Part 6 (1/2)
Yes, as Canon Holland well says, ”Facts have been too much” for those who would cling to the old and the less intelligent ideas of the future life. The ethereal world will even cease to be mysterious before advancing scientific investigation and knowledge. Through the ether, as Canon Holland notes, sounds and motions transmit themselves ”under conditions which transform our whole idea of what s.p.a.ce or time may mean.” In the realm of present life the same a.s.sertion may be made. Who can contemplate wireless telegraphy without having opened to him a range of activities and conditions undreamed of heretofore? ”We become sure,”
continues Canon Holland, ”that both above and below our normal consciousness we are in touch with mysteries that travel far, and that we lie open to spiritual acts done unto us from a far distance, that we a.s.similate intimations and intuitions that reach us by inexplicable channels.
”This world of spirit powers and activities has been opened afresh; and now even physical science is compelled to recognize the evidence for it, and a new psychological language is coming into being to describe its phenomena. We are only slowly recovering our hold upon this life of mystic intuition, of exalted spiritual communications; we are only beginning to recognize the abnormal and exceptional spiritual condition with which Saint Paul was familiar, when, whether in the body or out of it, he could not say,--G.o.d only knows,--he was transported to the third Heaven and heard unutterable things.”
This remarkable sermon is an initiation of a new era of religious teaching. The light is breaking and the full illumination is only a question of time.
Life is exalted in its purpose and refined in its quality by holding the perpetual consciousness of the two worlds in which we dwell; by the constant realization that
”The spirit world around this world of sense Floats like an atmosphere....”
This atmosphere is all peopled, and it is magnetic with intelligence.
Every spirit-call for aid, for guidance, for support, is answered. If a man fall on a crowded street in the city, how instantaneous is the aid that cares for him. He is lifted and conveyed tenderly to his home, or to a hospital, or to some temporary resting-place if the ill be but a slight one. Strangers or friends, it matters not, rush to his rescue.
This, which occurs in the tangible and visible world, is but a feeble ill.u.s.tration of the more profound tenderness, the clearer understanding, the more potent aid that is given instantly to man from the unseen helpers and friends in this spirit world which floats like an atmosphere around this world of sense. It is all and equally the help of G.o.d; it is the Divine answer to the call; but the Heavenly Father works through ways and means. If a man fall on the street G.o.d does not cause a miracle to be wrought and a bed to descend from the clouds, but He works through the sympathies of the bystanders. Is it not equally conceivable that the appeal for leading and for light sent into spirit spheres meets the response of spirit-aid; that it awakens the interest and the infinite tenderness and care of those who have pa.s.sed from this life into that of the next stage beyond, and that they are, according to their development and powers, co-workers with G.o.d, even as we who are yet on earth aim and pray to be?
Now it is just this faith that is so largely pervading the religious world to-day. Spirituality includes all the convictions that const.i.tute ethics. Spirituality is the unchanging quality in all forms of organized religion. And it is found, in greater or in less degree, in every sect and every creed. Outward forms come and go; they multiply, or they decrease, and the change in the expression of religious faith is a matter largely determined by the trend of general progress; but the essentials of religion, under all organized forms, remain the same, for the essential element is spirituality. In and around Copley Square in Boston, within the radius of one block, are several denominations whose order of wors.h.i.+p varies, the one from another. The Baptist believes in immersion as the outer sign of the inner newness of life; the Episcopalian holds dear his ritual; the Unitarian and the Presbyterian, and perhaps a half-dozen other sects in close proximity (which express the various forms of what they call ”new thought”), each and all exist and have their being by virtue of the one essential faith held in common by all,--the one aim to which all are tending,--that of the spiritualization of life. The larger recognition of the spiritual universe includes the recognition of this interpenetration of the life in the Seen and the Unseen. Every thought and decision is like an action on the spiritual side. A thought has the force of a deed, and there is a literal truth in the line,--
”The good, though only thought, has life and breath;”
and in Lowell's words:--
”Ah! let us hope that to our praise Good G.o.d not only reckons The moments when we tread His ways, But when the spirit beckons.”
The thought-life is, indeed, the most real of the two lives, and dominates the other. The events and achievements, held in thought and will, precipitate themselves into outer circ.u.mstance and action.
To live in this perfect sympathy of companions.h.i.+p with the forces and the powers of the unseen world is to dwell amid perpetual reinforcement of energy, solace, and sustaining aid, and with faith vitalized by spiritual perception.
All scientific problems are ethical, and even spiritual, problems. They are discoveries in the divine laws. ”Can man by searching find out G.o.d?”
Apparently he approaches constantly to this possibility, and finds that
”--through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”
Every succeeding century brings humanity to a somewhat clearer perception of the nature of the Divine Creation. However slowly, yet none the less surely, does the comprehension of man and his place in the universe and his oneness with the Divine life increase with every century. Jonathan Edwards taught that while Nature might reflect the Divine image, man could not, as he was in a ”fallen” state, until he was regenerated. Putting aside the mere dogma involved in the ”fall” of man, the other matter--that of regeneration, of redemption--is undeniable, even though we may interpret this process in a different manner from that of the great eighteenth-century theologian. The redemption, the regeneration of man, lies in faith. In that is the _substance_ through which and by means of which man comes into conscious communion with G.o.d.
It is by the intense activity possible to this mental att.i.tude that he conquers the problems of the universe, that he advances in knowledge, and advances in the increasing capacity to receive the Divine messages and to follow the Divine leadings.
[Sidenote: A New Force.]
Of late years a new force has been discovered in the line of ethico-spiritual aid in the higher order of hypnotism, as discovered and practiced by Doctor Quackenbos, who may, indeed, without exaggeration, be called the discoverer of this higher phase of applied suggestion. ”I have been brought,” he says, ”into closest touch with the human soul.
First objectively; subsequently in the realm of subliminal life, where, practically liberated in the hypnotic slumber from its entanglement with a perishable body, it has been open to approach by the objective mind in which it elected to confide, dynamically absorptive of creative stimulation by that mind, and lavish in dispensing to the personality in _rapport_ the suddenly apprehended riches of its own higher spiritual nature.”
Of the nature of this power, we again find Doctor Quackenbos saying: ”Hypnotic suggestion is a summoning into ascendancy of the true man; an accentuation of insight into life and its procedures; a revealing, in all its beauty and strength and significance, of absolute, universal, and necessary truth; and a portraiture of happiness as the a.s.sured outcome of living in consonance with this truth.” The learned doctor regards hypnotism, indeed, as ”a transfusion of personality.”
The truth is that there lies in every nature forces which, if recognized and developed, would lift one to higher planes and induce in him such an accession of activities and energies as to fairly transform his entire being and achievement. This would be effected, too, on an absolutely normal plane. The development of the spiritual faculties is just as normal as is that of the intellectual. And it is to this development that we must look for the true communion with those who have pa.s.sed into the Unseen. The objective life must be spiritualized. The soul can come into a deeper realization of its own dignity and the worth of its higher nature; can discern the spiritual efficiency, the energy commensurate to every draft upon it.
All, however, that is done by the highest phase of hypnotism, as exerted by Doctor Quackenbos, can be done by auto-suggestion. The soul has only to call upon its own higher forces. It has only to act from love and compa.s.sion,--from sympathy and generous aims, and all the infinite power of the Divine world is at its service.