APPEALS TO OUR CONSCIOUSNESS. 31 having faith or lacking it, how are they designated? As knowers and unknowers? No: but as believers and unbelievers. "He that believeth"-not he that knoweth-"shall be saved." As to things spiritual, the Bible (with rare exceptions) speaks of our belief on this side the grave, our knowledge only on the other. Then shall we know, even as also we are known." 66 But to argue at length such a point as this is mere supererogation. There are some truths the evidence for which no argument can strengthen, because they appeal directly to our consciousness, and are adopted unchallenged, and at once. A pious mother loses her child-though the very phrase is a falsity: she but parts with him for a season-but, in the world's language and in her heart's language, she loses her only child by death. If, now, just when her bereavement is felt the most despairingly-in the bitter moment, perhaps, (the winter's storm raging without), when the thought flashes across her that the cold sleet is beating on her deserted darling's new-made grave; if in that terrible moment there should reach her suddenly, unexpectedly, a token visible to the senses, an appearance in bodily form, or an actual message, perhaps, which she knew came that instant direct from her child; that appearance or that message testifying that he whom she had just been thinking of as lying, wrested from her loving care, under the storm-beaten turf, was not there, was far happier than even she had ever made him, was far better cared for than even in her arms: in such a moment as that, how poor and worthless are all the arts of logic to prove that the sunshine of such unlooked-for assurance, breaking through the gloomy tempest of the mother's grief, and lighting up her shrouded hopes, has added nothing to the measure of her belief in immortality, has increased not the force of her convictions touching the Great Future, has raised not from faith to knowledge the degree of credence with which she can repeat to her soul the inspiring words, that, though the dust has returned to the earth as it was, the spirit is in the hands of God who gave it! Then, if it should happen that the "unknown Dark" may, in a measure, even here become known; if it should be that the Great Dramatist inaptly described the next world, when he called it "The undiscovered country, from whose bourn if it should prove true that occasions sometimes present 32 NATURE AS A FIELD OF RESEARCH. themselves when we have the direct evidence of our senses to demonstrate the continued existence and affection of those friends who have passed that bourn; if it should be the will of God that, at this stage of man's constant progress, more clearly distinguishing phenomena which, in modern times at least, have been usually discredited or denied, he should attain a point at which belief, the highest species of conviction which Scripture or analogy can supply, may rise to the grade of knowledge;-if all this be, in very deed, a reality, is it not a glorious one, earnestly to be desired, gratefully to be welcomed! And should not those who, with a single eye to the truth, faithfully and patiently question nature, to discover whether it is reality or illusion-should not such honest and earnest investigators be cheered on their path, be commended for their exertions? If it be a sacred and solemn duty to study the Scriptures in search of religious belief, is it a duty less sacred, less solemn, to study nature in search of religious knowledge? In prosecuting that research, if any fear to sin by overpassing the limits of permitted inquiry and trespassing upon unholy and forbidden ground, let him be reminded that God, who protects His own mysteries, has rendered that sin impossible; and let him go, reverently indeed, but freely and undoubtingly, forward. If God has closed the way, man cannot pass thereon. But if He has left open the path, who shall forbid its entrance? It is good to take with us through life, as companion, a great and encouraging subject; and of this we feel the need the more as we advance in years. As to that which I have selected, eminently true is the happy expression of a modern writer, that "in journeying with it we go toward the sun, and the shadow of our burden falls behind us."* Some one has suggested that, if we would truly determine whether, at any given time, we are occupying ourselves after a manner worthy of rational and immortal beings, it behoves us to ask our hearts if we are willing death should surprise us in the occupation. There is no severer test. And if we apply it to such researches as these, how clearly stands forth their high character! If, in prosecuting such, the observer be overtaken by death, the destroyer has no power to arrest his observations. The fatal fiat but extends their field. The * " 'Essays written during the Intervals of Business," London, 1853, p. 2. of ours. DEATH, THE UNRIDDLER. 