Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

66

multiplied by 2. As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth, it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper whereto I have sent it." (Isaiah Iv. 10, 11.) Rain signifies spiritual truth, which is appropriated to man: by snow is signified natural truth, which is as snow whilst only in the memory, but becomes spiritual by love, as snow becomes rain water by warmth.

To conclude these illustration of Correspondence, we turn lastly to the animal kingdom, headed by man. Beasts, birds, fish, and insects, correspond to the affections, thoughts, and scientific knowledge with which he nourishes, supports, and stores his mind. The destructive animals image his mind in its unrenewed and unregenerated state. Those animals, tamed, represent the bad passions and tempers reduced to obedience, by the subduing influence of the spirit of truth. In this sense the "leopard lies down with

The

the lamb"-"the lion eats straw with the bullock." clean and useful animals represent the mind in its regenerating state. Animals of the flock correspond to the affections of the spiritual man; animals of the herd to the affections of the natural man. Birds correspond to the thoughts of the understanding; fish and animals living in the sea, to scientific knowledges. The quality and use of the several affections and thoughts are indicated by the distinctive quality of the animals named. We shall, in these, our concluding observations, confine ourselves to the consideration of man as a scientific. rational, and spiritual being.

Every person who seriously reflects on the constitution of man, must have observed that he appears endowed with three distinct degrees of life; so distinct indeed, that while he is in the exercise or enjoyment of one, it appears as though the others did not exist in him. Sometimes he takes the greatest pleasure, and experiences the highest happiness in the pursuit of science, and all his faculties for the time are absorbed in it. It is the delight of his existence; he lives but for it. At other times he turns his attention to the regions of intelligence; he enquires into the causes of

things; he analyses, compares, and investigates; and here again his attention is equally fixed, as when experimenting on the facts of science. At other times all his powers are concentrated on spiritual and religious subjects. His adoration is directed to the Great Supreme; his faith is exercised on the invisible things of heaven, by the contemplation of the visible things of earth; and his hope anticipates the period when heavenly happiness shall be enjoyed in all its fulness. We call these three degrees of life by the terms scientific, rational (or intellectual), and spiritual. There is, however, a rational principle before regeneration, and a spiritual-rational principle after it: the first is procured by the exercise of the scientific principle; the second is formed by the Lord-by the affections of spiritual good and truth; and though last in its formation, it becomes first in efficacy, and first in power, aiding the spiritual principle in the regulation of the rational and scientific.

There is a sanctifying power in the spirit of true religion, which has at all times commanded the admiration of mankind, and elicited the approval of even the most careless and unreflecting. Among the poor the brightest examples of this power have exemplified themselves, and shed a lustre over their character; and it has been often remarked by the learned, without their ever attempting to account for the cause, that in proportion as the poor have become eminently religious, and intimately acquainted with the Sacred Scriptures, they have at the same time become deep thinkers, acute reasoners, and well versed in scientific pursuits. That some cause must exist for this, no one will venture to dispute. What that cause is, we shall, in the sequel, endeavour to develope.

But if the sanctifying influence of religion is thus seen in its effects among the poor, whose education has been in many instances neglected, and in all instances limited, what ought we not to expect from the rich, whose opportunities are so great, and the cultivation of whose minds are so sedulously attended to. Whatever the most sanguine mind might anticipate, has been fully realised in those great monuments of human erudition, Locke, Newton, Boyle,

* See Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia, paragraph 2657.

Ray, and a hundred others; not to mention the illustrious Swedenborg.

If we study Locke, amidst all the stupendous acquirements by which he was distinguished, his piety shines with the steadiest brilliance, whilst his veneration for God's Word, and his obedience to its divine precepts, stamped him as one of the humblest of christians-as his great erudition did one of the most profound philosophers.

Who can forget the modesty of the great Newton describing himself, when he discovered any new truth as a mere child seeking pebbles on the sea shore, and occasionally finding one more beautiful than another? What but the sanctifying power we have mentioned, could have induced this true spirit of humility?

In the midst of one of the most profligate and licentious eras that ever disgraced the annals of Britain, what was it that dignified the character of the illustrious Boyle, but his deep acquaintance with, and divine veneration for, the sacred Scriptures? To the christian his memory is endeared, as that of one who, in one of the most licentious periods of English history, showed a rare example of religion and virtue in exalted station, and was an early and zealous promoter of the diffusion of the Scriptures in foreign lands. To the erudite, the intellectual, and the deeply thinking, his memory is peculiarly grateful, as the individual who laid the foundation of that learned body of men-the Royal Society, while by the lover of science, he is honoured as one of the first and most successful cultivators of experimental philosophy.

