Ch. III] OTHER WORLDS 191 "Therefore, since He is infinite, incapable of addition, diminution, or variation, it follows that He is perfect always and everywhere, complete, constant, and immovable, enjoying always the central immensity and eternity. Nor if we search beyond the utmost sphere of this universe is there aught that can co-exist with Him. For there we find first the yawning pit, the deep abyss, and chaos inscrutable, quite as potent a barrier as the firm, impenetrable walls that limit our universe. There, I say, is that formless void, that empty space, which Nature so abhors that she breaks her own laws rather than unite with it.2 Who could live or endure there before the world was made, or, what is beyond our conceptions, before time was? But that which is infinite must of necessity fill this void too, vast as it is in space and time, and be present outside the universe no less than within it. "It is clear, likewise, that God has our good attributes, such as power, life, intelligence, liberty, justice, goodness, and the rest, but in His own infinite degree; and not only ought we to refer to Him whatever in us is beautiful and distinguished, but even our better feelings and thoughts, for it is His work that our minds so act. "We may well believe that God has in Himself other splendours, of which this world gives no sign, and which are beyond conjecture and imagination; nor can we deny His power to produce other worlds than ours, or a new order of Nature, so different from the present as not to be described by any word or similitude that we could use. Finally, then, as God is infinite, and without rival or associate, it follows that in our conception God must notwithstanding insert something of our own into the poem too; but God Almighty is that skilful dramatist who always connecteth that of ours which went before with what of His follows after into good coherent sense. The primum mobile, an impenetrable shell (Masson, Introduction, Paradise Lost, p. 26). • Milton afterwards met Galileo, who knew Torricelli intimately, so possibly he had reasons to modify this ancient and proverbial idea in later life by the light of the Torricellian experiment. be distinguished as One, the One Deity, the absolutely perfect One; for that which consists of parts can never be infinite. "From all these arguments we can picture to ourselves a certain idea of God, which He, having regard to our finite faculties, deigns to accept from us; but His exceeding greatness and glory cannot be measured or comprehended by human reason. This we must ever humbly admit, and the confession will cover our imperfections in His sight." NOTE This fine optimistic peroration on Nature, and especially the view of Evolutionary Nature as the "Poems of God," call to my mind the expressions of a very humble and unjustly forgotten genius, John Critchley Prince, who said: "When the Almighty, in the plenitude of His wisdom, created the earth, the plan and progress of his work was the opening and the gradual development of a poem which no inferior Intelligence should ever be able to alter, imitate, or destroy; a poem of transcendent grandeur and sublimity, which should never become obsolete, but retain its pristine loveliness to the very end of time." He said much in continuation to the same effect in refined and cheerful eloquence, and his poems, especially The Poet's Sabbath, are worthy of perusal for their rhythmical charm and excellent wordpainting. He was an uneducated weaver born at Wigan in 1808, and wrote Hours with the Muses (1841, 1st ed.; 1847, 4th and last ed.). For some time he begged his bread from door to door. I give one stanza from this lover of Nature and its Creator: Man cannot stand beneath a loftier dome He cannot gaze upon a holier sight Than fleeting cloud, fresh wave, and fruitful sod Leaves of that boundless Book writ by the hands of God. (Hours with the Muses, 1847, p. 8.). CHAPTER IV THE STRANGE ECSTASY OF JOSEPH WHILE HILE he was thus speaking, a great fear and amazement fell upon him,' so that he seemed 1 Here we have something very much like the Koraσis of NeoPlatonism, and allied to the inner light of the Quakers. With the Neo-Platonists, to attain to this beatific vision was a high and rare privilege. Plotinus hints at but three or four such experiences, and Porphyry had one and only one, at the age of sixty-eight, There were Cambridge Platonists in Milton's lifetime, and though More, Cudworth, and the other leaders of the Cambridge school were rather later than Milton's college days, yet we know that More came up to the University before Milton left it, and Platonism was in the air. Who was more fitted to inhale it than Milton? Who was a better subject for receiving the inner light? And who of mortals has invoked the guidance of the Divine Spirit in sublimer language? It seems to have been More's wish to lead his friends to believe that he had himself enjoyed the Koraσis of Plotinus. I should not be surprised if Milton had similar feelings and experiences, though I cannot find that they have been historically or traditionally alluded to. Some have thought (Peck, Memoirs of Milton, 1740, p. 274) that Milton in his latter days was more of a Quaker than anything else, and in his later verse we read: He who receives Light from above, from the fountain of light, (Paradise Regained, iv. 288), and there was his friendship with Mr. Elwood the Quaker and Mrs. Thomson to bear this out. In addition to this beautiful trance utterance of Joseph in the text (and Joseph, we