Cornell University unrary Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031240223 YIEW AT THE FOUNDATIONS: OR, Jfirst €wam at €^uxmttx f AS OPERATIVE BEFORE BIRTH, FROM HEREDITARY AND SPIRITUAL SOURCES BEING A TREATISE ON THE ORGANIC STRUCTURE AND QUALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL, AS DETERMINED BY PRE-NATAL CON- DITIONS IN THE PARENTAGE AND ANCESTRY, AND HOW FAR WE CAS DIRECT AND CONTROL THEM. BY WOODBURY M. £ERNALD, Author of " God in bis Providence," " Compendium and Life of Swedenborg," etc. " fffcitt fct nrigfct stth a goblg sua." — PsI. a. IS. BOSTON: TO. V. SPENCER, 134 WASHINGTON STREET. 1865. Entered, according to Act of Congress, In the year 1865, by WOODBUEY M. FERNALD, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Stekeotyped by C. J. Peters & Son, Ho. 13 "Washington Street TO At 6, THE M A E8 ft D I ®, BUT PARTICULARLY TO Those who contemplate entering that Holy Union, €\}h $ittk featist IS EELIGIOUSLT INSCRIBED. NOTE TO THE READER. The subject of this Treatise is so manifestly important, and may lead to results so vital and profound, that if any persons wish to communicate with the author, by the presentation of any new case, or particular facts, or to make any suggestions, or point out any errors, especially with reference to future editions and enlargements of this work, he would be very hap- py to have them do so. PREFACE. " In the biography of eminent men, great care has generally been taken to show at what school or college they were educat- ed, under what able professor, and the particular course of study pursued. Yet how unimportant are these facts, when we reflect that a vast number of men, of only common capacities, pass through the same college, under the same able professors, and pursue the same course of study, without having been raised above mediocrity ? The inference then is, that the biographer must go farther back than education, to elicit the true cause which produced this pre-eminence in the subject of his memoir. And to what glorious results might not such inquiry lead — probably to the important result of the mental and physical im- provement of the whole human race. And he who can establish the practicability of such improvement, will have bestowed upon the world the choicest legacy ever bequeathed to humanity." * In regard to the phrase, " Moral and Intellectual Qualities Transmissible," it has been objected by some, that it is not strictly true. It is not the very, identical, actual character of the man, that is transmissible to his children, but proclivities to that same character. We acknowledge a degree of truth in this : at the same time, it is such proclivity as, to a degree, inevitably insures the character, and may be said to be, per- haps, more strictly, the natural ground or foundation upon which a man builds his own more personal and spiritual charac- ter, and into which is inseminated the finer and higher essen- * Intellectual and Moral Qualities Transmissible. New York : Wiley and Putnam, 1843. 1* 5 6 PREFACE. ces. It amounts, therefore, to the same thing in effect, whether we say qualities or proclivities transmissible. The result to the character is similar, for, in a certain sense, qualities are in proclivities, and proclivities in qualities. " The life and happiness of individuals, the love and harmony of families, the prosperity and stability of States and Kingdoms, and the protection of life, liberty, and person, are more depen- dent on influences that bear upon human beings, before birth, than on any influence that can be brought to bear on them afterwards. What is organized into us, in our pre-natal statei is of more consequence to us, and more vital to our triumph over the temptations and obstacles that impede our progress towards perfection and happiness, than what is educated into us after we are born." * " We are physiologically connected and set forth in our be- ginnings ; and it is a matter of immense consequence to our character, what the connection is. In our birth, we not only begin to breathe, and circulate blood, but it is a question hugely significant, whose the blood may be. For in this we have whole rivers of predispositions, good or bad, set running in us — as much more powerful to shape our future than all tuitional and regulative influences that come after, as they are earlier in their beginning, deeper in their insertion, and more constant in their operation." f " He who can convince the world of the importance of the laws of hereditary descent, and induce mankind to conduct themselves accordingly, will do more good to them, and con- tribute more to their improvement, than all institutions and all systems of education." % The great problem of our day is, how to produce the best origi- nal forms of humanity, for this world and the next. W. M. F. * Henry C. Wright. t Dr. Horace BushneU. J Spiirzlicim. CONTENTS. 1. THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE 9 2. INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL QUALITIES TRANSMISSI- BLE FROM PARENTS TO CHILDREN 19 3. FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND HOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL THEM 33 4. CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH WITH THE SPI- RITUAL; MARRIAGE, Etc 47 5. POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES OF HUMAN PER- FECTION, AS BASED UPON THE LAW OF HEREDI- TARY DESCENT 65 """- 0. REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE, BY NATURAL DE- SCENT, TO THE CHILDREN OF REGENERATE PA- RENTS 104 7. LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, Etc 117 ^ 8. LAWS OF HEREDITARY DESCENT, FACTS, Etc., ILLUS- TRATIVE 148 9. OTHER FACTS, MARRIAGE, PARENTAGE, Etc 170 10. DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL 185 11. PHILOSOPHY OF MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE 193 13. