Christianity: The Logic of Creation

PERSONAL HOMAGE tippers, though their talk be only of the dreariest millinery and mud of things, are yet more lumi- nous than evangelists and apostles. No doubt all spiritual truth falls at last into the historic plane, in order that it may become cognizable in that disguise to unspiritual or natural eyes. And the Divine creation, redemption, and providence, obey of course this universal law. But how base must we deem the intelligence, which insists upon view- ing the spiritual truth as identical with its historic ultimation ! How base, in other words, must we consider that spiritual state which regards a Divine operation as observing strictly personal limits , or shutting itself up to the experience of an individual bosom . Thus I have often been checked, in speak- ing of the Incarnation as a scientific verity, by the suggestion that “ the Incarnation took place only in the Christ, and could be true therefore only of his experience.”

their creative presence and power by bringing the most degraded and contemned forms of humanity into rapturous conscious conjunction with them . When I think spiritually of the Christian truth, I do not think of Jesus personally, except as it were to anchor or define my thought. I think quite away from Him personally indeed, and fix my attention upon what is universal to man, or upon the life of universal human fellowship which the Divine love is now engendering in your bosom and mine, and that of all other men, by the stu- pendous ministry of science. The Christian facts attest, reveal, predict this universal spiritual life of man, this redemption of the natural mind, because they are a real ultimation of it. Every incident of Christ's personal history grew out of this unseen and unknown Divine operation in humanity, and were thus a mystical and endless revelation of it, such a revelation as human intelligence permitted. There could have been no scientific information upon the subject of course, because no angel even knew the wonders of the Divine love implied in the intimacy of His conjunction with human nature. By the very necessity of the case, there- fore, the great and inscrutable truth could only look forth under a veil, and wait for the gradual unfolding of human reason to be discerned in its just spiritual proportions. That just discernment is now taking place. Men are everywhere now beginning to drop the tedious cant of mere per-

I said in my last that the natural world, being the world merely of phenomena or appearance, is strictly unintelligible without some light or reve- lation derived from the spiritual and real world. The reason of this is not very far to seek. Every lover of Truth, every one who is able to discrimi- nate between Truth and fact, will not merely ad- mit, but will loyally insist that her infinite and spotless form transcends the sphere of sense, or discloses itself only to the eye of reason. All spiritual existence indeed, all those higher truths which affect the soul's life, truths of the Divine existence and operation, of the Divine Creation and Providence, exceed the capacity of sense, and report themselves only to a higher and interior consciousness. To suppose me, for example, sen- sibly cognizant of an exclusively Divine operation such as my creation is : to suppose me not merely believing that God is my life, or rationally assenting to that truth, but also actually knowing it, or Ren-

to us; and the American spuks and table-turners are said by some of their disciples to make revela - tions even in advance of his. But this is an absurd use of the word. What is meant to be said in either case is, that the persons in question give us information of a certain character, and the character being unusual, it is supposed to be enti- tled on that account to the more dignified name of revelation . But revelation is not a more ele- vated information, because, strictly speaking, it is not information at all. Information always means imported knowledge, knowledge which is not in- volved in our consciousness, but which comes up to the soul from the senses, or is derived ab extra . Revelation, on the contrary, means exported knowledge, knowledge which belongs wholly to the sphere of consciousness, or comes down to the senses from the soul, thus ab intra. Whatsoever the broad face of Nature, or the testimony of friends, or the lettered page, brings to our eyes, and ears, and other senses, is information. It always bears the stamp of direct or immediate knowledge, being addressed by the sense to the reason or soul; whereas revelation is always re- flected or mediate knowledge, being addressed through the consciousness to the sense as to a mirror. Information postulates Nature as absolute or fixed. Revelation, on the other hand, turns it into a fluent mirror of superior existence. Infor- mation is subjective knowledge ; that is to say, it

The incomparable depth and splendour of Swe- denborg’s genius are shewn in this, that he alone of men has ever dared to bring creation within the bounds of consciousness — within the grasp of the soul. He alone has dared to give to Nature human unity, to endow it with the proportions of man. This is the fundamental distinction be- tween his genius and that of all our other great writers, that while they, by exteriorating object to subject, Creator to creature, God to man, mate- rialize man’s motives, and so construct a grossly sensual Theology, and an utterly selfish Ethics ; he in interiorating object to subject, God to man, spiritualizes man’s motives, and consequently con- structs a Theology which places God exclusively within the soul, and an Ethics whose sanctions lie in the demands of our endless spiritual develop- ment, and no longer in the arbitrary pleasure of any foreign power. As it is impossible to com- prehend the laws of creation without a clear per- e 3

