Did never season fall so glad As that, before our corn was stored (And now himself is reaped, and set Safe in the garner of the Lord)? God knows how fair a face can show Flush'd in the golden evening's glow. I mind the day the news was told, And how the village heard the tale, Our manhood with a lusty shout, Our women with a silence pale; How one by one they wended down That pathway to the distant town. For me, I had none closely near To send forth proudly there to die; Only this playmate, and you know We were no lovers, he and I: And yet methinks I too was pale At telling of yon woeful tale. I mind the last long look he gave Just as he turned him from the door, My hand was throbbing from his touch Poor hand that throbbeth never more! Now the night cometh-I shall sleep; Turned patient up to wait the day: Sleep sweet upon the blood-stain'd sod, Dear playmate, that has gone to God! AFTER THE WAR. THEY took him at that pleasant time When summer falleth, and the corn, And now the places where he stood Peer dimly through the misty morn; As ever, windeth low and high; Beside the window in the gloam Nor is there need to ope the door; For he that used to come, they say, Has travelled on another way. TO AN ANGEL PICTURED LOOKING THROUGH THE SKY. HIGH Creature, watching twirl'd See, for a seven times seven What belts of hope and fear In blame, lest One discern Fraser's Magazine. From The Contemporary Review. allow man to rest in his present state: he craves a state more righteous, more permanent, more pure than his present one. Now, who can deny that this disquietude of man's is a power? All great reforms have sprung out of impatience and indignation. I find supports furnished by the great naturalists to a belief I have held for thirty years that man's disquietude, to which he owes his morality and religion, is a natural development of that vital motion or disquietude to which are due all the living forms, animal or vegetable, which cover the face of the earth, so that this disquietude presents itself to me as the impulse that has made man, and it gives this token that it has not done making him, that it will not allow him to rest in his present state. IN answer to the question, Where is God the maker? I have replied-it is no new fashioned answer -"I find him in my own dissatisfaction." I find in man, not only the recurrence of certain periodical dissatisfactions which impel him to do what is needful for the maintenance of himself and his race; but I find also -deepening as thought expands-a permanent dissatisfaction with his social, and I may add, with his mortal condition. With his social condition. He cannot rest in the presence of injustice or oppression, and he craves a state where justice reigns-where men are done justice to, and treated with due considera- I find tokens everywhere that the imtion and sympathy. And he is dissatis- pulses which stir the creature are provified with his mortal condition. He craves dential in their character. The first thing "a state that hath foundations," a com- we find in the living substance is, motion munion with his fellows that is not a de- in a structureless fluid. This motion is lusive shadow of communion to vanish at there seen pushing out portions of the the touch of death. There is also a third, living substance, and using them as exrarer and nobler dissatisfaction, thor- tempore organs for grasping food, and oughly awakened only in the few, but subsequently, to all appearance making potential enough among the many to give the organs they need. From the most those few a strong hold over them. I structureless to the most highly organmean man's dissatisfaction with his pres-ized creature we see all living things iment animal nature. He complains that pelled to what is needed for their mainhis own selfish lusts and appetites have an undue ascendency over him: that he is not pure. The inspired teacher of men gets glimpses now and then in the lull of carnal appetite — of a bright-them. er and nobler life. He finds that the appetites and lusts of his lower nature mix themselves up inextricably with these visions, and obscure them, and stand as barriers to hinder his entrance on that better life that awaits the conqueror. Hence the doctrine of original sin: hence the traditions of the fall. Nothing brings home to me the reasonableness of Darwin's view so much as the reluctance of man's lower nature which Paul, with marvellous felicity, calls "the old man." Original sin is that obstinate tendency to revert to a lower state, which the wisest men feel most intensely. - seen tenance and preservation, and also for that of their race, and we find them all at first apparently unconscious of the providential nature of the impulses that move Now, if this is true- if the impulses that move every creature are providential in their character-then we may read in man's permanent dissatisfaction an evidence of the direction in which he is being led, of the shape into which he is being transformed. I think the reason why the doctrine of a providence has been discredited is that men have looked for the first manifestations of it in the wrong place. They have sought it in the accidents of life, whereas, it is to be seen first as a property of life. Life makes its children, and moves them to do what is needed for These three dissatisfactions will not their maintenance, and the perpetuation of their kind, and subsequently shows | manifested in every storm or frost or them what she is doing, and awakens. shower, or in every law of nature. We their sympathy with her purposes so that must be thankful if. we can find some they feel her impulses as their own de- clear indications of a providence above sires. and beyond ours. We have such clear indications. Finding the providential purposes of And life in every creature so incomparably the reason they have been so much overdeeper than the creature's consciousness looked is that men have looked for them -finding that the creature is saved by where they are not to be found, that is, obeying these impulses - finding man in the accidents of life; whereas