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 202 7 EIEST CAUSES OF CHAEACTEE. THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. THAT the human soul is an organized struc- ture is a truth which we must assume, for the most part, as a foregone conclusion with the reader, or one likely to be reached by him in the progress of his thought. For there can be no evi- dence of an exclusively scientific or rational nature so convincing as the testimony of the Seers and of the Scriptures ; and where this fails, the analogies and considerations which might be offered are com- paratively feeble and insufficient to one who is dis- posed to doubt or deny it. We think, however, that among the thoughtful at the present day, its truth is generally admitted. For no one who thinks at all worthily can think of the soul as utterly formless : if it is any thing, it must be a 10 THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. substance of some kind ; and if a substance, it must have form ; and if any form at all, — if any thing but a mere conglomerate chaos, — why not the human form, which is the universal testimony of the Seers and of the Scriptures ? Why not a completely organized spiritual structure, — -man in all his plenitude of internal, immortal powers ? But it matters not to the practical conclusions of our subject, whether we think of the soul as distinctly organized or not, as the body is, so be it that we give it some form, or some substantial ex- istence as an entity within the physical organism, and which came there by some law or process of nature, which has a definite quality and character according to its antecedents, and which has also a most wonderful sympathy with the body, showing a connection at once vital, profound, and inter- esting. Let us pass here, briefly, upon the common, or rather, the scholastic definition of spirit. It would seem to be sufficient for its own refutation. Spirit, we are told in the language of the schools, is a substance without form, parts, divisibility, color, extension, or any of the properties of matter. What is this but a mockery to the human under- THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 11 standing? For, if spirit be any substance at all, form or shape of some kind is inevitable : and so, we should infer, of parts, color, and indeed all the qualities that are usually attributed to matter, in a higher and more refined degree. We cannot, indeed, weigh it, and measure it, and analyze it, by the scales and rules and chemistry of this world ; but in its own proper world, I make no doubt, it can be tested in many ways perfectly correspon- dent to its grosser counterpart in this world of matter. In short, this attempt to define and refine spir- itual nature into nothing, must be repudiated ere we can advance a single step, rationally, into the truth and reality of spiritual things. We make no pretensions to absolute verity, nor would we dog- matize at all on so high a subject ; but we confess our strong partiality for the theory of one only eternal substance, out of which all things have been unfolded, visible and invisible. And the mind of man, as far as we can express it in a brief psychological formula, is the positive and negative motion, complex play, action and re-action, of the most highly refined and organized substance. Or in other words, spirit and matter are the two ex- 12 THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. tremes of one only substance. Not that spirit is a refinement of matter, as is sometimes crudely said, nor that matter is gross and material spirit ', but that one is discreted and separated from the other by a process which leaves them both differ- ent substances, yet as originally one. The subject is somewhat unappreciable to minds not familiar- ized with it ; but all we can say here is, for it is not really essential to our main theme, that God has probably created matter from Himself, not con- tinuously, or so that it is still a part of Him after it is separated from Him ; but discretely, to use the philosophical term, or so that, though it is pro- duced from Him, it is then no longer divine, but natural, finite, and material. And the process must be considered as from eternity to eternity, and not as diminishing the infinite by quantity. If any should choose to say that matter was the precip- itate of spirit, it would not be far from the truth, though the whole doctrine of this most elusive and controverted subject is probably to be found, as nearly as it can be anywhere, in Swedenborg's distinction between " discrete " and " continuous " degrees, to which we must refer the reader. But to eschew all theorizing which is in any THE SOUL AS AST ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 13 manner doubtful or questionable, and to confine ourselves within strictly truthful and practical limits, we only ask the admission of substance and form to the soul, which none can deny without in- volvement in the grossest absurdity. But if we can add to this the following simple statement of the Seer just quoted, then is the groundwork of our subject open, manifest, and clear. The soul or spirit of man, he says, is " the interior man, for it appears there altogether as a man, with all the members and organs that man has, and it is also the man himself in the body. That this is the case may also be manifest from the angels seen, as re- corded in the Word, who were all seen in the human form." Let us now attend somewhat to the physical and psychical conditions under which this form is man- ifest, and by which it is really made existent in the world. Clergymen of a certain class, and others of their stamp, are accustomed to treat the human soul, which they crudely contemplate, as a form- less