In the full revelation of this divine scheme of creation, so full of light, life, love, joy and harmony, a scheme void of death and annihilation, the mind once more reflects upon the physical illusions of slowly advancing scientific thought.Camille Flammarion, the great psychomaterialist of France, has painted, in his various novels, a lurid, almost horrible, picture of what the mighty universe must become from the logical deductions of his own school of thought; a school which would be best named as transcendental materialism.According to this conception, "thousands, aye, millions of worlds are rushing through space, inert, frozen, and dead.Suns have cooled down and ceased to give forth the life-sustaining element of light, but have still retained their mighty attraction upon their attendant planets, according to the laws of gravity, by virtue of their material mass, and thus hold their planetary offspring in the eternal, cold, icy grasp of death.Our Sun, too, is cooling fast; the Earth has already lost a great portion of her own internal heat.She has passed her prime of life, and death--cold, icy death--has already begun to encroach upon her extremities.The South pole (the feet) is now practically lifeless in one perpetual covering of ice.So, too, her head; her locks are the white of perpetual snow.No longer has she the blush and beauty of youth, no longer adorned with the healthy covering of verdue which youthfulness gives, and as our geologists prove was once the case.So that, although the time may still be long, according to our reckoning of years, it is only a brief moment in eternity when this fair Earth, and also the beauteous splendor of the silent stars, will be locked forever in darkness, and the final sleep of doom." If this be so, we ask of the inmost soul, if life be but the fitful awakenings of the indestructible spirit, ebbing and flowing in response to the rise and fall of Nature's cosmic barometer and the transmutations of matter; if life is, in reality, but a brief and passing moment, eternally repeated, from the flush of youth, "the gilded salon to the bier and the shroud, then why, O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" Why aspire to penetrate the inward realities of life and enter the Holy of Holies--to seek and find out God? As the rushing torrent of this thought swept o'er the mental chambers of thesoul and saturated the spirit with its icy sting, as it lay still chained within the prison house of matter, the higher self rose, sublime in its grandeur, and consciousness of divine relationship, and, in the last earthly appeal for light, for divine truth, as to Man and his immortality, it turned in reverence and awe before the still, shimmering veil of the sacred Penetralia.The trial had come, the crucial test, whether of life or death, the final revelation to Man.In purity of heart and humility of soul we await in agonizing suspense.There is a thrilling sensation, as though of ten thousand electric currents consuming the frame, and a swaying to and fro, as if drifting upon an ocean of fire; then a dead silence, so profound that whole eternities seem to pass, without either beginning or end.And the sight of the inward spirit is opened slowly.Who? Where? What? For the shadows have fled, the luminous curtain fades, is gone, and flashing before the inward sight stands the ineffable Adonai.It is I--YOU! There is no God but this, and in one moment the interior consciousness becomes at-one-with-self, God, and from that inconceivable height of profound vision we again look upon Nature.Behold Sun, Moon and planets in all the original magnificence of their nebulous luminosity; from nebulous rings we proceed, stage after stage, each producing its own degrees of life.On, on we pass the ages, the geological cycles of inconceivable duration in time, but only a mere instant in eternity; and on and on, as the changes roll, until we see Earth as she is now; still on, at the ever-urging desire of the triumphant Soul, and a remarkable change is apparent.From forces, at present latent, there comes a change; and, instead of so-called physical; electrical races have superceded the present humanity.Crystallization has ceased; and all things become lighter in density and more ethereal in nature; AND THE ORBIT OF THE EARTH GROWS LESS.Nearer and nearer shines the mighty Sun; first Vulcan, then the swift messenger of the gods are indrawn within the solar vortex, each absorption producing a cataclysmic change upon our Earth.Then comes the turn of Venus, while slowly and surely the orbit of the Earth contracts, and nearer shines the Sun.And, finally, the beautiful Earth, her mission over, the last atom of life beyond her rule, inward she sweeps, and is lost in the mighty ocean of fire as a stone is lost in the lake.Verily is the word of prophecy a literal truth: "The Earth shall be destroyedwith fire." And so on with the rest, each planet in its proper turn fulfilling the functions at present performed by the Earth, each becoming the grand theater of material and ethereal life, and the cometary bodies, to-day chasing unknown orbits in the realms of ether, gradually fall into line when their erratic cycle is ended, taking the places of the present outermost planets.
No such thing as death, no such thing as the dark silence of eternal night, for any organic creation of the Most High.From the Sun they come, and unto the Sun each must ultimately return, even as the body of Man, coming from the dust of Earth, must also return thereto, to be taken up in new forms and furnish substance for other degrees of life.And thus will it be, until the Sun, in its mighty solar heavens of purified spiritual life, will form the last, the final battle ground of matter, receiving ITS NEW LIFE FROM A GREATER CENTER THAN ITSELF.A glorious solar world, well typified in the last Battle of the Gods, and the new Earth--a World whereon the Angels tread in superlatively beautiful forms, clothed with the ideals and emanations of their own divine purity--Souls clothed in Air, treading the ethereal Realms of Light, as the children of God, and the inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Must the searching eye of the Soul seek further? Must the insatiable thirst of the Spirit launch out upon the trackless infinities of the yet To Be? Must it still penetrate further in the profound beyond, where time ceases to be, where the past, present, and the future, are forever unknown, but exist only as the Deific consciousness of the eternal Now? No.The Soul at last rests satisfied.The final revelation is over.
My brother, we have done; and, in closing, have only to add that, not until the speculating philosophy of earthly schools blends with the Science of the Spheres in the full and perfect fruition of the wisdom of the ages, will Man KNOW and REVERENCE his Creator, and, in the silent Penetralia of his inmost being, respond, in unison with that Angelic Anthem of Life: "We Praise Thee, O God!"
