of half-way house between God and non-existence, and since all imperfection has a tendency to make for nonexistence, while God is the author of existence and perfect goodness, we ought, in trying to arrive at the knowledge of God, to neglect the imperfections of matter, and to seize rather some glimpse of God's likeness from His purest and most perfect works here below, investing them with His attribute of eternity. As created things clearly show a Creator, so the infinite work of creation shows that the Creator is infinite. Again, since the lowest and most rudimentary forms enjoy existence, which is really their chief and typical feature, surely the existence of their Maker clearly follows; for whatever is non-existent can neither act nor give existence to others. So this existence, as far as it is real and beneficent, rises up to the existence of God. But all that is vain and dependent, limited, compound, or changeable, belongs to the creation, not the Creator. Take these away, then, from the idea of God, and you will understand that He is an existence primal, universal, perfectly complete.1 He is infinitely above us, yea, more so than we are above non-existence; for granted that God created us from non-existence, still He cannot create another Deity from us. Indeed, God could not be infinite, if we had attributes similar to His, but in Him we live and move and have our being as so many motes in a sunbeam, borrowing a fitful existence from the lightor rather, I might say, we resemble the phantasies and spectres of an active brain; and so we have been called 'the Poems of God.' And indeed 'He spake the word, and all things were created.' 1 Lat. omnibus modis consummata. Cf. Paradise Lost, viii. 421. Omnibus numeris absolutum was a similar phrase often used by Milton. It is Ciceronian, and corresponds to Ben Jonson's description of Bacon: "He filled all numbers." This phrase or idea was the common property of the Cambridge Platonists, with whom Milton was in some degree allied in thought, and it occurs several times in their writings. Cudworth, of The Intellectual Universe, repeats, with some expansion, what his fellowPlatonists had expressed before. "The evolution of the world . . . is a truer poem, and we men histrionical actors upon the stage, who 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. 1 The primum mobile, an impenetrable shell (Masson, Introduction, Paradise Lost, p. 26). 2 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 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, 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. 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 |