Now, the first consequence of the perfection of the human consciousness, as accomplished by God, will be the restoration of the divine image and likeness in man. The soul, now purified and made complete again, becomes once more spiritually fruitful, and in this internal productiveness, which even the pure spirits do not possess, is rendered similar, though at an infinite distance and in a very secondary sense, to the Creator in His productive energy. The livingly operative spirit in the creature is like to that in the being who is increate and from all eternity, while the livingly active sense, as the third member or element in the perfected consciousness, is similar and correspondent to the divine operating word. And lastly, in this livingly quickened and completely restored consciousness, man reassumes his original true and distinct relation to nature. By the soul, first of all, he is reunited to God; in his spirit, now restored to true life, he enters into a living and clear communion with all other kindred spirits; and by his will, now clearly seeing and working in God, he assumes once more his original relation to nature as her first-born son and her legitimate lord.
But nature, as the creature that groaneth and travaileth in pain together, waiteth in earnest expectation for its perfection and restoration. And this is the only view of it that is either founded in truth or really Christian. And in this idea of creation groaning and travailing in pain lies a fullness of prophetic intimations for nature. While she seems on the whole to be deeply slumbering, this alone excites a hope of a great and general awakening; whereas it is scarcely a generation and a half, or two at most, since physical science first began to awaken out of the grave of its own dead notions, when in nature itself, no less than in the science of it, all seemed sunk in death.
We need not, therefore, be surprised if this Christian view of nature and a dynamical physiology evince so little of agreement. For the latter invariably regards the system of nature as something absolute and as perfect and complete in itself; but this it evidently is not. And indeed many an eloquent theological essay on the proofs of design in nature and on its indications of the goodness of the Creator, sets out on a similarly defective hypothesis, that nature, in its present condition, is exactly the same as God originally created it. But this is directly contradicted by the promise so expressly and distinctly made to the last times, of “new heavens and a new earth.” For this not merely implies, but rather asserts, that nature stands in need of a grand renovation, which it transcends the ordinary course of its proper powers of development to accomplish, and which, consequently, is only conceivable as brought about by the immediate operation of divine power, or of a celestial theocracy for this purpose, in the time of the universal regeneration.
We are far more ready and disposed to assign to the powers of evil a greater influence and a wider field of operation in the world of man than in the system of nature. But it is, perhaps, more conformable to truth to see in the present condition of the latter a state of truce with the evil and destructive powers which formerly raged more fiercely—an interval during which the conflict is confined within certain limits, rather than as a complete and perfect peace. Its external influences, as they affect man, must not be taken for the standard in this case; for they may be merely accidental; just as the ordinary inundations belong to the economy of the balance of the elementary forces of nature, and as the storms and tempests, which occasionally are fearfully destructive, are, nevertheless, it is clear, a process necessary for the purification and salubrity of the atmosphere. But, on the other hand, many facts of medical experience and peculiar phenomena of disease, or even births of faulty or defective organization—as well as the lothsome generation of insects in the atmosphere or on the surface of the earth, and many diseased states in both—when viewed simply and elementarily, and apart from the usual principle of epidemic contagion, appear to point rather to some intrinsical evil and originally wild demoniacal character in the sphere of nature, even though they only occur as exceptions to these general laws. How deadly even sidereal influences may prove is at least established by the fact of lunacy. In those fields of celestial light, too, and those brilliant hosts of heaven, which, as nature’s more retiring and lovelier charms, become visible only by night, and display themselves to the calm and tranquil soul, all is not in such perfect unison and harmony as the first impression would lead us to suppose. A note of discord arises from the irregular orbits of those eccentrically revolving stars, which, though rare in their appearance, seem to be pretty numerous—exercising either a watery or an arid influence on the terrestrial atmosphere, and whose paths astronomy has indeed calculated, though her calculations have not always been verified. All our knowledge, too, and recorded observations of the rest of nature, i.e., in this sense of the earth itself, does not go beyond the surface—consequently to only one portion of it; and yet perhaps that internal part, which is hidden from us, is the very one that is most deeply significant, and more nearly akin to the eternal. Nature, in her interior and reality, may perhaps possess little resemblance to what we see of her externally. At every step we stumble on some new proof of our ignorance, and much also that gives an intimation of a new and unknown world.
Nature in general may, for us, be compared to a towering pyramid of hieroglyphics heaped together at random, from which, with our utmost pains, we can scarcely succeed in bringing together and deciphering two or three at most, while we have not the key for interpreting the meaning and order of the whole; for we must not, as under a very erroneous idea is often done, seek this in nature itself, but entirely in its divine principle; for in this must all that is unintelligible find its solution. Now, in that one part of nature which we are best acquainted with, its surface—after that law of sexual distinction which reigns not only in the animal but also in the vegetable world, and which, moreover, in a certain sense prevails in the very atmosphere and its elementary organs of life—no other law of nature is so universal as that of death. But if it be true that through that spirit and power of evil who first revolted from God, death came into the world, and also into nature, then must the earthly and now natural death have proceeded from the author of eternal death.
Very questionable, in this case, would it appear to be, whether the first and original creations of nature were other than immortal. If He whose essence is omnipotence thinks hieroglyphics, then are they living creatures; and can we, judging of Him in Himself, and His proper nature, suppose that He would conceive of or create aught else than what is eternal and immortal? The old curse still hangs over nature, wherein the first author and inventor of death has contrived to root himself so deeply. And that malediction was not removed by the first man; on the contrary, it was deepened and confirmed by him. And even at the divine renewal of the human race, the same anathema was again pronounced upon the natural tree of an earthly life, condemning it to wither still more and more under the baneful dominion of death. The victory over death is only to be gained together with the perfection of man. And then shall follow a theocracy and divine renovation of nature, under which all that is therein shall again become immortal. A perfect harmony shall thereby be restored to the whole of creation.
END OF PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.