Life.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4278, 16 September 1882, Page 3

Life.

[Lectubes by the Eev.S. JY Neill.]

No. y.—Hebeditaey Qualities; The subject is one which cannot,, fail to » be of the deepest interest to every thinking person. It is a subject the practical importance, of which is inconceivable. Let any man sow a handful.of dock seed in his garden, or field,- and in a few years he will know something of the result of a foolish action. . It would be well for us if the result of/evils which parents sow in the field of ;tb&fut;ure were, equally plain and as thoroughly realised. If we could trace the effect of a good quality or of an evil quality which the parent acquires, and transmits to his offspring through all after generations, if we could see it pictured like a history before - the eye of the mind, it would be better than any sermon; it would be better than any legislative"enactments against vice, for it would be the voice of God speaking to us. .

All, 'efforts after the betterment of human life, church organisations, laws, are good enough in their place, but they are only skirmishers of the great power of progression. Here, in the modification of the parental qualities, is the great function of life, which, sweet or bitter, will tinge '" and taste the whole stream. Whether we may. like it or not, whether we may-be able to explain it or not, it is the law of nature that we should manifest parental qualities. We may turn away from the theory of original sin, but in-> herited' tendency is a fact. It seems a very unjust thing that we should suffer for the sins of our forefathers, but so it is. .'Tbd/l&an who has a tendency to cancer, insanity, or consumption* must ponder sadly over the fact, knowing it to be. a fact, that these tendencies are manifested ' in him because they, were also in his parents. But with what deeper sadness, with -what misery of hell, should the parent.behold an evil tendency in his offspring which he himself has called into existence in his own life, not haviDg himself; inherited it. A man has descended from' a stock eTer known to be temperate, but be himself acquires and fosters by his own Twill,' intemperate habits, arid when . he beholds in the next generation that he has created evil and given it as a lifelegacy to others, what must his feelings be if' he does think P In another life, to keep before that man the picture of his evil, of his being a devil or asatan, that is, a creator of evil, what fire and brimstone extra do you need to produce the sharpest woe. If it were not that we 'can be destroyers of evil as well as creators of it, we might well bend our heads down to the dust, and wish for annihilation. If man were not spirit, there could be no such thing as evil action. Take away from man that power to determine, which shows his near kinship toths Infinite and Eternal, and you make all

things equally moral, or rather, the actions of a man are no more right or wrong than the action of oil or water, or of fire on wood, is right or wrong. No man is bound to hand on his parental qualities just as he has received them. Indeed he cannot if he.will do so. How do they become modified ? Surely by some active power. What,, then, is this sovereign ruler which by holding up his hand gives victory against the Amlikites of the soul P We name him Will. And yet, I think, when weigenerally use the term will, we refer rather to the outward; manifestation of feeliug or desire than to that personal being which is in its essence thought and will united, tfhat I call the spirit. It is ultimate * indivisible essence. It is the thought of God limited by being created, and clothed with consciousness of self—clothed with soul; which again is in this-earth life clothed with a more or less appropriate > body; and which, again, according to climate, is clothed with furs, or silks, or cottons. When you can contemplate . human thought and love you reach nearer God than by searching the ..starry spaces. Yes we can determine. We can say, if we have inherited a " weakly constitution, that by living in harmony with the laws of health, i.e., by willing God's will, that we shall in some degree eradicate the tendency to morbid or abnormal states. If we have inherited a tendency to any form of vice, we have the pojirjer'to 'send forth the lightning of the will and burn it to cinder. - We limit and undervalue and misrepresent the power of the spirit because it has become go crowded over with a burden of hereditary or* acquired evils.that the voice of God in man is.like the voice of one heard a long way off. This St. Paul speaks of, saying -that the will is hampered, when ' he would do good evil was present with | him. But the road lies upwards—the rery voice of God calling from the heaven of infinite purity and power, "Be ye holy, for I am holy," has for its echo the voice of the conscience—the spirit, which we may well call the voice of, God in man. It cries j like the Psalmist, "Thy face, O Lord, 11 will seek." You can neither teach the conscience, nor corrupt it; you may sear it, you may drown its voice, but still it is j " that which makes for righteousness." j The mosftl judgments may be developed,; or educated, but not that which tells us, tells our outer me, what is right and what

