God, before being able to see the beautiful; nor the beautiful, before good morals; nor good morals, before justice; nor even justice, before being clear of physical necessities. Nevertheless, it will not do, to look after physical comforts, this year; justice, the next; morals, the next; and religion, on the death-bed. The vision of the mind's eye must stretch always and at once from top to bottom, from equator to pole, and take all latitudes into one view. Until a man reach this height, and begin to lead a divine life in heaven, he may be sure he is not yet out of hell: through being of the elect the days of affliction are cut short: being once clear, he will then be also ready, either to go or to stay. But concerning the day and the hour, no man knoweth, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. Be therefore awake. And then, defy augury there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 't is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all."1 66 we For the rest, it may be left, with Bacon, to "God's providence, that (as the Scripture saith) reacheth even to the falling of a sparrow." The mind is the man. His power of thought, and the doings of his thought are himself. His material limitations and bodily investment are changing in every instant, in the constant flow of the physical stream: the soul only is his continuous self. "A man is but what he knoweth," says Bacon. So, too, God is the eternal mind of nature, continually thinking a universe. His power of thought and the acts and creations of his thought are himself; the eternal course of his thought measures the perpetual flow of the providential order; and so, the student of nature and philosophy, ascending, or rather, as it may be, descending, through particulars to the knowledge of the present existent universe and all its past states and conditions, so 1 Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 2. 2 Nat. Hist. § 737. far as ascertainable and knowable, comes thereby to know Him so far, and by the contemplation of the entire scientific order and whole history of nature, in all its kingdoms, and man in all the streams and phases of his development, civilization, and culture, and the order of necessity, justice, good, beauty, and purpose therein, to comprehend something of the mystery of his providence. But He is something over and above and beyond any existent universe, or present state of his thought: He is the eternally continuing Power of Thought and "Immortal Providence,"1 whose mind's eye sees all things; as when, in the "Measure for Measure," the reigning Duke, being about to absent himself from his dominions, devolves the government upon his substitute, but immediately returns himself in the secret disguise of a friar, in order to see how things will be managed by his deputy; and then, a chapter in human affairs is enacted in his presence, as if to draw down to the senses of the theatre some conception of an all-seeing eye. And when, on his return in person, it became apparent to the delinquent and erring deputy, that the Duke had been "a partaker of God's theatre," and that all his acts were known to him, he submits thus: "For," says Bacon, "if a man can be partaker of God's theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of God's rest; and again, that "men ought to look up to the eternal providence and divine judgment" : Pros. By providence divine."-Temp., Act I. Sc. 2. This is that same "Deity, which is the author, by power and providence, of strange wonders." And again he 1 Tempest, Act V. Sc. 1. 2 Nat. Hist., § 720. says: Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth": — -"arming myself with patience, To stay the providence of some high powers, That govern us below."- Jul. Cæsar, Act V. Sc. 1. And the strangers, that arrived in the island of Bensalem, in the New Atlantis, finding that the Governor knew all about them and their country, while they had never before heard of him or his island, were lost in wonder, not knowing what to make of it; for that it seemed to them "a condition and propriety of divine powers and beings, to be hidden and unseen of others, and yet to have others open and as in a light to them." Among other very admirable observations upon the ideal in Shakespeare, Gervinus makes this happy remark: “This ideality shows itself, also, in the high moral spirit, which in Shakespeare's plays controls the complications of fate and the issues of human actions, in that spirit, which develops before us that higher order, which Bacon required in poetry, indicating the eternal and uncorrupted justice in human things, the finger of God, which our dull eyes do not perceive in reality." Indeed, throughout both these writings, the universe, human affairs included, is contemplated as being moved, governed, and directed by an all-pervading and immanent divine providence; a fact, of which the mere materialist, or politician, who imagines that states and peoples, lives and fortunes, are to be manipulated by cunning and manœuvre, like machines that go by wire-pulling and money, is not supposed to take much note, any more than certain politic church-building priests, but of which Hamlet seems to have been fully aware; as when, at the grave, taking up the skull that had been "knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade," he speculates thus: : "This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?" Act V. Sc. 1. 1 Shakes. Comm., by Prof. Gervinus, II. 582 (Lond. 1863). The world known to us may be but a small part of the whole existent creation: as far as we may come to see and know it, we may know Him and no further. So far as we are able thus to discover and see the course and ends of providence in the known and knowable universe of mind within us and mind without us, extending our view around us, and with the eye of prevision forward into the certain, the possible, and the probable future, as well as with the eye of science backward into "the abysm of time," back through the whole historical and traditional line, and thence backward through the archæological and ethnological lines, extending far into geological epochs; and thence still backward through the entire zoological scale of ascending types of created forms and the stratified leaves of the geological record to the cooling crust of the molten globe; and thence still backward, through the astronomical order, even to the time when the first forms of substance began to be created and gathered by the creative power into a spiral nebula, perhaps, to form a world, when time and chronology for a solar system, or a globe, began, being bounded out of eternity, which is the possibility of time, and out of immensity, which is the possibility of space; and taking even so much of the past order of creation into view, and learning to comprehend the present and ever continuous order, with due perception of the actual and eternal, and with due prevision and anticipation of the possible and probable in the future continuation thereof, we may come not only to understand something of the mystery of His providence, but even to possess a certain degree and measure of foreknowledge; but not otherwise. This law is never dead, nor asleep : "Now, 't is awake; Takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet, Are now to have no successive degrees, Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 2. So much may be revealed to man; no more can be revealed to him in any way; for nothing streams into man from the supernatural world, in the direction in which the thinking soul comes, but his existence as such and the power to perceive, conceive, remember, think, know, and do. Thoughts, ideas, or knowledge of what the ideas and purposes of the Creator are, or have been, or foreknowledge of what they will be, do not, nor can, by any conceivable possibility, enter into the mind of man from that direction, nor by that road. § 2. DESTINY. Men have tried to believe, that some Dæmon, or Genius, or Angel, or some other kind of spiritual phantasm, stood behind their inmost selves, pouring into them, as it were, from the supernatural world, thoughts, ideas, revelations, divinations, prophecies, auguries, and foreknowledge; and that they had nothing to do but to put themselves into an attitude of passive receptivity, and to let these supernatural communications flow into them, as it were by the divine grace, or some kind of spiritual telegraphy. The idea is as old as Socrates, at least; and it has made a large figure among the poets, both ancient and modern. Even Goethe must have a Dæmon, and a spirit must tell his Mignon who was the father of Felix. Our author had need of the same conception for his poetical purposes, and he makes good use of it thus: My Genius is rebuk'd." Act III. Sc. 1. "Sooth. Thy dæmon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable, Where Cæsar is not; but near him, thy angel |