‘But him the maids of paradiseImpatient to their halls invite,And the dark Heaven of Houris’ eyesOn him shall shine for ever bright;They come—their kerchiefs green they wave,And welcome with a kiss the brave!Who falls in battle ’gainst the GiaourIs worthiest an immortal bower.But thou, false Infidel! shalt writheBeneath avenging Monkir’s scythe;And from its torment ’scape aloneTo wander round lost Eblis’ throne,And fire unquench’d, unquenchable,Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tellThe tortures of that inward hell!’
‘But him the maids of paradiseImpatient to their halls invite,And the dark Heaven of Houris’ eyesOn him shall shine for ever bright;They come—their kerchiefs green they wave,And welcome with a kiss the brave!Who falls in battle ’gainst the GiaourIs worthiest an immortal bower.But thou, false Infidel! shalt writheBeneath avenging Monkir’s scythe;And from its torment ’scape aloneTo wander round lost Eblis’ throne,And fire unquench’d, unquenchable,Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tellThe tortures of that inward hell!’
‘But him the maids of paradise
Impatient to their halls invite,
And the dark Heaven of Houris’ eyes
On him shall shine for ever bright;
They come—their kerchiefs green they wave,
And welcome with a kiss the brave!
Who falls in battle ’gainst the Giaour
Is worthiest an immortal bower.
But thou, false Infidel! shalt writhe
Beneath avenging Monkir’s scythe;
And from its torment ’scape alone
To wander round lost Eblis’ throne,
And fire unquench’d, unquenchable,
Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;
Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell!’
The disciples of Mohammed believed in the unity of God, but it is evident that they had not a very exalted conception of His character. Their trust in Him could infuse zeal into their hearts and vigour into their arms when they went to make proselytes by the sword, but could not produce that lofty type of character which has so frequently appeared amongst the followers of Christ.
39. We have now reached in the history of our problem the period known as the dark ages, during which the spirit of scientific inquiry was well-nigh extinct. At length, however, there arrived a time when the human mind, from a variety of causes, suddenly awoke from the lethargy into which it had sunk.
When scientific thought was once more directed to the subject of immortality it was easily seen that the doctrine of the resurrection in its vulgar acceptation could not possibly be true, since a case might easily be imagined in which there might be a contention between rival claimants for the same body. We might, for instance, imagine a Christian missionary to be killed and eaten by a savage, who was afterwards killed himself. It is indeed both curious and instructive to note the reluctance with which varioussections of the Christian Church have been driven from their old erroneous conceptions on this subject; and the expedients, always grotesque, and sometimes positively loathsome, with which they have attempted to buttress up the tottering edifice. Some deem it necessary that a single material germ or organised particle of the body at death should survive until the resurrection, forgetting that under such a hypothesis it would be easy to deprive a man of the somewhat doubtful benefits of such a resurrection, by sealing him up (while yet alive) in a strong iron coffin, and by appropriate means reducing his whole physical body into an inorganic mass. Boston, again, in hisFourfold State, goes still further, adopting the idea that a single particle of insensible perspiration which has escaped from a man during his life, will be sufficient to serve as a nucleus for the resurrection body. So that according to the disciples of this school, the resurrection will be preceded by a gigantic manufacture of shoddy, the effete and loathsome rags of what was once the body being worked up along with a large quantity of new material into a glorious and immortal garment, to form the clothing of a being who is to live for ever! Unquestionably we have continuity in this hypothesis, but it is the continuity of the Irishman’s coat in the story, the owner of which always made a point of retaining as many as possible of the rags which were present on the last occasion, those only which had absolutely fallen to pieces being replaced by something new! We have only to compare this grotesquely hideous conception with the noble and beautiful language of Paul, to recognise the depth of abasement into which theChurch had sunk through the materialistic conceptions of the Dark Ages.
