FEBRUARY, 1852.

THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE.-No. VIII.

WE have already surveyed the Spiritual Universe as far as our compass and chain can lead us. True, indeed, we look through a glass, and do not, with the naked eye, see its realities. Faith is, therefore, essential to our seeing things invisible to mortal sight. "It is the evidence of things not seen." But the testimony of other men, when believed, produces as much certainty as is necessary to all the purposes of life. It yields a certainty equal to our own experience, and puts us in possession of other men's experience, in all cases where it is perfect.

The experience of some men, in some respects, is much greater than that of other men in those respects; but no man's experience, in all respects, can equal all other men's experience in all respects. In society we are, therefore, obliged to borrow and lend experience, just as much as money, or that which it repreWe always borrow experience by faith, and we can lend it only through faith. My experience is of no value to any man that does not believe it; nor is any man's experience of any value to me, unless I believe it. Faith, then, is the only circulating medium in the market and exchange of human experience.

sents.

Although I have never seen Jerusalem nor Babylon, a burning mountain nor a frozen sea, Paradise nor Tartarus, I can, on adequate testimony, regard them as much realities as London or Paris, both of which I have seen. But it is alleged that human experience is limited to things of time and sense, and cannot, by any possibility, transcend these. But on what authority is it so alleged? On the authority of some men's experience. Not on the authority of all men's experience; for no living man, or set of men, are now in possession of all the experience of all men. It is, therefore, unphilosophic, irrational, and most presumptuous in any man, to say that he cannot believe in the apparition of an angel, or in a special message from heaven, or from some other world than this, because it is contrary to his experience, as well as that of all dead men. Let him first produce the experience of all men, and then he will have some show of reason in so affirming.

Still, even then, he would have no absolute certainty that a communication might not hereafter be received from another world-from some sun, moon, or star,from which we have hitherto heard nothing. This would be to foreclose all future new developments. It would be equal to affirming that there never can hereafter be any thing that has not already been. No one, on such premises, could have believed in a universal flood in the days of Noah, nor of cities being burned by a shower of fire from heaven, because, forsooth, till the days of Abraham and Lot, no such event had happened:

Human experience is a very mutilated volume. The cover is off, the preface torn, a hundred pages wanting in the middle and no one knows how many hundred are wanting at the end. Would he not be a silly boy, that, on entering school and taking into his hand these fragments, should, on reading them, affirm that he had read the entire volume; and fully comprehended, not only the contents of the volume, but also the contents of every other volume that could possibly emanate from the same author. As silly and as pert every man or grown boy, who affirms that he cannot, or will not, believe in an oral or written communication from the author of the volume of nature, of man, and of providence, because he has never found it on the few scattering leaves in the primer that he has read!

But it is alleged that a spiritual system and spiritual beings, are wholly without that evidence on which all faith in human testimony, respecting things material and sensible, rests. We believe human testimony touching matters which are sensible, which we know from the evidence of our own senses and from our own experience, do actually exist. But what living man has ever seen an angel, a spirit, or heard an angel or a spirit speak? And how can we believe testimony touching the actions of beings of whose existence we have no evidence -neither the evidence of reason nor that of sense?

But is this the sum total of all evidence? Have we not the evidence of consciousness, as well as the evidence of sense? Are we not conscious of what passes within us? And do we not feel as much certainty or assurance that we have a spirit, as that we have a body, and that this spirit is not destructible, as is the body.

On the philosophy of the objector, we might ask, has any one ever seen a pain, or heard a pain? And when answered in the negative, shall we negative the existence of pain? Shall we not rather say, that seeing and hearing are not the only inlets or avenues of pleasure and pain? That although we have never seen nor heard a pain nor a pleasure, we have often felt both. And is not feeling as good and reliable evidence as either seeing or hearing? We have felt a thinking, reasoning, grieving, rejoicing spirit within-willing, moving, controlling all the actions of the body, and even of the mind itself. There is a world of ideas, emotions, desires, passions, feelings, within us, as evident to our consciousness, as the world without us is to our five external senses. We have, therefore, as much assurance of the one as we have of the other.

The spirit of man, while in the body, is always controlling it. It early discovers its innate powers and supremacy. It may listen to its animal instincts and appetites, but it will assert its sovereignity-reigning over it with authority —and that, too, from reasons and motives springing from the intuition and recognition of moral, spiritual, and religious relations and obligations, originating not from the flesh, nor from the conditions of its present existence, but from the perception and assurance of things unseen-spiritual and eternal; for which it sighs and groans, and hopes and fears.

But it does more. It often, without knowing it, communes with a kindred great Spirit, in the admiration of the infinite, the eternal, the immutable. It feels an unutterable pleasure in the contemplation of the sublime, the beautiful, the incomprehensible. It does more. It cannot but approve the just, the holy, and the good, when they present themselves in generous and noble deeds. Of these, no creature merely animal, sensitive, and material, affords the slightest indication.