proviunder the same natural régime as all other dence is a property of life, each living creatures I consider that true wisdom thing is first passively provided for by consists in submitting to the guidance of the mother life of which it forms a part, those impulses which have made and are and is also impelled to provide for itself: still making us. These impulses will not in due time it feels the impulse as its allow us to rest but in seeking- I will own desire or will. It observes the not say a better country, or a better world, | results of the acts which it finds itself for those expressions are metaphorical-impelled to do, and acts in conscious ana better state. ticipation of these results. We see in character which man's actions display when he makes arrangements for future contingencies. The recognition of this is a great aid to faith. It is a great encouragement to a man to obey impulses whose authority he feels though he cannot explain its grounds; when he finds that all other creatures find their safety in obeying impulses which they cannot fathom. The callow swifts hatched in July under all vital activity that same providential our eaves do not know or criticize the call that comes to them the first week in August, and bids them seek another country. Why should we criticize our call? Is not our knowledge like theirs -infinitesimal. What does all the old talk about the Kantean imperative mean, but that man is under the same régime as other creatures, and that his salvation lies in obedience to impulses which he feels he must obey, but whose purposes he cannot fathom? If I succeed in showing that the creature is everywhere led by impulses whose providential meaning it cannot fathom, towards those things which it needs for the preservation of its race; and if man appears to be under the same régime as other creatures, then man's efforts and prayers will appear to indicate his real needs and his needs to indicate his destiny, - if, and this "if" is indeed a great deduction if outward circumstances allow his vital tendencies to develop themselves. The believer will say, naturally enough, "What is faith worth that rests on such a contingency? My belief is not in a Creator who is trying to accomplish certain ends if outward chances favour him, but in one to whom all chances are alike." And so is mine. But you will agree with me that we do not find indications of design everywhere; we cannot see purpose I do not say, mind, that we need these manifestations of a providence as the basis of our faith. God forbid: the basis of that faith which makes the new fledged swallow venture out across the trackless deep does not rest on appearances, neither does ours, but the power that has made us, has made us parasitic plants, so that we crave outward supports to sustain our instinctive faith, and if we lack these supports it droops and trails along the ground. DARWIN. I trust to show that there is nothing in Darwin's teaching that excludes this doctrine of a providence, though he uses expressions sometimes that seem as if he almost overlooked its existence. At the end of his "variations of plants and animals under domestication," he asserts, "No shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations . . which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the probable), I see in all living things a real world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided." The one expression in this passage against which I protest is, that man owes his formation to variation and natural selection, or that these are the groundwork of his formation. I have every inclination to believe that they have formed man in the same way that variation and man's selection have formed the double blossoming garden rose. But I ask, can man be said to have formed the rose? No, he has only modified it. So natural selection and variation, as the Duke of Argyll says,* need something to work on, something to modify, something to select from. Natural selection and variation, whether they are the result of chance or design, are the accidents of life. There may be no visible design in the accidents of life, and yet life may display providence as its own property. And so it does. In every living thing, whether labelled conscious or unconscious, sentient or non-sentient, we find an indwelling providence, an impulse that makes it provide for its own maintenance, and that of its kind, and to use the things which chance throws in its way as instruments for the work. Out of this impulse I find all that we call good or divine ultimately disclosing itself: - as I shall hope to show.t I would grant (what Mr. Darwin is far more competent to judge of than I am) that variation and natural selection in which no providential purpose can be ccrtainly traced, have caused the diversity of all the living forms we see, out of a living matter originally everywhere identical in its properties. I find the germ of this idea in Hunter, who says that the principle of life is everywhere the same, and partially illustrates it by reference to the phenomena of grafting. But whether it is the fact that different species are inalienably endowed with certain diverse habits and organific powers, or whether accident imposes on them their diversity (which last seems to me most "Reign of Law." ↑ See Murphy's "Habit and Intelligence." oneness of character. Everywhere I see providential impulses; I see every living thing moved, by impulses which it apparently cannot at first the least understand, to do what is needed for its own preservation and that of its race. And (as I have said that I hope to show), I find that all we worship as morally good or adorable, appears to be involved in these providential impulses, to be evoked in time in opposition to the pressure of adverse circumstances. What Edmund Burke said of the British nation, that I think may be said of all life, "Its antagonists are its helpers." "In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men." I shall attempt to show then that everything which we call good or divine exists as a latent property of life, to be evoked, if not directly "ætatis accessu," yet by those antagonisms that time is sure to bring. Holding, as a matter of vital faith which it is spiritual death to let go of, the Christian's presentiment that all things willingly or unwillingly, as antagonists or allies, will be found to do the work of God; I think at the same time that this work of God presents itself to us as an organizing power that overrules things antagonistic or indifferent, and compels them to minister to its purpose.