But belong to the more interior workings of the spirit, when disease has released it, either wholly or partially, from the restrictive outward influence. Still, whatever may be our theory of explanation, the thought we would set forth remains equally impressive. Such facts as these show the amazing power of the soul in respect to time. They teach us that in respect to our spiritual, as well as our material organization, we are indeed "most fearfully and wonderfully made." They startle us with the supposition that, in another state of existence, time may be mainly, if not wholly what the spiritual action causes it to appear. We have heard of well-attested cases, in which the whole past, even to its most minute events, has flashed before the soul, in the dying moments, or during some brief period of imminent danger arousing the spirit to a preternatural energy. If there be truth in such experiences, then no former exercise or emotion of the soul is ever lost. They belong to us still, just as much as our present thought, or our present sensation, and at some period may start up again to sleep no more, causing us actually to realize that conception of Boethius which now appears only a scholastic subtlety—a whole life ever in one, carrying with it a consciousness of its whole abiding presence in every moment of its existence—tota simul et interminabilis vitæ possessio. But we may give the thought a more plain and practical turn. Even now, it may be said, what we have lived forms still a part of our being. However it may stand in respect to outward time, it is never past to us. We are too much in the habit of regarding ourselves only in reference to what may seem our present moral state. We need the corrective power of the idea that we are, not simply what we may now appear to be, but all we ever have been, and that such we must forever be, unless in the psychology and theology of a higher dispensation there is some mode of separating us from our former selves. Now the soul is broken and dispersed. Then will it come together, and as in the poetic imagination of the resurrection of the body, bone meets its fellow-bone, and dust hastens to join once more in living organization with its kindred dust, so in the soul's anastasis will all the lost and scattered thoughts come home again to their spiritual abode, and from the chaos of the past will stand forth forever one fixed and changeless being, the discordant and deformed result of a false and evil life, or a glorious organization in harmony with all that is fair and good in the universe.
Geology has created difficulties in the interpretation of certain parts of the Scriptures; but these are more than balanced by a most important aid, which in another respect, it is rendering to the cause of faith. The former are fast giving way before that sound interpretation of the primeval record which was maintained by some of the most learned and pious in the Church, centuries before the new science was ever dreamed of. The latter is gathering strength from every fresh discovery. We refer to the proof geology is furnishing of the late origin of the human race, and of the absolute necessity of ascribing it to a supernatural cause. While there has been an ascending scale of orders, every new order has commenced with the most mature specimens. The subsequent history has been ever one of degeneracy, until a higher power came to the aid of exhausted nature, and made another step of real progress in the supernatural organization of a superior type. The largest fishes, the most powerful reptiles, were first in the periods of their respective families. And thus it went on until the introduction of the human species. An attenuating series of physical and hyper-physical powers forms the only theory which, on the fair Baconian induction, will account for the phenomena presented. There are scientific as well as theological bigots, and both are equally puzzled to explain the facts on either set of principles to the exclusion of the other. It is chiefly, however, in regard to man that the argument acquires its great importance; as bearing directly on that first article, and fundamental support of all faith—the veritable existence of the supernatural. This is not the same with faith in the Scriptures, and yet is most intimately connected with it. With the utter rejection of the latter, must soon go all available belief in a personal deity or a personal future state; and so, on the contrary, whatever in science shuts up the soul to a clear belief in the supernatural, even in its most remote aspect, is so much gained, ultimately, for the cause of the written oracles. And this is just what geology is now doing. She proves, beyond doubt, the late introduction of man upon the earth, and thus compels us to admit the most supernatural of all known events within a period comparatively very near to our own. The fact that, after a very few thousand years, the light of history is quenched in total darkness, presenting no farther trace of man or human things, goes far to prove his prior non-existence. But it might, perhaps, be maintained, that of former generations, only the merest fragments had, from time to time, survived the wreck of physical convulsions, in which all outward memoranda of their older existence had wholly perished. Such memorials, it is true, might have departed from the surface, but then geology must have found them. She has dug up abundant remains of types and orders, which, from their position in the strata, she is compelled to assign to a period anterior to that of man. There would have been no lack of zeal on the part of some of her votaries. More than once, on the supposed discovery of some old bone in a wrong place (to which it had been carried by some ordinary disturbance of the deposits), have they rejoiced thereat, "like one who findeth great spoil." But the evidence is now beyond all impeachment. Remains of every other type have been discovered. The relative periods of their different deposits have been ascertained. No stone, we may literally say it, has been left unturned; and yet, not a single joint or splinter of a human bone has been found to reward the search. The argument from this is of immense importance. The essence of all skepticism will be found, on analysis, to consist in a secret distrust of the very existence of any thing supernatural—a latent doubt whether, after all, every thing may not be nature, and nature every thing. Unnatural as it may seem, there are those who actually take delight in such a view. It hides from the consciousness a secret, yet real antipathy to the thought of a personal God, and the moral power of such an idea. Whatever disturbs this feeling excites alarm, lest all the foundations of unbelief (if we may use the word of a thing which has no foundations) should be rendered insecure by the bare possibility of such direct interference. Hence the moral power of well attested miracles, although it has been denied, even by religious writers, that there is any such moral power. It is the felt presence of a near personal Deity. It is the startling thought of the Great Life of the universe coming very nigh to us, and revealing the latent skepticism of men's souls. Although greatly transcending, it is like the effect produced by those operations of nature that startle us by their instantaneous exhibition of resistless power, and which no amount of science can prevent our regarding with reverence, or religious awe. With all our knowledge of physical laws, no man, we venture to say it, is wholly an atheist, or even a consistent naturalist, when the earth is heaving, or the lightning bolts are striking thick and fast around him.