But still it is suggested by the fallen and depraved, that we have no clear, distinct, palpable evidence of a Devil, a tempter, an evil spirit, influencing the actions of men. But what evidence have we of the positive formal existence of any one of the most puissant agents in nature, save in their operations and effects! The bold and daring infidel asks, with an effrontery and assurance indicative of superlative depravity of reason, and conscience, and moral sensibility, who ever saw an evil spirit tempting himself, or any one else? The modest and unassuming Christian philosopher asks in reply, who ever saw any one of the most appalling and terrific agents in material law? Who has ever seen the great agent, sometimes called the Law of Gravity? Who or what is gravity-that awful, fearful, yet beneficent agent, which unseen, unheard, unfelt, wheels the spheres of nature in their awful circuits through immeasurable space

-which holds suns, and moons, and stars, in absolute abeyance? Say, weak, frail, vaccillating materialist, what subtle, invisible, omnipresent, all-pervading, immutable, self-existent principle, agent, or personality, is this unseen, unheard, unfelt, GRAVITY?

Is it intelligent, omnipresent, immutable, benevolent, from everlasting to everlasting? Nay, cover thy face, and come down to the lowest classes of terrestrial agencies. What is the thunder, which shakes your person and your castle, but the atmospheric report that an electric spark has left home, or been awakened from profound repose? And who, or what, is this titled prince of life, nick-named electricity? this omnipresent, all-pervading, and all-potent Anima Mundi? this all-animating soul of the natural universe? Lightning is but its travelling wardrobe, the clouds its chariot, when, on the wings of the winds, it goeth forth to rend the rocks, to break the oaks of Bashan, and to shiver to atoms the cedars of Lebanon. Olympus, in its cloud-capt eminence, robed in eternal snow, skips like a calf, and Sirion like a young unicorn.

And whence this power? It is only a volition. But matter has no will. It. is naturally and necessarily passive. Active matter, if not a misnomer, is but matter in motion, or matter controlled by a volition. Matter, like my pen, is but an instrument. It is animated, controlled, directed, by volition, or by a spirit in motion; for what is volition, but a spirit in motion from one object to another? Volition is no attribute of either matter or mind. It is not a part of a spirit—a faculty of a soul. It is the whole soul or spirit in motion. Hence the universe itself is but the effect of an intelligent, and omniscient, and omnipotent volition. It is a spirit in motion in a certain direction, to a certain object; that consummated volition retains its power, and reposes in its own achievements. But it is alleged that this is all metaphysics. True; but it is the only remedy for those who have been intoxicated by physics. Men cannot recover from sickness, but by one of three medicines—prayer, physics, or metaphysics. Whether nature or art be doctor, intellectual paralytics must take physics or metaphysics. A few grains of metaphysics-say Dr. Rush's celebrated dose of ten and tenwill cure, if not the yellow fever, the yellow jaundice, which preys upon the vitals of all sceptical Christians, as they are sometimes improperly so called; for really true Christians are the only morally healthy and sound persons in the world.

Christians, I say, are persons of sound mind, though occasionally of weak constitutions. They live by faith, walk by faith, and learn by faith. Infants learn their A, B, C, both the form and the sound, or the body and spirit, by faith in the primer and the enunciations of a nurse or a school mistress. So Bacon, and Locke, and Newton, studied nature, man, and God. We all by faith-the true Jacob's ladder-scale the heights of heaven, and fathom the abyss profound. We even clamber up from star to star, in our literal heavens, by faith in symbols, signs, co-signs, tangents, and sometimes by mere lettersby A, B, C, X plus Y-a circle or a square. And what man of good common sense, of cultivated mind, can doubt that, if by faith we travel through signs and symbols from earth to heaven's most faint and glimmering star; calculate conjunctions and oppositions of wandering systems, suns and moons, by faith in the currency and symbols of abstract science, we may, by the heaven-descended symbols, words, and breathings of the spirit of wisdom and revelation, ascend to the heaven of heavens, and rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, in the presence of Him who sits between the cherubim, in the truly high and holy place!

A. C.

SELF-CULTURE,

AN ADDRESS BY W. K. PENDLETON, DELIVERED BEFORE THE MEMBERS OF THE

WELLSBURG LYCEUM.

WHEN I first received your invitation, requesting me to address you on the present anniversary, I hesitated to undertake the labor of such an address as I knew you would expect from me, and as I felt the occasion would demand. The many and arduous duties already rested upon me, and accumulated during a recent absence from home, together with a no very robust state of physical health, were not among the least causes of my hesitation. But it was only for a moment. When I reflected upon the duty to which I was called, and saw that the occasion was one so intimately connected with the great purpose to which I have ever proposed to dedicate the best powers of my mind, and felt, that in refusing the task, I should be recreant to a high duty, and fail to improve an opportunity for public usefulness and service, which it ought to be my pleasure to embrace, I forgot every other consideration, and without seeing very well how I could spare the time, determined, nevertheless, to commit myself to the work, and trust to fortune or chance for the opportunity and means of performing it.

