The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1874-10-08


trust, we may inquire whether the ms
terialism of Mr.. Tyndall necessarily ex
cludcs belief in spirit-world, and eve
in God. 1t may we'll be doubte
whether his theory has, in any wa,
touched the question of soul in any of it
forms, human, angelic or divine. TIL
question how souls come is very dis
tinct from the question whittier the,
have come, and where they will 60. /
is only the former of these ideas whicl
is approached by the recent address Q
the English scholar. He discerns i" in mat
ter the promise and potency of every form
of life" This assertion does not, there
fore, affect the quality of life, consciou
| life, hitherto supposed to exist in tn,
universe, but simply tells us that insteat
of having come from nothing or wish
de milo, it has rolled up out of materia
base. What Mr.. Tyndall himself infer
from his theory is not matter of i'm
portance: the important inquiry bein!
what conclusion does his theory neccssi
tate, even if it were true to the most ex
IRENE degree. 1t seems evident that il
true his hypothesis does not touch tn,
fact or quality of any spirit life, bu
touches only the origin of that life ant
leaves us a supreme spirit also, but will
wonderful bOldness assigns to this su
prcme spirit an origin. Life is here up
on earth as act. 1t is a wonderful
phenomenon. How it has swarmcd ovcl
this footstool for thousands of years, anC
through what forms of grandeur it ha.
passed under the name of man! Lool
back upon its path of glory, the glowing
wake of its great ship of poetry, elo
Quencc, architecture, music, language
friendship, love and beauty. Ifyou will
listen to the lips of Moses as he unfolded
the early principles of justice, and to the
Roman lawgivcrs when they also deliv.
cred their law; if you will behold the
eloquent works man has wrought from
the KNOBS and flowers" of Solomon's
temple to the decorations of Athens
and the embalmed Pompeii; if you
will recall the poetry from David
and Homer to Dante; if you
will seem to hear again all the
eloquencc from Pericles to Bossuet, or if
with tenderer heart you will think of all
the high love and beauty that have
marched along in grand procc ssion from
Ruth and Antigone to Zenobia and Beat
rice, you will confess that the life of
man is a fact that overwhelms by its
magnitude and bewilders by its beauty.
And in such survey of man we have
left out a thousand wonders-thej joys and
sports of his children, the marriage altar
wrcathed with flowers, the altar of wor-
ship, vocal with song and prayers, the
home with vines above it's windows and
roses by its path, and the tomb wet with
tears-and have from the poverty of both
language and thought been compelled to
rest in the conclusion that human life is
indeed a wonder immense and thrilling
Now, matter, according to Mr.. Tyndall,
possesses the potency to produce such a
form and quality of life. Let it be so.
But this dead matter which has such
promise and potency is not confined to
our little star. In the vast heavens our
globe floats as only one particle of dust
in a measureless sunbeam, and hence if
in our little star the promise and
potency" of matter are so effective it
must be that other realms may possess a
form and quality of life equal to or
higher than this wonderful existence
which we behold, and hence, as Mr.. Tyn-
dall's theory creates man, SO it peoples all
space and explains heaven of angels
at the same instant that it explains a
world of humanity. The same success
sion of material causes that gives us
man gives US other rational beings, and
hence between the materialism of Tyn.
dali and the spiritualism of Robert Dale
Owen, or of the Bible, there is no logical
difference, Mr.. Owen simply saying
" Here the spirits are" and Mr.. Tyndaii
simply telling him whence they come"
According to the recent address matter
has every promise and potency, and
hence there is no limit to be assigned to
the dignity and power of the soul that
may have come up from the depths of
the past eternity, and hence ample room
may dream of as inhabiting the silent
preaching the question whether there be
some one governing spirit with some CEN
trail home, the philosophy of Mr.. Tyn-
how that chief intelligence was made,
no reference to the quality of fact but
only to the origin of a fact. Instead of
us to give up the fact Of angel
or Deity the great student asks US to
learn how the angel or Deity came
Give us the fact of life human, angelic,
and divine, and we shall be very char
table toward any who seek to find the
by which the life was slowly
or rapidly wrought out.
Having seen now that this "thcory of
material potency does not affect the
fact of soul, but only its origin, and does
not do away with a governing soul, but
only seeks the mechanism that gave rise
to such soul, we may also see that this
theory of life does not affect the theory
OF destiny. For if matter possesses such
potency of life that it has peoplcd all
space with men and spirits, so that the
atmosphere around earth is just as prob
ably home of unseen spirits as of the
seen, no one is competent to deny that
it may carry man across from the mortal
to immortality. If the potency of mat
ter is such that it can produce the
phenomena of human life, can produce
mind that thinks, hearts that love, a
conscience that hates the wrong and
loves the right, if it can write out poems
and develop our arts, and if it can people
all space with angelic and even divine
life, We should dislike to say that it had
no potency to help mans soul from an
humble life to a higher one, from a
coarse body to finer one beyond this
vale. But we have exhausted our criti-
cism of this materialism when we say
that it does not touch single fact of the
whole spirit world, but is nothing but an
inquiry how any fact ever came. Hav-
ing found that life came from matter it
gives up the enigma how matter be-
gan, and, having bartered away
the mystery of the spirit, takes
back in payment the mystery of
such potent" dust. A theory which
thus makes room for the spiritual world
of the most imaginative Christian, for
even the apocalypse of a St. John, and
which only tells us how things began,
and not what they are nor where they
will carry US, theory which dares to
say nothing about the quality of God,
but only points out the place of His in
fancy, is theory curious rather than de-
structive or alarming. Instead of being
alarming it only reminds us of the i'm
pressive value as an argument of the great
fact of what We call soul. The patient
naturalists may toll long and hard to
solve the whole enigma of the past, but,
be their conclusion this or that, here is
the soul itself, perfectly unmoved by its