40. But it is needless to say that this offer of a certain class of theologians to surrender everything except a single shred of the worn-out body, liberal as it may appear, was nevertheless at once rejected by the school of scientific men. Death, they replied, must be regarded as a total and complete destruction of the visible body, so far at least as the individual life is concerned. At the same time professing themselves unable to conceive such an existence as a disembodied spirit, they were forced to conclude like Priestley,[25]that the soul is not in its nature immortal. At this point, however, the scientific school splits up into two or even three sections, one believing with Priestley and others that immortality is a fresh and miraculous gift conferred upon man at the resurrection; another, unable to conceive the possibility of a miracle in the case of each individual, denying a future state altogether; while a third section maintains that there is no use in discussing the subject, because man after death has passed beyond the sphere of human inquiry.
41. Regarding the existence and nature of the Deity, various opinions have been entertained by the disciples of what we may term the extreme school of science. Some have maintained that we have no evidence of the existence of any such Being, others that we have no evidence of His personality, while others argue that although we may become convinced of His great power and wisdom from the works of creation, there are other attributes of Hischaracter which are not so revealed. We cannot, for instance, say they, maintain the benevolence of the Deity in the way in which we understand the word benevolence, nor have we any evidence that He is just in the way in which we understand the word justice. It is well known that the late John Stuart Mill would have regarded the claims of Christianity with more favour had its character been more Manichæan, that is to say, had the spirit of evil been allowed a position more nearly equal to that of the spirit of good in the government of the universe.
42. Let us here pause to indicate two points of similarity between this scientific school and the system of Christianity. Both, we conceive, maintain in some sense the supremacy of law or the invariability of the procedure adopted by the Deity in the government of the universe (Art. 36); both maintain likewise that the outer works of the visible universe are insufficient to manifest certain attributes of the Deity. Here, however, the likeness ends; this scientific school conceive they have no information beyond the visible universe, while the Christian system asserts the existence of an invisible order of things, and the fact of communications having taken place between the two for the double purpose of revealing God to man, and of raising man towards God.
43. Leaving now the views of those who may be said to constitute the extreme left, let us shortly consider the various opinions held regarding a future state by those who, though often differing widely from one another, yet rank themselves within the pale of Christianity.
Not a few who revere the sacred writings, believenevertheless that the descriptions of the unseen world contained therein are purely allegorical. These do not believe in the existence of evil spirits exercising an influence over the mind of man. Satan is regarded by them as a personification of evil (Διαβόλος, the accuser, Devil’s advocate) rather than as possessing a real objective existence. The worst half of the unseen world having thus been got rid of, the other half follows in due course. Such men do not believe in the unseen presence of angels (ἄγγελος, messenger); in fine they conceive that there is nothing above man but the Deity, and that He always acts according to rigid law. It is an immediate step from this to believe in the futility of prayer, which is looked upon as necessarily devoid of any objective influence, although the practice of it may be regarded as possessing a beneficial subjective effect. A future life is believed to be conceivable, but only under conditions and in a universe about which we know and can know nothing. At this point, however, the views of what may be called the left centre come into contact with those of the extreme left.
44. But there are others quite disposed to believe in the existence of the unseen world, who yet regard as figurative a large part of the Biblical descriptions. Some, like the Church of Rome, consider the separation of the souls of men after death into two categories, and only two, as insufficient and unsupported by the spirit of Scripture; while others cannot admit the eternity of misery, but believe that the most reprobate will ultimately be reclaimed and elevated into the regions of bliss.
Others again, arguing from some expressions in theBible, regard immortality as a boon reserved for the good alone, believing that the wicked will be annihilated, both soul and body, in hell. No doubt by an energetic nature such a fate would be regarded as even worse than endless misery:
Sad cure! for who would lose,Though full of pain, this intellectual being?Those thoughts that wander through eternityTo perish rather, swallowed up and lostIn the wide womb of uncreated night,Devoid of sense and motion.
Sad cure! for who would lose,Though full of pain, this intellectual being?Those thoughts that wander through eternityTo perish rather, swallowed up and lostIn the wide womb of uncreated night,Devoid of sense and motion.
