"Life."

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4260, 26 August 1882, Page 2

"Life."

[Lectube by the B.ev. S.- J. JNmMi.] No. 11. Under the similitude of a lake, calm and cloudless, or beclouded and tempesttossed, the lecturer represented the attitudes of different minds. towards V truth. The progress in astronomy typified the advancement of human thought,.--which is first mundaDe, then solar, then stellar. Only as minds become like the ; calm, unclouded lake, will men see eye to eye the star truths that shine in the everlasting sky. ""Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." In the first lecture the unity of life was considered: life was in its essence unknowable; there is no place where life is not, and no time - when it was not. Now, we consider life as that by virtue of which all things appear, whether they be animals, plants, minerals, gases, or ethers. Here we come to consider the connection between ap-. pearances and reality. Is it the' same thing to say, " that by virtue of which all things appear," or to say, " that by virtue of which all things are?" We receive - certain sensations when we come into con* tact with the world ; what is it which lies • beneath or behind the qualities of objects which produce these sensations P We call the qualities or manifestations of the outer world physical phenomena, but is there - not a something, which we may call essence, being, substance, or reality, • which is the cause of the phenomena? Metaphysics treats of that life which is the essence of existence, and also of psychology, or the manifestations of the human mind, or true self. The human body belongs to the external world, and i is considered under that branch of physics Cilled physiology, of which Huxley is a learned exponent. . To illustrate.: ..A, physicist considers a piece of wood as composed of carbon and other chemical substances —a metaphysician considers it as producing certain sensations in us, such as size, shape, &c, or else considers what may underlie the qualities in the object, and also what that is which is conscious to itself of impressions received ; in other words, what that is underlying the phenomena of what we call matter and what we call mind. With our senses, it is plain we can never know anything more than external, phenomena, but in the thought of the mind may we not know reality or essence. Mind possesses that strange power of being able to contemplate itself. I cannot only, think of the qualities of objects outside me/ butT can think of my own thoughts , (the phenomena of mind), and I can think of myself as thinking. In this self-contem; •-■- ---plativeness we come, I think, into very close, or actual, contact with life: with essence, or reality. We know that we " are " more certainly than the external world "is" or exists, because, as we have seen, knowledge of all things extra must come through the senses, and may ■ not give us a correct notion of things as they are, while we know immediately that we ourselves exist. It is, therefore, as many learned thinkers have always seen, more certain that mind is than, •; that matter, or an eternal world, is. And hence what is called' Idealism is more rational than Materialism. Indeed, V science must begin by faith, by believing that there is a substance or essence underlying all phenomena, for this we cannot absolutely know. The lecturer here referred to Bishop Berkely, and Idealism. The question was not, Are our sensations of things constant, but is there anything, as a basis, by which phenomena exist; or do they, for aught we know, exist simply as phenomena, in and of themselves ? The constancy of sensations in vivid dreams was i nstanced. May not the mind be able to give being to realities as real as itself? - The materialist or atheist, equally with the Christian is bound to consider what may be is the esse of all existence, and ' also the connection between the esse and the phenomena, unless he is prepared to say that there is nothing besides phenomena. The Christian philosopher has a no less difficult problem placed before him. Life, or that essence by which all things appear, stands to many instead of the Christan s idea called God. But conceiv* ing God as absolute Thought and Will conscious of self as we are conscious of self, though infinite self-consciousaes is not preceeded by any process as it is in us we are then met by the "difficulty ' of the way by which all things exist or appear. The gap between thought and will in man, and infinite thought and will, is not one of kind though it is in degree! but the gap between: the infinite mind and that called matter is very great in all our minds. Some of the views about creation were then mentioned, and the lecturer concluded with a consideration from analogy of plants, worlds, and systems, of the question of.a divine centre as 1 opposed to the notion of Hermes that God 7' had his centre everywhere, and circumference nowhere. The former ia conceivable, the latter may perhaps be the truth, ; but is beyond our conception.* At anyrate we may regard as certain this which it is most important to know, that-God is as really with'us as anywhere else. The eye of man his glories cannot see, but they are around us, and .within us every« where and ever more. We cannot flee from His Spirit. In one *ense we can come nearer to" Him, by becoming more ia harmony with our highest idea of Him. That is the road upward for us all,—the secret of progress here. And the progress through all ceons and worlds.

i[The first lecture will be found in outSupplement.]