substance, without considering its physical and psychical conditions, and its intimate union and • sympathy with the body. And the immense amount of good which is done by these merely 14 THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. moral and spiritual appeals, and the intellectual influence which is thus brought to bear upon hu- manity, we do not wish to overlook or disparage. But the question we have to ask is, how does this influence take effect ? To what are these appeals addressed, and how do they operate? And here the fact comes up to us in all its gigantic impor- tance, of the organic condition of this mass of humanity, in its psychical and physical relations. When great conversions are made, when multi- tudes are aroused from apathy and indifference, when bad men become suddenly good men (but mark from how bad to how good they suddenly become), the influence so wrought is always upon those brains and spirits which stood before most susceptible to these influences, by their good phy- siological and spiritual conditions. I know that there are apparent exceptions to this remark. I know that sometimes extremely bad men — per- sons quite gone in sensuality and degradation (as in the case .of any great revival of religion, — that wide-spread, deep excitement in Ireland, for in- stance), are among the first to become the sub- jects of these spiritual influences, while many more moral and externally respectable men es- THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE, 15 cape. But to say nothing of the causes which are beyond the notice of our eye, and the means in the spiritual world which for certain reasons may be made operative and efficient upon them, while they cannot so well upon others to us more prom- ising, be it observed that this does not invalidate the position in the least, that some conditions, some preparations, in the physical and spiritual brain, are necessary to the production of any effect at all. If a man had no brain and heart, I fancy he could not be converted. By parity of reasoning, the better his natural soul is, the more easily can he be converted. For there is no absolutely " irre- sistible" or unconditional grace in the matter. Therefore, all other circumstances and conditions being equal, here and in the spiritual world (both worlds being so intimately connected), those come most easily under the power of moral and spirit- ual appeals, whose physical and spiritual organisms are most suitably prepared. It is a work wholly grounded in organic relations of some kind. The very heavens are organized ; each angel has his own peculiar brain and body ; God himself must have, infinitely speaking, an organic existence ; and the Holy Spirit, when it sweeps through the 16 TEE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. hearts of men, has its own laws, is limited by its own receptacles, and makes the music or. the dis- cord of humanity according to the substantial ma- terials over which and through which, its divine breath circulates. Many remain in negligence and criminality from their circumstances in social life, position, habit, or education ; but still so well organized and attem- pered as only to wait the influence of powerful appeal, clear knowledge, and realization, to turn them from wickedness to virtue. What, then, is the first, or proximate cause, of their conversion and change ? Fine physical and psychological conditions, including the entire spiritual organ- ism itself, without which, in some degree, all the eloquence of the pulpit, and the thunders and splendors of eternity, could not awake them from their moral torpor. If this is not true, let the pulpit try its influences upon those hard and in- tractable specimens of human nature to be found in our State Prisons, — whose brains, internally and externally, spiritually and physically, are notched and angularized by the ancestral discord of many generations, and, with their bodies, shorn of all beautiful and moral proportions. Of course, THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. 17 something can be done, but little comparatively. Now, if. this is true in extreme cases, it is true in principle : and we only need to make the proper discriminations in degree, to announce, as the foundations of all human excellence, those nice or- ganic conditions of matter and spirit, which are as capable of being shaped and moulded by human art and science, as the clay in the hands of the potter. And, therefore, antecedently to the work of re-formation, we need, most radically, formation. More than reformers we need formers. At least in a future age we shall. It is comparatively a hard work to* re-cast and re-form the discordant ma- terials which have received their mis-shapen birth and fixity by the influence of a thousand genera- tions. But to form — to create anew, wii-h the original proportions of beauty and perfection, is the most important, as it may be the easiest work. And the problem is, how to produce the best ori- ginal forms of humanity, for this world and the next ? For it should be observed that this subject is so important, that not only time, but eternity, is involved in its far-reaching consequences. The human soul receives its impress — its style — its 2* 18 THE SOUL AS AN ORGANIC STRUCTURE. distinguishing characteristics, which it must bear through all eternity, before its birth into, this in- cipient world. Its discords may eventually be outgrown, or destroyed ; but neyer the distinctive fashion of the man : and even the discords, we have reason to know, are not only perpetuated all through this life, but deeply and sadly into that life which is to come. No subject, then, can claim superiority to this. H. INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL QUALITIES TRANSMIS- SIBLE FROM PARENTS TO CHILDREN. WE