know, stands for the author of Nova Solyma) there are many other allusions to what is called Divine, or Spirit, guidance in Nova Solyma. Joseph's Genius is frequently noticed; his poems, nova quaedam et forte incognita ("things unattempted yet in prose 13 VOL. I. 193 carried round in a great whirlpool of conflicting thoughts, quite unable to utter or explain the mighty and deep things that were rushing through his mind. Meanwhile, his inner sight being opened, he stood silent for a time, as though seized and arrested by ecstatic musings or or rhyme "), are said to be the creation of his Genius; and by this word the old classical idea of a guardian spirit, or guide, is suggested, or at least not excluded. Milton uses the word too. In that well-known autobiographical passage in Reasons of Church Government, where he complains of being engaged in a manner of writing wherein he has the use only of his left hand, he describes himself as "led by the genial power of Nature to another task." But there is stronger evidence yet, and Richardson, a good early witness, supplies it. It seems that Milton's unpremeditated verse would sometimes flow in a torrent, under the impulse, as it were, of some strange poetical fury, and that in these peculiar moments of imagination, his amanuensis, who was generally his daughter, was summoned by the bell to arrest the verses as they came, and to commit them to the security of writing. With a certain impetus and oestro," are Richardson's words. 44 Scholars are well acquainted with the interesting cases of Socrates and Pascal (Vision and Amulet, November 23rd, 1654); but I do not think it is so well known that both Tennyson and Wordsworth were occasionally ecstatics. Professor Tyndall is my authority, in his "Glimpses of Farringford" at the end of the second volume of Tennyson's Life. It seems that Tennyson, Jowett, and Tyndall had been talking together after dinner in Tennyson's den near the top of his house; and when Jowett had left, Tennyson, with great earnestness, described a state of consciousness into which he could throw himself by thinking intensely of his own name. It was an apparent isolation of the spirit from the body. "By God Almighty," he exclaimed, "there is no delusion in the matter! It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendant wonder associated with absolute clearness of mind!" Tyndall also says that he was told by Professor Bonamy Price that Wordsworth, while walking out with a friend, turned to his companion and said: "My dear sir, to assure myself of the existence of my own body, I am sometimes obliged to grasp an object like this [a gate they were passing] and shake it." See later on, in Book IV. chapter x., Joseph's ecstatic vision of God and judgment compared with the "Vision of Adonai as experienced by Maitland, Annie Kingsford, and T. L. Harris. Since writing the above it has been a pleasure to notice that these matters are now coming more to the front even among the strictly orthodox. In the Church Quarterly Magazine, the most cultured exponent of Anglicanism, we read: "The spiritual gaze may be purged Ch. IV] AN EARLY MEDIUM 195 dazed by excess of heavenly light. After he had returned to himself, Politianus again took up his office of critical objector, remarking that "If God be such as you say, and so great, why, I wonder, does He not come forth and show Himself; why does He not preserve all things in their due perfection, and assert His power and vindicate Himself before ignorant and unjust men?" To these questions Joseph, having first slightly jerked his head, thus replied: "Your weapons are too weak to expel or take from our possession that truth which we have gotten for ourselves and hold to, nor are they hard to parry. My wonder rather is, how the eternal and infinite Deity can be perceived by a finite mind in any way or manner. Can any one conceive in his mind by what force or art or magic something can come out of nothing? Again, if God were willing to show Himself to our finite senses, He must needs become an Impersonator, and clothe Himself with a material body; but crass and dull matter has no congruity with His purity, and not even then should we see Him as He is, but something most unlike. Nor is it possible that any one could properly explore that infinity which God enjoys with no companion, being and unsealed at the fountain of heavenly radiance, and as it cannot be denied that it has been granted to many, so it may be possible for us to experience and enjoy a consciousness of a communication with the Eternal" (Review of Christian Mysticism, January, 1900). There has also just been published (1900) a suggestive book, The Soul of a Christian, by Frank Granger, Litt.D., who quotes the following: "Mr. Yeats speaks of a little company of Irish mystics who cultivate the power of vision at the present time. They 'have taught for some years a religious philosophy which has changed many ordinary people into ecstatics and visionaries. Young men who were, I think, apprentices and clerks have told me how they lay awake at night hearing miraculous music, or seeing forms that made the most beautiful painted and marble forms seem dead and shadowy'" (Frank Granger's Soul of a Christian, 1900, p. 150). 1 As coming out of a trance? Any one who has been to spiritual seances or heard inspirational speakers in these latter days, will have noticed the peculiar jerk of the head when the inspiration is ended, and the speaker returns to himself. Was Milton a medium? or had he seen one? |