The other great name we have mentioned, JOHN RAYwhom Haller describes as the greatest botanist in the memory of man, and whose writings on animals are pronounced by Cuvier to be the foundation of all modern zoology-we have introduced, for the purpose of showing how sublime were his views in connecting religion with science, and elaborating even to the eternal world and state the wisdom of God in the works of creation. 66 It is not

likely (says he), that eternal life shall be a torpid and inactive state; or that it shall consist only in an uninterrupted and endless act of love; the other faculties shall be employed as well as the will, in actions suitable to, and

perfective of, their natures, especially the understanding, which chiefly differs in us from brute beasts, and makes us capable of virtue and vice, of rewards and punishments, shall be busied and employed in contemplating the works of God, and observing the divine art and wisdom manifested in the structure and composition of them; and reflecting upon their Great Architect, the praise and glory due to them. Then shall we clearly see, to our great satisfaction and admiration, the ends and uses of those things which here were either too subtile for us to penetrate and discover, or too remote and inaccessible for us to come to any distinct view of, viz., the planets and fixed stars; those illustrious bodies, whose contents and inhabitants, whose stores and furniture we have here so longing a desire to know, as also their mutual subserviency to each other. Now the mind of man being not capable at once to advert to more than one thing, a particular view and examination of such an innumerable number of vast bodies, and the great multitude of species, both of animate and inanimate things, which each of them contains, will afford matter enough to exercise and employ our minds, I do not say to all eternity, but to many ages, should we do nothing else." In how beautiful a light is this extract reflected! The spiritual principle leads to humble adoration of the Great Supreme, for his marvellous works; the rational principle contemplates with delight, the ages in which it shall occupy itself in reflecting upon all creation's wonders; while the scientific feel equal pleasure in studying the animate and inanimate objects, which the myriads of worlds that revolve in the immensity of space unquestionably contains. Such must, and always will, be the case, when the rational and scientific principles are in due subjection to the spiritual. On the other hand, let but this subserviency be destroyed, and religion made to bend before reason and science, and a mental madness takes possession of the soul, which ends in neither fearing God. nor regarding man. The faculties of the soul, under such government, are in the most inextricable confusion, and the most superlative powers are constantly the sport of the most glaring inconsistency. Nothing can be more easily accounted for than this state; the whole is expressed in the words, "without God in the world;" that is, the spiritual principle,

instead of being the governing one, is the servant, and in this state order becomes inverted.

We might easily illustrate this by the conduct of many eminently learned and scientific men, who, denying the divine truths of God's Word, nay, and sometimes denying also the existence of God himself, have, notwithstanding the stupendous power of their intellect, stood as wild beasts in the midst of their fellow-creatures, and have been shunned by all rightly constituted and seriously minded people as a moral pestilence.

66

The mind of man evidently consists of a great number of affectuous and intellectual faculties and tendencies, very distinct from each other. The love of God and our neighbour, for instance, are very different principles from the love of worldly power and worldly possessions; and those intellectual exercises which are conversant with divine and heavenly subjects, no less vary from those which are confined to matters of a corporeal and earthly nature and it is evidently congenial to our natural feelings and perception, to assign to the former of each of these classes of sentiments, a higher and more interior seat in the mind, than to the latter; we acknowledge, in common discourse, the one to be sublime and exalted feelings and contemplations, the other to be such as are low and grovelling. Nor will our conceptions on this subject be much altered, whatever may be the theoretical views which we are inclined to entertain of the nature of the mind. If, with one class of metaphysicians, we believe the mind to be one simple principle, the whole of which is concerned in every one of its exercises, though under a distinct modification in each; then we must consider the whole mind, when under the influence of heavenly love and wisdom to be in a sublime and exalted state, or to be under a modification of that description: or if, with others, we conceive the mind, like the body, to consist of a great variety of organs, each having its proper function; then we must consider those which are the seats of disinterested benevolence and of the perceptions of divine and heavenly subjects, to be placed in an elevated and interior region and those which are appropriated to grosser tendencies and mean conceptions, to be respectively low and external. Our observations here proceed upon the supposition, that the latter view of the nature

« AnteriorContinuar »