33 torch is not quenched in the grave. It burns far more brightly beyond than ever it did or can in this dim world Here the inquirer may grope and stumble, seeing but as through a glass darkly. Death that has delivered so many millions from misery, will dispel his doubts and resolve his difficulties. Death, the unriddler, will draw aside the curtain and let in the explaining light. That which is feebly commenced in this phase of existence will be far better prosecuted in another. Will the inquiry be completed even there? Who can tell? A CHAPTER II. THE IMPOSSIBLE. "He who, outside of pure mathematics, pronounces the word impossible, lacks prudence."-ARAGO: Annuaire de Bureau des Longitudes, 1853.* THERE was enacted, in April of the year 1493, and in the city of Barcelona, one of those great scenes which occur but a few times in the history of our race. A Genoese mariner, of humble birth and fortune, an enthusiast, a dreamer, a believer in Marco Polo and Mandeville, and in all their gorgeous fables-the golden shores of Zipango, the spicy paradise of Cathay-had conceived the magnificent project of seeking out what proved to be an addition to the known world of another hemisphere. He had gone begging from country to country, from monarch to monarch, for countenance and means. His proposals rejected by his native city, he had carried them to Spain, then governed by two of the ablest Sovereigns she ever had. But there the usual fortune of the theorist seemed to pursue him. His best protector the humble guardian of an Andalusian convent, his doctrine rejected by the Queen's confessor as savouring of heresy, his lofty pretensions scouted by nobles and archbishops as those of a needy foreign adventurer, his scheme pronounced by the learned magnates of the Salamanca Council (for when was titled science ever a pioneer?) to be "vain, impracticable, and resting on grounds too weak to merit the support of the Government" -he had scantily found at last, even in the enlightened and enterprising Isabella, tardy faith enough to adventure a sum that any lady of her Court might have spent on a diamond bracelet or a necklace of pearl.† * The original, with its context, is "Le doute est une preuve de modestie, et il a rarement nui aux progrès des sciences. On n'en pourrait pas dire autant de l'incredulité. Celui qui, en dehors des mathématiques pures, prononce le mot impossible, manque de prudence. La réserve est surtout un devoir quand il s'agit de l'organisation animale."-Annuaire, p. 445. Seventeen thousand florins was the petty amount which the fitting-out of Columbus's first expedition cost the crown of Castile. How incommensurate, sometimes, are even our successful exertions with the importance of some noble but novel object of research! COLUMBUS IN BARCELONA. 35 And now, returned as it were from the dead, survivor of a voyage overhung with præternatural horrors, his great problem, as in despite of man and nature, triumphantly resolved, the visionary was welcomed as the conqueror; the needy adventurer was recognised as Admiral of the Western Ocean and Viceroy of a New Continent; was received, in solemn state, by the haughtiest Sovereigns in the world, rising at his approach, and invited (Castilian punctilio overcome by intellectual power) to be seated before them. He told his wondrous story, and exhibited, as vouchers for its truth, the tawny savages and the barbaric gold. King, Queen, and Court sank on their knees; and the Te Deum sounded, as for some glorious victory. That night, in the silence of his chamber, what thoughts may have thronged on Columbus's mind! What exultant emotions must have swelled his heart! A past world had deemed the Eastern hemisphere the entire habitable earth. Age had succeeded to age, century had passed away after century, and still the interdict had been acquiesced in, that westward beyond the mountain pillars* it belonged not to man to explore. And yet he, the chosen of God to solve the greatest of terrestrial mysteries, affronting what even the hardy mariners of Palos had regarded as certain destruction-he, the hopeful one where all but himself despaired-had wrested from the deep its mighty secrethad accomplished what the united voice of the past had declared to be an impossible achievement. But now, if in the stillness of that night, to this man, enthusiast, dreamer, believer as he was, there had suddenly appeared some Nostradamus of the fifteenth century, of prophetic mind instinct with the future, and had declared to the ocean-compeller that not four centuries would elapse before that vast intervening gulf of waters-from the further shore of which, through months of tempest, he had just groped back his weary way-should interpose no obstacle to the free communication of human thought; that a man standing on the western shore of Europe should, within three hundred and seventy years from that day, engage in conversation with his fellow standing on the eastern shore of the new-found world; nay-marvel of all marvels! that the same quella foce stretta Ov' Ercole segnô li suoi riguardi, |