There is then, we teach, no great evil spirit who strives with the Creator for the souls of men. There is no such arch fiend, Satan or prince of devils; and we ourselves are the only demons who, mad with pride, drunk with selfconceit, and hardened by ingratitude, refuse to enter into the blessed kingdom of God. He would lead us to light and to life, to truth and to love; we, of our own will, wend our way wickedly and foolishly on to darkness and to death, embrace error, nourish hate, and wilfully neglect or reject the glory and happiness which out of His disinterested, divine love, has been offered for our acceptance. There are no antagonistic powers in nature, nothing hostile in fact, but all tending to mutual development and perfection. Matter is not hostile to spirit nor is darkness hostile to light, as the ancients imagined. But through matter does spirit act, and out of darkness is light educed and developed. Out of darkness and death proceed light and life for death is the absence of motion and of action, and life is signified by their presence; thus the highest life is that which educes the greatest activity for good, and the expression we have just used "the darkness of the house of destruction" means final death: for it may be true that the brightest light is produced by the particles of air moved to their greatest possible amount of action by the power of the sun and that darkness is the result of an inactive state of the atmosphere-absence of motion is the absence of life and of light. But do not be frightened at the darkness. God has given you power gloriously to emerge from it. Day springs from night; the external world from the depths of the dark mass; man from the womb; the flower from the dark-bound seed; the fruit from the kernel; the chrysalis lies hid till it springs, beautiful, into light; sparkling gems come from the depths of the earth; coal from the dark mine, and gas from the coal; the purest water from the deepest wells; the sap flows and spreads within the bark-bound tree; the blood nourishes man through tortuous, hidden, and obscure channels, impervious to the light; and the good soul at death springs from the comparative obscurity of earth into the brightness of an inconceivably purer light: whilst the wicked soul will seek for itself a still deeper obscurity, and endeavour to hide its dark thoughts and deeds in a still darker atmosphere. An enlightened man and able writer, Leo Grindon, in "Life, its Nature, Varieties, etc." speaks of "Darkness and passivity" (as the states) which precede life, and out of which life springs. Everywhere in creation the dim and shapeless is prior in point of time. The universal law is that the passive shall precede the active (state): ignorance, knowledge: indifference, love. Among the ancients night was finely styled "mother of all things." "With him enthroned Sat sable-vested night, eldest of all things." The cosmogony of the Greeks, as given of the Greeks, as given by Hesiod, and of every ancient nation of which any records survive, opens with darkness, out of whose womb presently proceeds light. "If we would observe a philosophic order, winter should stand first, not last, in the scheme of the seasons: as among the ancient Egyptians, with whom harmonies were an exact science, and who drew the sun at the winter solstice as an infant, at the vernal solstice as a youth at the summer solstice as a man of middle age: and at the autumnal equinox as one at his maturity." As to matter, so far from being antagonistic to spirit, it is essential to its manifestation. Spirit has a permanent interest in matter, and is indebted to it for its active and efficient development. The entire material universe is vivified with a force or spirit imparted to it by the great Creator. In all nature is the power of God seen, but not God Himself; pantheism has no place in our creed. Everything that He has made is good, matter included. Good, for it has a purpose, an useful aim in view-that useful aim is in some instances perfectly attained, in others is in course of development. The body of man is no more the man himself than the material world is God Himself; each and every power in action is but an agent, and those persons have surely very confused ideas of the nature of the Deity, who can mistake His agents and His creations for Himself. God is as distinct from His divine creations as is from his artificial combinations, though in each the spirit of the maker is manifested, and each in their degree attest the action of an individual, intelligent and spiritual being. In most ancient creeds, especially in those of the Eastern world, this idea of matter as something hostile to spirit, and from which the latter seeks to free itself in order to exist in purity and liberty, is a fundamental principle and is, in common with other fancies of Asiatic origin, vital to the theological system of Christianity. Vital it is indeed, but a vital error, and one which has led men into most wretched follies, one which has produced most deplorable results. Neither angels, nor devils, nor spiritual influences of any kind, nor matter, nor darkness, can permanently affect the soul of man-that soul, which is himself, which is endued by its Creator with a capacity for endless progress, and which is now and ever will be responsible to Him for its advancement in the path which He has marked out for it—a path which leads to man's welfare on earth and to his everlasting bliss in the world to come. GHOSTS AND THE AFTER