Sad cure! for who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being?
Those thoughts that wander through eternity
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion.
So speaks Milton, putting the idea into the mouth of Belial, the fallen spirit, when addressing his peers.
45. Such are a few of the ways in which the statements of Christ and his Apostles regarding immortality have been interpreted by those who call themselves Christians. But amid this great diversity there is yet one principle common to all. It is imagined that something peculiar in the history of the world took place at the coming of Christ, which has not since been repeated. Communications were then made to mankind which are regarded as unique, and the truth of which it is held will only be verified in the case of each individual when he has passed into that country from which we receive no travellers’ tales.
Notwithstanding this general belief, not a few have arisen pretending to have received a new and supplementary revelation. In most of these cases the scientific historian may at once come to a conclusion without any violation of his impartiality,—they are so manifestly the products of delusion if not of imposture. There is however one system which merits fuller treatment, inasmuch as it has led to amode of viewing the spiritual world which has many followers even at the present day.
46. Emanuel Swedenborg, the apostle of this system, was in many respects a remarkable man. Living more than a century ago, and during the time when Science was pausing for the spring she has since made, he seems to have foreshadowed, if he did not anticipate, many of the doctrines now current. We are not however now concerned with his purely physical speculations.
Swedenborg has written at great length regarding the nature and destiny of man, and the constitution of the unseen world into which he asserts he had the power of entering.
He assumes the existence of a human or semi-human race before Adam, of which he remarks that they lived as beasts. ‘Man,’ he tells us, ‘considered in himself, is nothing but a beast.... Man’s peculiarity over animals—a peculiarity they neither have nor can have—consists in the presence of the Lord in his will and understanding. It is in consequence of this conjunction with the Lord that man lives after death; and although he should exist like a beast, caring for nothing but himself and his relations, yet the Lord’s mercy is so great, being Divine and Infinite, that He never leaves him, but continually breathes into him His own life, whereby he is enabled to recognise what is good and evil and true and false.’
Regarding man’s mortal nature we are told by Swedenborg that ‘man at birth puts on the grosser substances of nature, his body consisting of such. These grosser substances by death he puts off, butretains the purer substances of nature, which are next to those that are spiritual. These purer substances serve thereafter as his body, the continent and expression of his mind.’[26]
‘A man at death,’ he tells us again, ‘escapes from his material body as from a rent or worn-out vesture, carrying with him every member, faculty, and function complete, with not one wanting, yet the corpse is as heavy as when he dwelt therein.’
Regarding the spiritual world, he tells us ‘that the whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world collectively and in every part; for the natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual world, just as an effect does from its cause.’ He also tells us ‘that if in the spiritual world two desire intensely to see each other, that desire at once brings about a meeting. When any angel goes from one place to another, whether it is in his own city, or in the courts, or the gardens, or to others out of his own city, he arrives sooner or later, just as he is ardent or indifferent, the way itself being shortened or lengthened in proportion.... Change of place being only change of state, it is evident that approximations in the spiritual world arise from similitudes of mind and removals from dissimilitudes; and thus spaces are merely signs of inner differences.... From that cause alone the hells are altogether separated from the heavens.’
Of God he says: ‘The Divine is incomprehensible even by the angels, for there is no ratio between the finite and the infinite.
‘No man or angel can ever approach the Fatherand immediately worship Him; for He is invisible, and being invisible can neither be thought of nor loved.’
Of God’s Providence he says: ‘As in the Lord we are and act, His Providence is over us from birth to death, and even to eternity.... To talk of the Lord’s Providence as universal, and to separate it from particulars, is like talking of a whole in which there are no parts, or of something in which there is nothing. Consequently it is most false, a mere picture of the imagination, and downright stupidity, to say that the Lord’s Providence is universal, and not at the same time in the minutest particulars; for to provide and rule in the universal, and not at the same time in the minutest particulars, is not to rule at all.’
