The herald., 1896-02-10
Professor Bowman

At the church of the New Era Professor
Bowman, by special request, yesterday
discussed matter and spirit. He said, sub
stantially:
This is an age of reaction and revolution,
both in politics and religion. And, as in
all reactionary periods, there is a tendency
to extremes. In politics extreme reaction
is anarchy; in religion it is materialism.
Because government goes wrong, the ex-
tremist would do away with government,
and because religion errs, he says: Down
with all its teachings; it is curse. There
is no God, nor soul, nor spirit" So there
is need for discussion of subjects like this.
Even science, revolving against the theo-
logical absurdty of a universe controlled
by a personal will or spirit, separate and
apart from the material cosmos, has lent
its influence to materialIsm. Yet the most
seemingly materialistic utterance of Hux-
ley, that "matter contains within itself the
promise and potency of all things" may
be strictly true, without affecting in the
least the question of God or spirit, except
to bring the soul of the world into its body,
instead of leaving it outside as theologi
cal abstrac ton. Yes, there is "promise
and potency" in matter because there ia
spirit in it. But what do we know of spirit?
Strange as the answer may seem, we know
as much about spirit as we do about mat
with equal certainty.
We know all things only in their quail
ties. not in their essences. We know mat
ter through our physical senses because it
presents to these senses its physical quail
ties or attributes of extension, form, color,
weight, taste, smell. touch. We know
spirit with equal certainty through our
spiritual sense because it presents to these
senses its spiritual attributes of thought,
memory, reason, sentiment. hope, fear,
love, JOY, peace, anger, VIII, with many
other qualities which we know to be wholly
different and distinct from material quail
ties.
Why, then, do we deceive ourselves with
the fallacy that we know SO much more
about matter than spirit? Simply because
we are so sensuous and material in our
habitudes that the grosser qualities of
material things make them seem to us the
only real entities. We're we as spiritual as
we are now material, the case would be
reversed, and the spiritual would appear,
as it is, the real. The material is the van.
ishiug, the changing, the dissolving. Even
our physical life is vapor, a span, a
temporal; it is the unseen that is eternal
1t is the spiritual that is mighty, and
mighty i'll proportion as it is unlike the
material.
1.-THE clod or the stone is grossly mater
ial and lies in dead passivity. Water is
less gross, anu Dy us easy InOOlilty TOarS
in breakers or sweeps in torrents of power.
Air is more attenuated and in the same
proportion still more terrible in it's males.
ty OF storm and tempest Behold the
measurless power of steam omnipoted
with the spirit of heat invisible. See the
tightening clearing the sky, and it's vo ce
shaking the pillars of Heaven, while the
very world is moving by wise currents of
this mysterious power, SO spiritual that it
utterly eludes the senses while it fills our
very bodies. What material attributes are
possessed by the power called gravity Let
1t move the world and system and hold
them in eternal order like the power of
subtle and marvellous powers are to the
transcendent energy of pure spirit, the Ill
innate attributes both of duty and humani-
ity.
And yet, in our stupidity, we exalt the
material and ignore the spiritual.