure of earth into deserts of despair.

John Fiske well says, "Man never would have attained his present psychic powers but for religion," and without religion ideality would never have soared to her lofty heights or brought forth her beautiful thoughts, her lofty conceptions, her sublime dreams of joy, or her noble gems of art, poetry, sculpture, architecture and literature. Remove the twin brothers—religion and ideality—from the earth, and its glory and worth would shrivel like a withered flower. Its hopes and joys, its dreams of peace and love, of paradise and heaven, would vanish into the desolations of a boundless Sahara, heaped with the burning sands of doubt and scorched by the withering blast of despair. The religious concept is the pilot of the soul to the fair field of heaven, the communion with the Father of the spirit, and ideality is its companion and servant who carries its cloak and staff as they journey along the pathways of earth and the highways of eternity. Science and philosophy, ideality, love and hope and all the aspirations of the human soul sustain the religious concept. It is a scientific postulate imbedded in the nature of man and in the basic law of the universe. Ideality and religion are the most powerful forces in uplifting humanity. The sublimer the ideal the more potent and ennobling its influence on the human soul. Though millions grasp not its sublimity and truth, those receptive souls nearest the light will catch its divine illuminations and reflect it to those below. And gradually those below will grasp its beauty and truth and step up higher, and each in succession, step by step, will advance to "a higher plane and a broader view," and this is growth and progress toward perfection.

The ultimate aim and purpose of creation is ideal perfection. This purpose is written in the fundamental law of evolution—progress from the lower to the higher and the survival of the fittest. The higher, the more sublime, the spiritual truth, though it be ages in advance of the world's comprehension, yet its brightness and power will penetrate the darkness, and scintillate from soul to soul, as the sun gleams from atom to atom, until at last all humanity is illumined and exalted. When we go down into the darkness and poisoned vapors of a dungeon we seek for a ray of sunshine as we seek for life and light, and we are cheered by the smallest sunbeam which enters through a crevice, for in its silvery thread of light little atoms float like miniature stars, dispelling the desolation. There at our feet, left to decay and perish, may be the seed or bulb of an insignificant vine or flower, forgotten by the busy world of conflicts without, where little men become great and great men become little, not dreaming of the eternal law of life and hope that thrills in every throbbing atom and electric germ in this life-evolving magnetic universe.

But there in the darkness of that dungeon a struggle for life and hope goes on as important to the life involved as that of building a throne or destroying an empire. Never did a hero dare or a nation fight more bravely to attain its aspirations than did that little seed or bulb lying in the darkness. A slender beam of light gives it a hope of escape, and, cold and chilled, its prayer for life has slowly evolved a delicate pale vine which creeps toward the sunbeam.

Each day it has seen that beam of light fade and pass, and darkness and mildew paralyze it into the stupor of unconsciousness. And again that sunbeam awoke it to consciousness and life. At last it reached the crevice whence came the light, and, lifting itself as a prisoner escaping from death, it springs forth into the sunshine and opens its blossoms of beauty and perfume to greet and gladden the world of light and life.

Thus has humanity struggled for light, and toiled for hope and joy and sunshine through a thousand ages of gloom and chilling mildew of ignorance and darkness. And wherever a gleam of light and truth has pierced the shadows of life's struggles and tragedies, like the tiniest seed or fragile vine, the aspirations of his nature and his longing soul have reached up toward it.

What the ray of light is to the flower seed in the dungeon, religion is to man. Wherever man has crept, like the vine, in the darkness, towards the light it was his religious spiritual nature and aspirations which led him. Truth, which comes from the bosom of the eternal Good, streams down into the darkness and lifts man's soul up into the light by the same law that the flower and the vine seek the sunshine, and all true science and philosophy sustain the religious concept.

Life seems of little value when men of every nation are armed to the teeth to slay each other like madmen, as the best way in which they can show their gratitude to nature for the useless gift of life. But they are not so anxious for war and bloodshed as their preparations would indicate. And the World's Peace Conference at The Hague, and recent arbitration of national questions, mark a new era in the world's history, and indicate a disarmament of the nations in a few decades. The fear of death is useless and absurd. As Flammarion has said, there are only two sides to the question. When we go to sleep at night there is always the possibility that we may never awaken. Yet this thought does not prevent us from falling asleep. In one case, suppose death to end all; it is but an unfinished sleep to last forever. In the other case, should the soul survive the body, we shall reawaken in another world to resume the activities of life. In this case the awakening must be rather delightful, as every form of life and every creature finds its happiness in the exercise of its natural energies and faculties. The deep study of this important question and the disgust at the indifference of men to this great problem of human destiny impelled a great student of science to attempt suicide. Because he saw everywhere people absorbed in their material interests, accumulating wealth, consecrating their lives to Mammon, folly and passion and neglecting their nobler natures, it made him doubt their fitness for an eternal existence, and he determined to know the truth at once by plunging into the invisible unknown.