are here brought to the consideration of the law of hereditary transmission of qual- ities. Every one knows that physical peculiarities are transmitted from family to family. The form of the face, the figure, the temperament, and many striking particulars, are frequently alike in parents and children. The disposition to various disor- ders, as scrofula, consumption, dropsy, gout, epi- lepsy, deafness, insanity, &c, is frequently the inheritance of birth. Sometimes also anomalies and deformities can be thus traced ; as of a family mentioned by Sir Anthony Carlisle, in which were supernumerary toes and fingers for four genera- tions. They were introduced by a female who had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot. Now, if physical qualities and disorders are governed by this law of hereditary descent, it 19 20 INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL would seem a ready inference that mental and moral qualities must be, for these latter are only- able to manifest themselves through the physical organism. And it is proved that certain peculiari- ties of physical organism are necessary to the cor- responding peculiarities of spiritual character. In fact, the spirit itself, being in general a perfect counterpart and analogue of the body, owns the sovereignty of similar laws. And family resem- blances are quite as common in minds as in bodies. The only ground of objection to the universality of this law is in those apparent exceptions which sometimes occur, as where parents of superior tal- ents and virtue often have children of an inferior nature, and where, in many families, there are indi- viduals of very different and even opposite capaci- ties. But it should be remembered that where there is only one superior parent, married to a partner of inferior conditions, the qualities of the offspring must be uncertain. It is a common ob- servation that boys resemble their mother, and girls their father ; and that men of great talents almost always descend from intelligent mothers. This last remark, however, must be taken with many grains of allowance. Still, there is so much QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 21 truth in it — there are so many instances of great and commanding geniuses, both in the moral and intellectual world, whose distinction can be traced in an open and direct way, more or less, to a supe- riority of maternal descent, — of which may be mentioned, Bacon, Bonaparte, Milton, Goethe, Cu- vier, Edwards, "Washington, Sir William Jones, John Wesley, and a host of others,* that we are inclined to bestow a few moments' notice upon it, as also upon a most remarkable statement of an apparently opposite character, put forth by Eman- uel Swedenborg, that the soul only is from the father, and the body from the mother ! " The soul, which is from the father, is the very man ; and the body, which is from the mother, is not man in itself, but from the soul." True Christian Beli- gion, No. 103. The statement is also repeated in his work on Conjugial Love, 206, where it is rep- resented that the soul receives its clothing only from the mother, analogous to seeds cast into the ground, and receiving a body from nature. The assertion is also fortified by a reference to a gen- * See, for an illustration of the parentage of these men, an excellent little work entitled "Intellectual and Moral Qualities Transmissible:" referred to In the preface. 22 INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL eral image of the father's face in each descendant, when in just series ; or if not in the immediate pa- rentage, in the more remote ; and by the fact that nations are known from their first father. "For, there is in the seed of every one, from which he is conceived, a graft or offset of the father's soul, in its fulness, within a certain covering from the ele- ments of nature, by which the body is formed in the womb of the mother." And since this state- ment is fundamental, also, to the author's theology — his doctrine of the incarnation of our Lord, and his miraculous conception in the womb of the Virgin, it is evidently made with great care. Moreover, from the character of Swedenborg. as a Seer as well as a Philosopher, and his well-sus- tained reputation, we are satisfied it is not made without some substantial reason, or truth founded in absolute science. But whether it has been well understood by all his followers, or whether he or his translators have not used the term "body," with reference to the mother, in a loose and unac- customed sense, — these are the questions. Cer- tainly, so acute and able a mind as that of the Swedish Seer and philosopher could not have meant that the fleshly, material body was all that QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 23 the mother contributed of her nature to the child ! What infatuated stupidity this would be ! And how it is contradicted by the noble line of brilliant and superior men and women whose distinction can be directly traced to the superiority of the maternal parentage ! What then could he mean ? In reply, it must be observed, that the phraseol ogy of Swedenborg is in many instances peculiar. And in the use of the term " soul," he some- times, and perhaps oftenest, uses it to express the whole soul, or what we commonly mean by the im- mortal part ; and sometimes, when he means to be more metaphysically exact, he uses the word as expressive only of the inmost or sujaremest part of man — that spiritual degree of his nature which is above consciousness. As in his treatise on Influx, No. 8, he says, "The human soul, as being the superior spiritual substance in man, receives its influx immediately from God; the mind, as an inferior spiritual substance, receives its influx from God mediately through the spiritual world." Here is a