God's own revelations, the lights afforded through the sciences, Nature around us, true philosophy and reason, all confirm our hypothesis. Cut loose now from this, and we can anchor nowhere, save in a blind incomprehensible faith, ever floating and drifting as in a sea of ether, and surrounded by impenetrable mystery and gloom.
All hold and teach that the spirit, when it leaves the body, flies away from mortality and Earth, and goes to the place prepared for it by its Creator. The celerity with which spirit moves we do not now know, but the reality and law of its flight does exist, and this by God's own arrangement and established agency in Nature. That such agency is continually with us, and ready at all times for the use of disembodied spirit, we cannot doubt—nay, possibly its principle or element is in and of us, from the first moment of our existence, through all subsequent time, and will continue to all eternity to come.
The blood is the life of man, its element or stimulæ of life is electricity, let this but escape from the blood, and with it the soul or spirit has fled, and the body is left to moulder back to dust. We find electricity to be a principle of immateriality; an element of fire, which pervades all things, in a greater or less degree, not only solids and fluids, but also atmosphere or air.
Now let us consider this element which God has permitted man to comprehend as existing in nature, and yet veils it from our sight, and, although he permits us to use it for beneficial purposes, yet we can never see or comprehend more than its effects, for, in itself, it is ethereal and no mortal eye can behold it. Man has not only been permitted to comprehend that the principle of electricity does exist in Nature, but also to measure, by time, its rapid flight. Thus, with proper appliances, this Earth can be belted with it in about one tenth part of a second of time. It would seem to almost annihilate time, and space, as its flight is nearly 300,000 miles a second—being more than one third swifter than light.
In preceding pages, we have dwelt upon the distance of our Earth from the Sun, and also distances to various planets, and to some of the fixed stars, and nebulæ, far away in sidereal regions. We have given you the conclusions of the most scientific Astronomers throughout the world. Their measurement of distances by light have been shown to approximate correctness, and the truth of their deductions we cannot doubt. They have explored regions so far remote, that it is rendered certain that it has required light several hundred thousand years from the time it left its native Sun, to reach our Earth, and that these rays travelling from thence, are now successively arriving and beaming upon the eye when it is placed to the telescope. Indeed, from one cluster of suns, or nebulæ, beyond the "milky way," it is computed that the light derived from thence has been 700,000 years in transit, although travelling at the rate of 192,000 miles a second.
Now all these facts are astounding, and must impress every reflecting mind with force. All can see that Astronomers, by the aid of that wonderful gift of God to man—the telescope—have looked abroad, and have penetrated and surveyed with the eye space far remote in sidereal regions, to the extent of which it would require 300,000 years for electricity to reach at a flight of 300,000 miles a second, and yet they have not discovered any thing greatly different from our own planetary system, nor any object or seeming phenomenon they could denominate heaven. Without a solution of these facts, is not the mind bewildered and lost in the hazy contemplation? If heaven is still far out beyond, what period or measure of Eternity may it requite for the spirit, or soul to reach it after leaving the body? Knowing that there is stern reality, regulated law, order, and motion in all pertaining to Jehovah, His creations and government; even the mind of faith staggers, and must founder in the contemplation of conceptions so mighty and so mysterious.
You have taught us to believe that heaven is a "fixed place," and has a "permanent locality," but while accepting this through faith, you have failed to give us a permanent thought. Therefore, notwithstanding all our hopes and desires, mystery and gloom, dark and impenetrable, have shrouded the mind's eye of faith; leaving no light but an excited and restless imagination, and we call upon you to give faith and hope a resting-place somewhere else than floating in ethereal regions, and wandering about with blind chance through illimitable space.
Our hypothesis locates heaven just where we believe it is, and to it the spirit can ascend, on angel-wings of electricity, in a fraction of eternity equal to only five minutes of time. And, although discoveries through the lights of science directed our mind thither, and assisted its comprehension, yet we believe Divine Revelations alone sustain our views, and thus afford the mind a resting place where faith and hope can anchor, and be founded in reality, in immutable and ETERNAL TRUTH. The laws of Nature, the controlling influence of that world, our perceptive faculties and reason, all proclaim that it must be so. Its protecting fires shield it from mortal sight, yet proclaim to us through ten thousand blessings showered upon our earth, 'tis there! 'Tis There!!
Are any ready to ask why the "glory-light" of that heavenly world, represented as "far above the brightness of the Sun" cannot be seen? Such inquiry must exhibit a lack of knowledge respecting the nature of God, the Great Spirit; as also of any proper conception of the immortal spirit of man. That light is for spirit alone, and cannot be seen by mortal eyes, and that which is darkness to us while our sight is veiled with mortality, so far as relates to that heavenly world and our future, becomes—after the death of the body—transcendent brilliancy, and the light of the "glory of God."