In the first place, the principle is proved and illustrated by the doctrine of mechanical reaction.
From the principle, long since settled in mechanics, that action and reaction are equal, it will follow that every impression which man makes by his words, or his movements, upon the air, the waters, or the solid earth, will produce a series of changes in each of those elements which will never end. The word which is now going out of my mouth causes pulsations or waves in the air, and these, though invisible to human eyes, expand in every direction until they have passed around the whole globe, and produced a change in the whole atmosphere; nor will a single circumgyration complete the effect; but the sentence which I am now uttering shall alter the whole atmosphere through all future time. So that, as Professor Babbage remarks, to whom we are indebted for the first moral application of this mechanical principle, “the air is one vast library, on whose pages are forever written all that man has ever said, or woman whispered.” Not a word has ever escaped from mortal lips, whether for the defence of virtue or the perversion of the truth, not a cry of agony has ever been uttered by the oppressed, not a mandate of cruelty by the oppressor, not a false and flattering word by the deceiver, but it is registered indelibly upon the atmosphere we breathe. And could man command the mathematics of superior minds, every particle of air thus set in motion could be traced through all its changes, with as much precision as the astronomer can point out the path of the heavenly bodies. No matter how many storms have raised the atmosphere into wild commotion, and whirled it into countless forms; no matter how many conflicting waves have mixed and crossed one another; the path of each pulsation is definite, and subject to the laws of mathematics. To follow it requires, indeed, a power of analysis superior to human; but we can conceive it to be far inferior to the divine.
The same thing is true of the waters. No wave has ever been raised on their bosom, no keel has ever ploughed their surface, which has not sent an influence and a change into every ocean, and modified every wave, that has rolled in upon the farthest shores. As the vessel crosses the deep, the parted waves close in, and every trace of disturbance soon disappears from human vision. Nevertheless, it is certain that every track thus furrowed in the waters has sent an influence through their entire mass, such as is calculable by distinct formulæ; and it may be that glorified minds, by the principles of celestial mathematics, can as easily trace out the paths of the unnumbered vessels that have crossed the waters, as the astronomer can the paths of the planets or the comets.
The solid earth, too, is alike tenacious of every impression we make upon it; not a footprint of man or beast is marked upon its surface, that does not permanently change the whole globe. Every one of its countless atoms will retain and exhibit an infinitesimal, but a real, effect through all coming time. It is too minute, indeed, for the cognizance of the human senses. But in a higher sphere there may be inlets of perception acute enough to trace it through all its bearings, and thus render every atom of the globe a living witness to the actions of every living being.
In view of these facts, we cannot regard the glowing language of Babbage an exaggeration, when he says, “The soul of the negro, whose fettered body, surviving the living charnel-house of his infected prison, was thrown into the sea to lighten the ship, that his Christian master might escape the limited justice at length assigned by civilized man to crimes whose profit had long gilded their atrocity, will need, at the last great day of human accounts, no living witness of his earthly agony: when man and all his race shall have disappeared from the face of our planet, ask every particle of air still floating over the unpeopled earth, and it will record the cruel mandate of the tyrant. Interrogate every wave which breaks unimpeded on ten thousand desolate shores, and it will give evidence of the last gurgle of the waters which closed over the head of his dying victim. Confront the murderer with every corporeal atom of his immolated slave, and in its still quivering movements he will read the prophet’s denunciation of the prophet king.”
The distinguished mathematical professor from whom I have just quoted limits the effects of this mathematical reaction to this globe and its atmosphere. But if, as the philosophers now generally admit, there is a subtile and extremely elastic medium pervading all space, why must they not extend to other worlds, yea, to the whole universe? Without an accurate acquaintance with the facts, indeed, it will seem a mere extravagant imagination to say that our most trivial word or action sends a thrill throughout the whole material universe; but I see not why sober and legitimate science does not conduct us to this conclusion. Nay, still further, it teaches us that the vibrations and changes which our words and actions produce upon the universe shall never cease their action and reaction till materialism be no more.
We venture, then, to push this thought of the ingenious mathematician into another sphere, which he did not enter. The majority, probably, of the ablest expounders of the Bible have maintained, as previously shown, that the apostle Peter most unequivocally teaches us that the new heavens, or atmosphere, and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, are merely our present earth and atmosphere, melted and burnt by the fires of the last day, and fitted up anew,—a second and a lovelier paradise,—to be the everlasting abode of holiness and happiness. Indeed, to attempt to fix any other meaning upon Peter’s language makes of it a most absurd jumble of literal and figurative expressions, and produces an inversion of chronological events. But, admitting the literal meaning of the apostle to be the true one, then those reactions, produced by our words and conduct upon the present world, shall not be destroyed by the fires of the last day, but reappear in the new economy, and modify the pulsations of the new heavens and the new earth through all eternity.
But even though heaven should be in some other part of the universe, and not this earth refitted, yet, if it be a material residence, why, on the principles already explained, should it not be reached and affected by those vibrations which the laws of mathematics assure us are now spreading from each individual, as a centre, through the whole universe? The conflagration of the earth will alter its chemical constitution, and convert matter into new forms; but the mechanical character of the atoms will not be destroyed; and when they emerge from the final catastrophe, in new and brighter forms, they may still bear and exhibit the impress of every word and every action which they now receive.
Such representations as these, I am aware, will, upon first thought, seem to most minds little better than the dreams of fancy, although founded upon the laws of mathematics. For how soon does every trace disappear from the earth of the most terrible convulsions and the mightiest human efforts! The shout of countless multitudes, the thunder and the crash of battle, and even the volcano’s bellowing, are soon succeeded by unbroken silence; and we cannot discover a trace of any of those countless scenes of noise and convulsion that have been acted upon the world’s busy stage. How practically absurd, then, to imagine that any influence goes out from the feeble efforts of individuals, that can be recognized, either now or hereafter, on the wide field of the universe!
Such objections as these, however, are based upon the impression, of which it is hard to divest ourselves, that our present means of distinguishing the effects of physical forces are as perfect as we can hope for in eternity. And yet, who will doubt that, when our present gross bodies shall be laid aside, the soul, looking forth from a spiritual body, with quickened powers and unobstructed vision, shall penetrate a new world in the infinitesimal parts of creation? What absurdity in the supposition that then the minutest movement among the atoms, which can now be discovered only by the mathematics of quantities infinitely small, may then stand out as distinctly to our inspection as do now the features of the landscape? What absurdity in the supposition that, even now, there are finite minds in the universe who possess this quickened power of perception, and, though in distant worlds, do actually know what is passing here by the vibrations which our words and actions produce upon elastic matter?