It is with no affectation of feeling that I declare myself deeply interested in every measure that proposes to improve the condition, intellectual, moral, or physical, of the society in which I live—of my fellow-men generally. No one can place a higher estimate upon man, as man, than I do. I see stamped upon his form, glowing in his intellect, and breathing in his moral nature, the lineaments, the glory, and the spirit of divinity-and no matter whether he be attired in the robes of earthly royalty, or the shaggy garb of honest industrywhether he repose under the canopy of wealth, or struggle in the meshes of inextricable want-whether he come forth adorned with the highest polish of education, or rude with the uncultivated instincts of a neglected nature—under all circumstances of rank, of fortune, and of education, I see written upon him, as with the finger of revelation, his inherent immortality, and I attach to him a value commensurate in worth with the duration of his being. No occasion, therefore, which has for its object the improvement of our fellows, which affords a favorable opportunity of saying or doing any thing that can tend to help on the general progress, can fail to enlist my services or to secure my most cordial co-operation. Especially do I feel interested in co-operating, on such an occasion, with the young men of Wellsburg, and you, young gentlemen of the Lyceum; for, however large our patriotism may be, and ought to be, the constitution of things under which we are placed, requires that our labors shall be directed, first and specifically, to ourslves and those more immediately around

us.

Our first duty is, unquestionably, to improve ourselves; to cultivate, develope, and adorn our own nature; to train up to manly strength, that we may employ in noble enterprises, the powers that the beneficent Creator has endowed us with. Our next duty is to our families and immediate circle of friends-then to our village, our county, our state, our race. Thus from the heart of the individual the sphere of influence expands, till, with a divine philanthropy, it includes the whole human family.

Knowing, as I do, the influence which a few words, timely spoken, may exercise upon young minds, ardent in their desires for distinction and influence, and desirous, as I always feel, to give a practical and useful direction to every thing that I do, you will appreciate my motive, if, instead of playing with your fancy

by sallies of wit, or perplexing your reason with the abstractions of philosophy, I prefer the humble, but not less noble work, of directing your attention to the high ends to which you should devote the powers, intellectual and moral, which you no doubt already feel have been given you for a worthy purpose. I shall take it for granted, that you have so far looked at yourselves—so far studied the curious problem of your own personal identity, as to be satisfied that you have not, any one of you, been thrown upon the bosom of life to float as a weed upon the trackless ocean, the sport of chance, and destined only for decay; but that you feel in that finite embodiment of infinity which makes your own particular individuality, a conscious power and worth moving you to noble efforts, and filling you with desires for honorable distinction. I shall assume that you have progressed so far in studying the mystery of your own being, as not only to have raised the question, "Why am I here; to what end have I been thrown upon this wide stage of the world, among so many actors?" but that you have, moreover, inquired somewhat into the part that you are to play, and the manner in which you shall perform it.

These things we take for granted. Still, we cannot suppose that your thoughts have been so profoundly subjective on these questions as to have discovered all that they inquired for, or that we may not yet find it profitable for a moment to dwell upon them. No one, perhaps, ever asked questions of more solemn and eternal import; yet, while a child may raise them, philosophy, unaided by a divine light, has never yet satisfactorily answered them.

That there is some design in your being is, indeed, evident enough. We cannot look at a piece of mechanism so curiously contrived--so marvellously and intricately arranged and adapted-with such powers of thought, of volition, and of action—with a form so divine, and a mind expanding in its aspirations to embrace all that is beautiful and infinite, without feeling that here is a being, not a thing simply, but a spiritual thing, that some how or other has been sent upon this earth, not by chance, not by mistake, but with a deliberate design-a previous deep purpose, worthy of the mighty powers with which it is endowed, and honorable to the wisdom and skill of the Architect who conceived and created it. The very law of our being, our own consciousness of the relation between motive, as a cause, and its effects, constrains us, almost with the promptness of an instinct, to conclude that we have sprung from a great motive. Nor can we fail, after a little reflection, to admit that that motive is and must be the end of our being. If we construct a machine, we do so with some design. We intend it for some purpose, and if we are competent and skilful artizans, it is adapted to, and capable of, the use for which we made it. Still, it only answers the end of its creation when employed in the use for which it was designed. So it is with man whatever may have been the motive which caused his creation, that motive is the end of his being, and he can only be said to fulfil the end of his existence when engaged in those pursuits which his Maker designed him to follow. If these premises be true-and who can question them?-does it not follow that no man can be said to live rationally who is not striving to be all that his Creator designed him to be? We arrive thus, by a very short, yet by a most conclusive process of reasoning, at the great and necessary ground of duty, and see that it is no other than the will of him who made us, so that we are shut up to the conclusion, that his will is the only supreme law that a man should seek after and follow all the days of his life. Looking at ourselves, then, in this light, let us turn our attention to a brief consideration of some of the great duties which, as men and citizens, we owe to ourselves and to society; and first to ourselves.