Prof. Albert H. Walker, in a recent lecture—May, 1903—makes a new distinction in philosophy and religion, when he says: "Two systems of philosophy will divide the attention and adherence of the people of the twentieth century. One is the old system of Epicurus which long preceded the rise of Christianity and which underlies the Declaration of Independence; and the other is the philosophy of Christian science."

His definition of religion and Atheism is something modern and unique. He says: "I define religion as belief in a God who cares; and Atheism as lack of belief in a God who cares. These two definitions, if correct, divide all men into two classes, and, according to this classification, most of the men in the United States are Atheists." He seems to think all men believe in a God, but a majority believe in a God who does not care, and that is Atheism. An Atheist has always been defined as one who believes there is no God; now they may believe in a God who does not care. This is not a very bad distinction and may be the true one in the future. For modern knowledge and culture forbids any thinking man from denying the existence of a God, and this may compel modern Atheism to modify its creed and accept a don't-care God.

He thinks this century may find an answer to the immortality of the soul, and "it may be in the affirmative through actual communication with departed souls; or in the negative by scientific demonstration that the spirit or soul of man is only a name for the electrical and chemical actions and reactions which occur in the body." He also says: "The twentieth century may show whether there is a great master hand that sweeps over the whole of this deep harp of life, or whether men are but pipes through whom the breath of 'Pan doth blow a momentary music.'" Religion has nothing to fear from the future; materialism is vanquished and now Atheism must change its creed.

Canon Farrar says: "Let us think noble thoughts of God and break through the brain-spun meshes of impotent negations. God is not vortices of atoms, or streams of tendencies, or earth fermentations. Heaven is not a vacuous eternity, or a future of ceaseless psalmody."

The Greek had his Elysian Fields, his daffodil meadows where the Eidola, the shadowy images of the dead, moved in a world of shadows; and his islands of the blest, where Achilles and Tydides unlaced the helmet from their flowing hair. The Scandinavian dreamed of his green sylvan paradise hereafter, amid the barren wastes. The Indian saw God in lightning, heard him in the thunder's roar, and viewed beyond the cloud-capped hills his hunters' paradise. And in the perennial hereafter in the all-life-giving sun there are green fields, daffodil meadows, golden light, rainbows that never fade, glorified cities, white-robed innocence, the crown and the palm branch, the throne of serene majesty, the golden harp and the song of rejoicing, and all-abounding happiness, innocent, thrilling, intense and unending.

The rare and radiant physical beauties of heaven we cannot describe, but it is a place where no guilty step enters the gates of pearl, in the city of God; no polluting presence flings shadows on the golden streets of the New Jerusalem. It is the dwelling place of angels and just men made perfect, and spirits of saints in celestial glory. There is no darkness, envy, hatred or slander, no gold mixed with dross. No bleared and blighted crowds, degraded out of the semblance of humanity, crawl, like singed moths, around the flaring house of multiplied temptations. Where boyhood shall not so live as to make its own manhood miserable; where manhood shall not so live as to make old age dishonorable and death ghastly. The apples of Sodom cannot grow on the same soil with the Tree of Life.

In other stars and countless worlds there may be work for us to do. What radiant ministrations, what infinite activities, what never-ending progress, what immeasurable happiness, what living ecstasies of unknown raptures may surround us in the beauty and loveliness of the land of the leal, in the life supernal?

Heaven is not a reward but a continuity, not a change but a development. It means a place of love and goodness where we are one with God and playfellows with the angels. Present science would change God into a struggle of careless forces or a complexity of impersonal laws. Let us reject the Chinese idea; they believe in God, but worship the devil, because they think the devil's rule predominates.

Let us discard the pagan deification of annihilation, and the modern agnostic's plea for suicide, and the Greek poet's pessimistic postulate: "It were best never to have been born, and next best to depart as soon as possible." Let us grieve at the dark shadows flung by theologians athwart God's light upon those who believe that human reason, conscience, and experience, as well as Scripture, are the books of God. Phrases which belong to metaphor, to imagery, to poetry, to emotion should not be formulated into dogmas, or crystallized into creed.