is Wrong. The best way, I think, under which, jH? can-think of the inmost princi. pl^ofsman, or the true ego, is as a thought of the Infinite mind ever living, because in connection with the Infinite Thought and Will. As it is written, "Because I lire ye shallljve also," and also, "In Him we live and tnofe," and "All live unto Him.'; To God the Infinite Life there is no such thing as death; and the more we have of the Divine Spirit in us, the more clearly does the great truth appear to us also, that deatty is bat another name for,change, and | ne^jfbirth.' Life is life for evermore; only the Time shadows perish and are perishable. "All live unto him." Only. a few, who are like children scraping on an untuned fiddle, say that the best music they can get ou of the Scripture and the Universe is that there is no Spirit. If so, there ia no hope for man ; really there is no man at all, for the man is that Divine thought which ' gather round it ideas, and becomes individualised as the true ego. If man is only a mass of parental qualities, then there is no more hope for progress than ,„ there is in. a stone, which is also an assemblage of qualities. It. is not to be supposed that all men are agreed on this '" ■ subject of spirit, soul, and body. The '■•■* terms are scriptural, but those who hold & that spirit and soul are not names for ft different things, but different names for l. : the same thing, say that the phrase body, soul, and spirit, when used in Scripture, does not mean that there is a body, and a soul, and a spirit, but that this ft form of ; expression the whole man. Wft Ao not come; to the conclusion.that there is this threefold condition, because Continued in Fourth Page.