Digitized by Google MINERAL EVOLUTION Creator and creature, God and man, are undis- tinguishable one from the other. And Nature in her earliest or fluid beginnings does but exactly symbolize this indistinction. All things are then chaotically blent. Confusion reigns: that is to say, there exists a sensible fusing together and indistinction of all forms of individuality, of all forms of life or consciousness, under strictly uni- versal forms. And the entire scope of what we call history is to reduce this chaos to order, to lift up this sobbing and prostrate universe into beautiful and joyous and individual form, to train this mute and melancholy and boundless nature into the free and glorified lineaments of human personality or character.

The mineral form then is the earliest or lowest evolution of the me. It is the me in an intensely inert state, in a passive state or state of rest simply. It is the me gdtting place or position first, in order to its subsequent experience of growth in the vegetable form, motion in the ani- mal, and action in the human form. We may say that it is the me in a foetal state, conceived but not yet born. Mineral life bears the same rela- tion to vegetation and animation, that the foetus bears to fully developed bodily life. Being desti- tute as yet of sensation, of sensibility to out- ward existence, it is of course devoid of visible form or individuality, and loses itself in the womb of the common mother. But the phenomena of Digitized by Google OP CONSCIOUS LIFE

to us as yet only in a celestial condition, that is, in its infantile beginnings ; and although this con- dition is one of seeming innocence, yet the least reflection shews that the innocence is more appa- rent than real, more superficial than solid, being of -that sort which characterizes lambs and doves rather than humanity. It is destitute of the human element, which is spontaneity, and hence will not keep. It is the innocence which flows into us from spiritual association, which we inherit from our past ancestry, and is consequently inca- pable of constituting our true individuality. As to my natural or inherited genius, I may be as guileless and harmless as all the lambs and doves extant ; yet nothing shall hinder me spiritually or individually becoming perhaps as ravenous as the wolf, as cunning as the fox, as lordly as the lion, as venomous as the serpent, simply because this guilelessness and harmlessness have no root in my proper spontaneity, that is in my God-given self- hood, but are reflected upon me from chance spi- ritual association. Swedenborg was never able to discover any angelic existence which was sponta- neously good, or good of itself. On the contrary, he found that the highest angel, when dissociated from his fellows, and brought into contact with lower influences, became as lascivious and vile as any devil. In short, he discovered that the angelic goodness was invariably contingent upon harmonic association, or depended upon a rigorous previous

a pallid face in prayer to God lest some hideous calamity engulf his fairest hopes. Few persons have maintained their natural naiveU and candour so unbronzed by contact with the world, as this great and hearty Thackeray, this huge, yet child- like, man; but if the secret bosom of men were canvassed, there would be none found who does not profoundly sympathize with him. We are all of us without real selfhood, without the selfhood which comes from God alone. We have only the shewy and fallacious one which inflows from the spiritual world, and which is wholly inadequate to guarantee us against calamity. We shiver in every breeze, and stand aghast at every cloud that passes over the sun. When our worthless ships (which we ought to be ashamed of building, which we ought in fact to hang our shipmasters for building) go down at sea, what shrieks we hear from blanched and frenzied lips peopling the melancholy main, perturbing the sombre and sympathetic air, for months afterwards ! When our children die, and take back to heaven the brimming innocence which our corrupt manhood feels no use for, and there- fore knows not how to shelter ; when our friends drop off ; when our property exhales ; when our reason totters on its throne, and menaces us with a downfall ; who then is strong ? Who, in fact, if he were left in these cases for a moment to him- self, that is, if he were not steadied in his own despite by the mere life of routine and tradition.

“ On the whole I am led to regard these so-called ‘ spirits’ rather as so many vermin revealing themselves in the tumble-down walls of our old theological hostelry, than as any very saintly and sweet persons, whose ac- quaintance it were edifying or even comfortable to make. I hope their pale activity — their bloodless and ghastly vivacity — may do indirect good by promoting a general disgust for the abject personal gossip which they deal out to us, and which has so long furnished the staple spiritual commodity of the old theology. But I vehe- mently discredit the prospect of any positive good. Man’s true good never comes from without him, but only from the depths of divinity within him, and whatever tends to divert his attention from this truth, and fix it on Ma- hommedan paradises, and salvation through electricity, claims his most vindictive anathema. Above all, a spi- Digitized by Google APPENDIX