Be it, then, near or remote, one unanswerable evidence of supernatural intervention gives a foundation for all faith. And this geology does. Only a few centuries back, on any chronology—a mere yesterday we may say—she brings us face to face with the most stupendous of personal, miraculous interventions. No mediate stages—no transitional developments have been, or can be discovered—no links of half human, half beastly monsters, such as the old Epicureans loved to imagine, and some modern savans would have been glad to find. Nothing of this kind, but all at once, after ages of fishes, and reptiles, and every kind of lower animation, "a new thing upon the earth"—the wondrous human body united to that surpassingly wondrous entity, the human soul, and both new born, in all their maturity, from a previous state of non-existence. So the rocks tell us; and the rocks, we are assured, on good scientific authority, "can not deceive us" like the "poetical myths of man's unreasoning infancy."
Now what difficulties are there for faith after this? What is there in any of the earlier narrations of the Bible that should stumble us—such as the account of the flood, or the burning of Sodom, or the transactions at Sinai? The supernatural once established, and in such an astounding way as this, what more natural than that the new created race should receive their earliest moral nurture directly from the source of their so recent existence? What more credible than such an early intercourse as the Bible reveals—when God walked with men, and spake to them from his supernatural abode, and angels came and went on messages of reproof or mercy. How irrational the skepticism, which, when compelled to admit the one will still stumble at the other, as being in itself, and aside from outward testimony, too marvelous for belief. There are those who are yet disposed to assail with desperation the doctrine of man's late supernatural origin. But the danger from that source is past. Geology and the Scriptures speak the same language here. There is no need of any forced exegesis to bring them into harmony. It is only of yesterday that the Eternal Deity has been upon the earth. His footsteps are more recent than many of those natural changes science has taken such pains to trace. Geology has proved, beyond all doubt, the fact of man's creation; what then is there hard for faith in the revealed facts of his redemption? Is the supernatural origin of a soul an event more easy to be believed than a series of supernatural interventions for its deliverance from moral evil, and its exaltation to a destiny worthy of its heavenly origin?
Editor's Easy Chair.
Next to the winter weather, which is just now beguiling the town ladies to as pretty a show of velvets and of martens, as the importers could desire—talk is centering upon that redoubtable hero, Louis Kossuth. We are an impulsive people, and take off our hats, one moment, with a hearty good-will and devotion; and thrust them over our ears, the next, with the most dogged contempt; and it would not be strange, therefore, if we sometimes made mistakes in our practice of civilities. We fell, naturally enough, into a momentary counter current—started by anonymous and ill-natured letter writers from the other side of the sea—in regard to Kossuth. While he was riding the very topmost wave of popular admiration, a rumor that he had been uncivil and unduly exacting in his intercourse with the officers of the Mississippi frigate, struck his gallant craft and threatened to whelm her under the sea she was so triumphantly riding. The opportune arrival of the Mississippi, and the unanimous testimony of her officers to the respectful and altogether proper demeanor of the Hungarian hero, restored him to favor and even swelled the tide which sweeps him to a higher point of popularity than any other foreigner, La Fayette excepted, has ever reached in our republican country. How he has earned their respect, a biographical sketch in another part of our Magazine will enable each reader to judge for himself.
Linked to Kossuth is the new talk about the new and strange action of that gone-by hero Louis Napoleon. Curiosity-mongers can not but be gratified at such spectacle of a Republic as France just now presents; where a man is not only afraid to express his opinions, but is afraid to entertain them! It must be a gratifying scene for such old hankerers after the lusts of Despotism, and the energy of Emperors, as Metternich, to see the loving fraternity of our sister Republic, called France, running over into such heart-felt action of benevolence and liberality as characterize the diplomacy of Faucher!
Stout Emile de Girardin, working away at his giant Presse, with the same indomitable courage, and the same incongruity of impulse, which belonged to his battle for Louis Napoleon, now raises the war cry of a Working-man for President! And his reasoning is worth quoting; for it offers an honest, though sad picture of the heart of political France. "The choice lies," says he, "between Louis Napoleon and another. Louis Napoleon has the eclat of his name to work upon the ignorant millions of country voters: unless that other shall have similar eclat, there is no hope. No name in France can start a cry, even now, like the name of Napoleon. Therefore," says Girardin, "abandon the name of a man, and take the name of a class. Choose your workingman, no matter who, and let the rally be—'The Laborer, or the Prince!'"