'we interpret Scrip'ure thu v, or because of any preconceived.; theory, but we have dome oy reason to look. for, to feel after that which is not body, for body we hold cannot retain -dental * phenomena,' and something which.is jnot spirit, for if the spirit proceed from God it must be pure —that the spirit coming from God cannot manifest parental qualities of any kind. either good 'or body.* Dr Hodge .says there is only a body and spirit. Then he is obliged, to hold, that the mental qualities of the parents are retained in and manifested by the body of the child, for, as the spirit or mind come from God, there,is nothing else in which mental qualities can be manifested. Since he says there ate only two things—spirit and body,—then parental qualities must be manifested in one'or both, but, if not in "the spirit, because from God,' then these qualities must be in the body—that is to say, mental phenomena" becomes material phenomenal arid -then' changes back 'apain to mental phenomena,, and yet he is sup- ' posed to be one of >d^ir greatest authorities. The very fact that we can do wrong: supposes "that we' live just as much as the power of right doing, though it is* not'<£he- same* kind of life—not a happy and joyous life. -Jesus said the hour, not'only cometb, but now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God,..and they that hear shall live. There, you perceive, it'ia not cessation of conscious being which is- spoken of, for that state called death, he says, is a state in which they hear the Toice of the Son of man. /The word is here used in a double sense also —"They that hear shall'j lire;*' this.is, they that obey. As it is j said elsewhere, "If any man hear my Toice," they that hear shall live. The state of conscious God^knowledge is compared with mere self-conciousness; the latter alone is called death—the former life. There is consciousnese in both states, but the God-life, or the conscious knowledge of Eternal Light and Love, is called Life. To know God, it is written, is " Eternal Life," meaning, not so much ever-enduring existence as perfectly full and blessed existence. He speaks of eternal life .as of something lasting through years ,or ago 3, but there.is no such thing as time to the Infinite—from his lips ''Eternal Life" is '"Perfect Life." Either the spirit '"comes from God, and is similar, or else it is sinful and does not come from God. Of what nature soul and spirit are we cannot distinctly say. We only reason to their existence from facts of consciousness and laws of thought. Of spirit as spirit we can know very little. Perhaps even in the life after this we shall not know very much. In many people it is so dim that the thought of its existence has never hardly come before them. But when we speak of that voice of God in man which curbs evil'passions, which makes for light and love and holiness, which raises up out of self into the life of others, into universal life, that, monitor turned in the white light of truth, then we mean the spirit. When we speak of the soul, we mean that something in which parental qualities inhere, and by which they are transmitted —a vari-colored web,.a chequered floor, a battle, field : that which, enables the onter consciousness to know the voice of God in the inward man : that which is the connecting power between thought and extension. It is the spiritual body which every man now has, and'in which, when .« the material • body is put off, he will / continue to exist. Does not the Apostle ' say there is a material body, and there is a spiritual - body. As Aretaeus says :— " The soul is no will-o'-the-wisp in the swamps of the cerebrum, but the internal man—a body within a body—a life of the womb within a life, in the material body, as God is in the universe : everywhere, nowheie —everywhere for the enlightened intellect; nowhere for the physical view;" or, as Mosely says in bis Psycosophia— " And though it fills the. body, yet it taketh up no room in the body; and if the body decrease, if any member of it be cut off or wither,'the soul is not diminished, out only ceaseth to be in that member as before, and that without any hurt or blemish to itself." Though we cannot and need not look for words to be used always in the same sense in the Bible, yet the spirit of the Bible here is a true reflex of what we think we perceive to be the. true teaching of Nature. About the two chief points there is not, and cannot be, any difference. First, as corresponding to what we called the spirit, there is in every man the sense of right and wrong. Second, there is the fact of hereditary transmission. We also know that'we can, by the exercise of that power within us, which tells of right and wrong, modify the parental qualities that we have received. Surely, the parable of the talents teaches this clearly. Just as the heir can make the inheritance in a few years of more value or of less value than when he received it, so we all can sow good seeds or bad seeds-in the garden of the soul. How do bodily qualities become transmitted ? > Not by any material process, I think, not by a division of the atoms of each part, but by that soul or inner body which is.the formative principle. . Matter never, can and never does give form to itself. The crystal, the plant, the animal, , owe their form to, forces, or a force, more ethereal than they themselves are. ■ But especially when we come to mental qualities does the question of heredity become absorbing. Hereditary * vices cause disease and suffering, and make the worlcf'fV much more difficult, and unpleasant place to live in than it,might be.. If it w.erjp,.np,t for that .merciful disposition of tfie All-good, that survival, of the fittest, what sort. of place in a few thousand years, or even in a few hundred years, would this world become P There are many very interesting phenomena pertaining to this branch of science which cannot be mentioned here, but which each should study, and get benefit thereby. For instance, the fact, that the children of a woman .by the second husband sometimes resemble the first husband^ The influence which may be transmitted from such things as the contemplation of books, statuary, beautiful pictures, music, &c - The soul influence which we all exert continually upon each other. A man may be the child of a great teacher in a far more real way than of any physical parent. There is a soul-kinship of a far more binding and enduring nature than that of physical qualities. I do not know of anything for which we should pray and strive, and study, and wait more earnestly and patiently than that time when men will generally understand more fully the principles of heredity and families, and nations will be governed accordingly. We can hardl^Eope yet for the time when, society, mill - 'say \tq each man and woman, if you are a drunkard, or diseased, or evil-disposed, you shall not become parents till you drop these qualities. And yet the farmer who would improve the quality of- his wheat carefully

selects year after year the earliest, finest, heaviest heads for seed. The gardener is equally careful in the choice of his seeds. He,buds, grafts, that which is the best. Man has bestowed incalculable care on horses, birds, dogs, sheep, but upon him-selfrr-upon him who is the ruler of the whole—very little care or thought is bestowed. Darwin says: " When the principles of breeding and of inheritance are better understood we shall not hear ignorant members of our Legislature rejecting with scorn a plan for ascertaining by an easy method whether or not consanguineous marriages are injurious to man." Let the body be strong, perfect, pure— a temple of the Holy Ghost—let the soul be in perfect harmony with that voice which speaks from the Holy of Holies ; then we may look for the " crowning race of humankind." Till then— O living will that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock, Flow through our deeds and make them pure. That we may lift from out of dust ':■ A voice as unto Him that hears, A cry above the conquer'd years, To One that with us works and trusts, i With faith that comes of self-control, The truths that never can.be proved ■ Until we closed with all we loved, i And all we flow from, soul in soul.