Swedenborg likewise believed in an intermediate state analogous to purgatory, although he objected to the name. This was called by him the world of spirits, after staying in which, for a longer or shorter time, the souls of the departed were drafted off to heaven on the one side, and to hell on the other.
47. We have now said enough to give our readers some idea of Swedenborg’s spiritual system. Unquestionably it is the system of a profound thinker, and many great men have not hesitated to express their admiration of Swedenborg and his works. It is one thing however to admit the beauty, the philosophical completeness, and even the possible truth of many of his statements, and another thing to believe that he actually conversed with the inhabitants of another world in the way in which one man converses with another.
But, after all, suppose that the every-day experienceof men is that only he who lives in the world as not of the world lives a true life, and this is the Bible teaching,—whose then is the true doctrine? Swedenborg errs if he claims this as hisexclusive personalexperience. Paul claimed it as belonging to all men. Surely men of science should of all men claim this likewise.
Now, when a man unquestionably honest makes an assertion such as Swedenborg made, there are only two possible conclusions to which we can come, unless we choose to remain in a state of mental suspense. We must either believe that he really saw what he professes to have seen, or that he was the victim of some strange hallucination, in virtue of which his subjective impressions became transferred into the realms of objective realities. We know very well that the human mind is extremely prone to such delusions, and that the nature of the case is frequently betrayed by some indiscreet admission which we have external grounds for believing to be incorrect. Had Swedenborg confined himself to the invisible world it would have been very difficult to prove him the subject of a delusion, but when he converses with angels from the planets, and thus comes to describe their inhabitants, he enters at once upon dangerous ground.
Concerning his description of the various planets it has been remarked that his information relates only to those, the existence of which was known when he wrote, Uranus and Neptune being passed over. This of itself is a suspicious circumstance. Again, he peoples the planets Jupiter and Saturn with inhabitants as well as our own Moon; now, scientific analogy is strongly against either of these two planetsbeing inhabited, while it is next to certain that our moon is entirely without inhabitants.
In fine, there is no reason to suppose that the speculations of Swedenborg were anything else than the product of his own mind, in the same sense as that in which the speculations of this volume may be regarded as the product of the minds of its authors.
48. Before concluding this historical sketch let us say a few words about modern spiritualists in so far as their pretensions have reference to our subject. They assert the presence among them of the spirits of the departed, assuming sometimes a visible shape, and they compare these appearances to those which are recorded in the Sacred writings. But there is this prominent distinction between the two: the spiritual communications recorded in the Scriptures are represented as made to those who were unprepared to receive them, and also for the most part as taking place in open daylight, or, to speak more properly, having no sort of reference to light or darkness. Whatever be their explanation they have an open-air look about them. On the other hand, the manifestations recorded by the spiritualists take place as a rule in insufficient light, if not in total darkness, and in presence of those who are in a state of mental excitement.
Now, for our own part, we should not be disposed to credit any communication from the world of spirits that was not made openly, and to those unprepared to receive it, and therefore unprejudiced.
The man of science must be perfectly recipient, but he must in the interests of truth guard himself against the possibility of delusion. We know thealmost infinite power of the mind not only to delude itself, but to propagate its delusions to other minds, and, as we have already remarked, the conditions of these manifestations are specially favourable to the spread of such delusions. We do not therefore hesitate to choose between the two alternative explanations, and to regard these pretended manifestations as having no objective reality.
49. But while we altogether deny the reality of these appearances, we think it likely that the spiritualists have enlarged our knowledge of the power which one mind has of influencing another, and this is in itself a valuable subject of inquiry. We agree too in the position assumed by Swedenborg, and by the spiritualists, according to which they look upon the invisible world not as something absolutely distinct from the visible universe, and absolutely unconnected with it, as is frequently thought to be the case, but rather as a universe which has some bond of union with the present.
This line of argument will be developed in the following chapters of our book.