Discard the tyrannous realism of ambiguous metaphors, the asserted infallibility of isolated words. Canon Farrar says: "Erase from our Bible the erroneous disputed renderings of the three words, 'damnation, hell and everlasting.' Not one of these three expressions ought to stand any longer in our English Bible."

He says further: "There has never been a human being yet since time began, however beautiful, gifted, bright with genius, or radiant with fascination, who has sinned with impunity." Evil and punishment, as Plato said, walk this world with their heads tied together, and the rivet that links their iron link is of adamant. It needs no lightning stroke, or divine interposition, no miraculous message to avenge God's violated laws. They avenge themselves. The hell fire of the Bible was a spiritual fire which does not burn the flesh, but purifies the spirit. Not a material fire, but self-kindled fire, an internal fever—in fact, remorse for remembered sins—a figurative representation of a moral process by which restoration shall be effected.

When earthly life vanishes and we see in the visions of the soul an endless life and being in countless worlds of destiny, death has no terrors. The thought of the pale, cold body enwrapt in its winding sheet, coffined and alone in the narrow grave, its last sad dwelling place, with the grass growing above, where the lonely cricket chirps through the silent night, does not disturb the calm and reasoning soul. A few years hence and we shall all cross the dark river to the shadowy unknown shore and learn the mysteries that lie beyond. But where is that wondrous shore, and where will all of the now living inhabitants of earth be a century hence? Not floating in the marvelous belt of atmosphere which surrounds the earth. Nor on a changeful planet like our earth. Not floating in the frigid ether of space, but, if my hypothesis is correct, they will be celestial residents in the self-luminous, all-life-giving sun.

The only rational scientific theory that satisfies my mind is to regard the suns as self-luminous, perfected worlds, the visible abode of deity, and the future home of the soul. This hypothesis accords with every recently established fact in science, nature and revelation. It fits man's hopes and aspirations, his aesthetic nature, his psychic powers and religious concept which have followed him through all the vicissitudes of his history.

The question often arises: As justice reigns in the moral world, as equilibrium reigns in the physical world, and the destiny of the soul is the result of its aptitudes and its aspirations, are only those souls alone that truly live and unfold their faculties and aspire to knowledge and truth destined to a conscious immortality? Many souls pass their lives here in mental sleep, intellectual stupor, and spiritual paralysis. Will they receive the gift of eternal life? Many great scientists think they will not. And all who neglect their mental and moral development seal their own fate and will have no future existence. This is a distressing view held and championed by some of the able minds of modern times. But I do not agree with them, for I believe every soul is a spiritual atom of deity and, however ignorant and depraved, may become wise and good, and enjoy the beatitudes of an immortal existence.

CHAPTER XII

HUMAN REASON AND THE UNIVERSE ARE BOOKS OF GOD, AS WELL AS THE BIBLE

It is a mistake to consider the Bible as the only book of God and its revelations the only revelations of Deity. The natural universe and human reason are also books of God. They are books He has been writing all along through the varied history of man and the universe, from the dawn of creation until now. Man is God's handiwork, His most perfect and finished product, a machine he has been developing and improving through all the ages, a book that He has bound and rebound, and stamped upon it His name and title a million times.

The Bible teaches this when it says, "Ye are His epistles known and read of all men." He has named this book, this living epistle written by His own hands, "The Sons of God," "Children of the Most High," "Heirs of Eternal Life." And man's body, the binding which He has furnished for this book, He has designated "the temple of the living God—the tabernacle of flesh." The Bible is not only a book of religious and ethical teaching, but also a history of the reason, conscience and experience of men for a thousand generations.

The Bible is the revelation of God's mind and will, and so is man, who was "made in His image." The Bible is God's book, but so is the physical universe His book and the revelation of His will. The Scriptures affirm this truth, also, when they say, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge." Thus God has three books instead of one. His first book was the physical universe, His second book was man and human reason, conscience and experience. And then He added the third, the oracles of Divine truth, to instruct His spiritual atom, man, in the essential truths of life, spiritual being and moral perfection. The theologians should remember this, and the scientists should read and study all these books.

Man is a second edition of God epitomized, and in his enlighted spiritual nature he thinks like God, reasons like God, and has the moral conscience, goodness and love that emanate from God. All these books of God should bear the same infallible testimony. The Bible should be in accord with the reason, conscience and experience of man, and both with the constitution and laws of the physical universe. Wherever they seem to differ or contradict each other it is because we do not understand them, for there is perfect unity and harmony in all creation.