STATE OF THE SOUL. Intimately connected with the subject of good and evil spirits is the nature of the soul's existence after death on earth. On this point, as on the former, still more vague and baseless ideas are commonly held. Only one thing is generally admitted—it is itself a spirit of some kind, The very nature of the soul even, incarnate as it is in man, is but obscurely conceived. It is a something-a nothing; a spark of the divine fire, a flame, a breath of celestial air, a vapour, a spiritual principle: a mysterious agent acting on man, not the man himself, though dwelling in his body, and yet it is the spirit of man, which, on its departure from earth or at some indefinite future day, is subject to change of nature, to sudden alteration, and even to entire transformation Thus, after death, it may float about in the air, invisible, yet existing; lie quiescent in the grave; await somewhere, somehow, the day of final judgment; rise at once, or at some future date, to a state of indefinite perfection, to heaven; or be cast into a state of indefinite degradation, to hell. It is naked, it is clothed; it is invisible, it is visible; it is described, as held by the Romans, who probably derived it from them-soma, body; pneuma, spirit, or breath; nous, mind; psyche, soul. "Some souls, such as are killed in battle, become, writes Josephus, "good demons and propitious heroes, and show themselves as such to their posterity afterwards," whilst others sink into oblivion. The umbra still remains a credited appearance throughout the Levant and in Italy, where it is known as the ombra, ombra di casa, bell'mbriana. Its character and appearance vary. Sometimes a vengeful and malicious being, it takes hold of new-born children and dashes them against the wall; if properly propitiated, however, and not offended, the ombra becomes a sort of house fairy: in each case it is a disembodied spirit or shade, acting as a familiar to the household for good or for bad. This superstition is now, however, happily dying out; but it has its strongholds still in the remote parts of the south and east of Europe and in Syria. Volcanoes have ever been regarded as the openings to hell, which received the spirits of the wicked; thus the learned Robert Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy (A.D. 1621), writes, "There be certain monsters of hell, and places appointed for the punishment of men's souls, as at Hecla in Iceland, where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen and sometimes talk with the living. Fiery chariots are continually seen to bring in the souls of men in the likeness of crows, and devils ordinarily go in and out. Bredenbachius in his "Peregrinations in the Holy Land," says, "Once a year dead bodies rise about March, and walk, and after a while hide themselves again; thousands of people come yearly to see them." (Dendy, "Philosophy of Mystery," p. 7.) وو We have not been able to find out when Bredenbachius lived, but Burton is a fair example of what superstition can effect, even with an intellectual mind, in a comparatively enlightened period of the world's history. The belief in Palingenesis held by Sir Kenelm Digby, Kircher, and other philosophers of the 17th century, namely, that out of the dust of a plant or flower its full appearance might be reproduced by chemical means, served also to strengthen the popular belief in ghosts. We have seen that the Romans believed the umbra to walk after death, and that the spiritus flew to the stars. But many of the most educated Romans were Sadducees in creed. Thus the intellectual Emperor Hadrian is said, when dying, to have composed the following verses to his soul: "Animula, vagula, blandula. This is the only instance which we know of in which man has expressed his regret at the presumed loss of mirth in a future state. It is not the face but the soul which laughs, and the spirit is moved to mirth, of which laughter is but the outward sign. Wit and fun are purely spiritual qualities, though, perhaps, not of the highest order, and in all states of existence will find rational cause for their exercise. Mirth is not necessarily malicious: wit need not be exercised at the expense of others; and fun, and humour, and nonsense, to a certain class of souls, must ever give delight; nor are they defects even in the highest. Shakspeare does not lose any of his superiority when he thus unbends and indulges, as he does with infinite gusto; indeed, the wider the range the higher and more complete the spirit of every being, the more must wit, humour, and mirth enter into its composition. To conclude this section of our chapter on ghosts, Bodinus, the great French witch authority of the 17th century, as Burton tells us, is fully satisfied (and this was the prevailing creed of the crowd), that "these souls of men departed, if corporeal, are of some shape, and that absolutely round, like sun and moon, because that is the most perfect form; that they can assume other aërial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleasure, appear in what likeness they will themselves; that they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant, and so likewise transform bodies of others into what form they please, and, with admirable celerity remove them from place to place; that they can represent castles in the ayre, armies, spectrums, prodigies, and such strange objects to mortal men's eyes; cause smells, savours, deceive all the senses; foretell future events, and do many strange miracles." |