plain difference between the soul, in its inmost degree, and the mind, with its affections and thoughts. The mind is considered as some- thing lower, or more external. Now, it must have 24 INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL been in this latter sense, in which he speaks of the " clothing " of the soul as conferred by the mother. And although he uses the term " body " with re- gard to it, yet it must be remembered that Swe- denborg always speaks of spiritual things as exist- ing in form and organism, and he even explicitly says that the soul in the other life " retains a kind of border, [or circumambient accretion] from the purest things of .nature, around it." The body, then, which is from the mother, in Swedenborg's sense, must have been the spiritual body, or cloth- ing of the inmost soul, in connection also with the fleshly body of nature. In no other sense could he, otherwise than most stupidly, say that the body only is derived from the mother. And the soul which the mother communicates, as may be inferred even from him, is the comparatively exter- nal soul, or mind, not the inmost supreme ens, and this is what we believe. And this is the very truth which we wish to suggest as the reason why, after all, too much stress must not be put upon the proverbial saying that great men have generally had remarkable or distinguished moth- ers. Frequently they may have had, but this could be from that decided, potent, psychical na- QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 25 ture, or mind, which the mother communicates, and which plays so distinguished a part in the world. But at the same time, that inmost and supremest ens which the father communicates, it is not hers to give, for this is communicated by the seed, which is in the father ; and it is for the mother only to clothe and organize that germ for external action ; and this is the reason why, after all is said, man is universally recognized as pre- dominant in power and influence, in some sense to which woman in vain aspires. Yet still, in a true order of things, the part which the woman contributes to organic life and character is equal in importance to that which man communicates, only differently placed : and therefore, with a true philosophy, there need be no detraction from her high prerogatives. We see her unjust oppression ; we acknowledge the superiority of her love and refinement, and her beautiful and brilliant intel- lect ; we know that in a perfectly true union she would be the equal of man, as God designed her, but no more ; and we labor gladly, triumphantly, for her elevation. There is a new day for her to come. But we must not protract this discussion here. 26 INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL We may just state now, as our own modest opin- ion, that it is not superior mothers, pre-eminently, that we need for the origin of great men, but the excellence of both parents, in their united organ- isms, temperaments, and influence : for when either is lacking, the other is comparatively weak in pro- ductive effort. Sometimes it is of the mother, sometimes of the father, that illustrious progeny proceeds ; but the truth unquestionably is, that were all operative causes taken into consideration, it would be found that nature is uniform in her processes, and that neither the one nor the other could boast of any predominance other than that of an impartial, beautiful order in all that God has designed. " One of the great causes why men of talents frequently leave no gifted posterity, is, that they form alliances with women of low tempera- ment, in whose inert systems their vivacity is ex- tinguished ; and, on the other hand, the cause why men' of genius often descend from fathers in whom no trace of ethereal qualities can be discovered, is, that these men were the fortunate husbands of women of high temperament, and fine cerebral combinations, who transmitted these qualities to their offspring." QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 27 Since writing the above, we have received a let- ter from a critical friend and admirer of Sweden- borg, confirmatory of these views, in answer to a question put to him respecting the point in ques- tion. His reply is — "What Swedenborg means by the body only being from the mother, I do not know, for I am neither his expositor nor apologist : but what I should mean is, that the sensual mind, as well as the first corporeal substances, are sym- pathetically moulded by her during pregnancy and in the first age of childhood ; but when both pa- rents are truly united, they continually so act upon each other, that it would be difficult to say which most influenced the character. That our best and greatest men trace their qualities to their mothers is because a mother's influence is more seen and felt; and when her love is reciprocated by the child, it cannot fail to develop, nurture, and strengthen his noblest points of character." In the case of any other differences in the same family, which the above considerations are insuffi- cient to account for, there are, doubtless, super- natural causes which operate — means and appli- ances, I mean, in the spiritual world, by which, when a genius of particular character is wanted — 28 INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL a great commander, mathematician, poet, philoso- pher, reformer, or some other personage, the angels themselves, who are only glorified men and women, conspire to operate upon the original germ, and so far as the laws reigning will admit, produce the character that the world needs. It would be diffi- cult to account for the timely and providential ap- pearance of certain great leaders — such as meet great crises, and affect large periods of. history, if there are not in operation some such supernatural