* It seems to me puerile to deny that the very ideas of love, and goodness, and God, postulate separation and evil and chaos as the groundwork of their manifestation; nay, as the only things that can give these sacred words any meaning whatsoever. Life is organific power; Heaven itself is spoken of as an organism - - a kingdom. Now casualties are precisely what life needs to manifest itself as an organizing power-an organon is a tool, a thing that existed for its own end, overruled and made to minister to ends which are not in its own programme at all. It is something adapted to a different use from that which brought it into existence. The true Christian assertion of the noncasual character of the divine purpose seems to me to be this- not that there * In opposition to the idea of one who has originally made all things with an express view to all the ends to which they are intended to subserve. are no casualties (such may be the case, but such is not the view that our Maker has caused us to see)—but that to Divine omnipotence all casualties are the SAME: all seeming diversities are ONE. lief from pain, which they bring. It is as yet simply the creature of impulse moved by a power whose ends it does not sympathize with, to provide for its own preservation and growth. It is learning to They can only help divine omnipotence work in anticipation of results, but preby giving fresh aspects to its power. This sent relief or satisfaction are all the reis contained in the old assertion, "All sults which it has observed to follow from things work together for good to them certain acts, and are still its only motives. that love God." And this is the only We find in this child traces of a still sense in which the following old proverb earlier stage. It is now eating, drinking, need be accepted, "oi kvßol Aç del vin- and breathing for itself: there was a time TOVOL" It need not mean that the dice when another ate and drank and breathed of God are always loaded, but only that for it. It is still protected and nursed all throws of the dice are one and the by its mother, so that the providence to same to the Maker. Casualty cannot which it owes its life is still in some possibly exclude the idea of Divine Om-measure outside of it: this is the survival nipotence, for this idea will vanish into of a still earlier stage in which it was in thin air if we attempt to make it mean more than this; namely, that it is a power which will in time conquer all antagonists. THE PLACE OF PROVIDENCE. Darwin's philosophy may greatly help the cause of Natural Theology, if it leads men to look for a providence not in the things which surround and press on the life, but in the reaction to the pressure. We are not authorized by what has been shown us to call the pressure "God's will." That way lies Moloch worship and every enervating superstition. If we look for providence, not first in the adverse circumstances that press on the life, and vary the forms and habits it assumes in order to accomplish its ends; but in the living impulse itself, the method has this incalculable advantage, that we are beginning from things within the scope of our vision.* Here at least we may see a providence whose existence no one can deny, however much they may limit its sphere. No one can deny that man exercises providence. I trust further to bring my readers to admit that providence cannot be said to begin with man, or with any creature's consciousness. The first dawn of consciousness is practical, and it consists in noticing the re sults of our own acts. its parent; wholly formed and cared for by its parent; dependent on her acts for its maintenance. The mother is in this stage the wholly unconscious agent of the providence that is perpetuating her race by forming her child within her. She only gradually comes to sympathize with the providential meaning of her own maternal acts. At first she is wholly unconscious. Then there comes a stage, seen especially in birds and insects, when she is impelled to seek a suitable deposit for her coming eggs - thence in due time, in higher stages of life, she learns to know and love her offspring. Reader: Does the providence that feeds the embryo, and that makes the embryo appropriate what it needs, originate in the creature's consciousness? To ask the question is sufficient. Everyone must answer, No. The embryo is first preserved by an impulse of which neither itself nor its parent knows or understands anything. Parent and child are alike preserved and the race perpetuated by a providence which is not their own in any sense, but is a property of the life by which they live. Are these assertions too obvious to need making? I declare that I could show, if needed, the necessity of repeating these obvious truths. A child becomes aware of itself and I think there is great danger that folfinds itself already performing certain lowers of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, natural acts by which its life is sustained lacking the wide circumspection of their and developed, such as breathing, eating, teachers, may be thoughtless enough to drinking, &c. Nature is already doing speak as if all instinct was at first expefor it what it will presently in some meas-rience, and that the innate instinct of the ure learn to do for itself. It does not young was always and entirely inherited perform these acts for the sake of life and experience that had passed into mechandevelopment, but for the pleasure, or re-ical habit. Such persons might say, “It is true that the young of each generation Χαρκτέον ουν ἴσως απο των ήμιν γνωρίμων. ARISTOTLE. |