means. Spiritual beings have much more to do with births, even ordinary births, and the whole pre-natal condition from the moment of conception, than we are aware of. They not only arrange, when they can, for the suitable parties who shall, under providence, become the parents of a partic- ular child, but (taking the testimony of the Seers, Swedenborg in particular, with our own reason) they preside continually over the womb that con- tains so precious a treasure, and, by a course of direct and subtle operation, they ward off all hos- tile influences, and, by nourishment and protection, minister to the unborn infant in a thousand un- known and secret ways, to prepare it for its future mission. In this way, frequently, even all heredi- QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 29 tary laws seem to be set at defiance, and the great- est possible unlikeness between the child and the parent is secured by a higher power. " Generation is so holy that there is present a direct influx from Almighty God, upon all orderly earths, in the celebration of .the nuptial mysteries ; and there is a special series of vortices, by means of which these first essences of mankind become deposited in their resting-places. The Angels of the Ultimate Heaven preside over this, and, when the germ becomes ultimated, they are guardians each of that child over the descent of whose germ they have mediated."* There is undoubtedly an inverted truth con- nected also with the miscalled science of Astrol- ogy. The groupings of the suns and planets in the universe, and the subtle auras emanating from them, may be supposed to have some influence over the susceptible embryotic life, as we know that they do upon the earth's atmosphere, causing many perceptible changes. Speaking of certain great and influential men, as of Cromwell, Frederic the Great of Prussia, &c, and of particular con- vergent influences in the heavens, it is remarked * Arcana of Christianity, by T. I*. Harris, No. 522. 3* 30 INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL by the author just quoted, that " when God wills to raise up a hero for the deliverance of any people of our earth, or for any great transition period, a mother is selected, and a father, of suitable organic life, and the initiament of the germ into the womb is effected when -such suns as these are ascendant in the centre of influence." 502. We do not vouch for this, neither do we slightly disregard it, being well aware that " there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." But to leave, for the present, the higher and supernatural influences, let us remark here upon the thousand influences and conditions of a purely natural character, attending both parents through the whole continuance of the pro-creative term, and particularly the period of gestation. How slight a circumstance will change the whole char- acter and fortune of the child! The laws of sympa- thy, impression, outward cirnumstance and inward state — how marvellously they operate ! Bonaparte awoke to conscious existence amidst the civil wars and commotions of his own native Corsica ; and his mother, the wife of a military chieftain, was often on horseback in the thickest of the strife. It has been remarked generally, of the children whose ex- QUALITIES TRANSMISSIBLE. 31 istence dated from the horrors of the first French Revolution, that " they turned out to be weak, ner- vous, and irritable of mind, extremely susceptible of impressions, and liable to be thrown by the least extraordinary excitement into absolute insanity." And in common life, in thousands of well-known cases, who is not familiar with the influence of parental impressions prior to birth, both on the physical and mental constitution of the child ? Now, here is the law — here is the place, time, occasion, which, in connection with other influ- ences to be mentioned afterwards, is rife with more important consequences to humanity and all true reform, than all other causes, frequently, in a whole lifetime. Education and regeneration may do much after this, but little comparatively with- out this, even in their most successful efforts. And we shall see, in the sequel, how much regen- eration is connected with this. Let us look at this a little more in particular. "We are very apt to say we can do but little here, people are so faithless, and so sensual and worldly. But the truth is, we do not know what we can do till knowledge is made patent and tangible before us, and till, considering the desolations and cor- 32 INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL QUALITIES. ruptions of humanity through all its relations, we begin in some sense to despair of it, and to ask if some more radical and effective measures may not be instituted for its redemption. Let us, then, if possible, venture upon the most radical grounds. And let us put off the shoes from our feet, for the ground is holy. ni. FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND HOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL THEM. THE facts on this subject range all the way, from the most hopeless idiocy, to the most beautiful and marked developments of virtue, in- tellect, and human joy. We would that we could present a greater array of them, but our limits, and the requirements of the subject, must make the following sufficient. By these, the principle of all we have to say is permanently and promi- nently established. For a case of the most melancholy character, take that recorded by Dr. Combe, in his " Consti- tution of Man." — "The child's father belonged to a regiment then in Ireland. He had obtained leave of absence to join his relations in England, and on the eve of his departure to join his regi- ment again, an evening entertainment was given, at which the daughter of an elderly woman was S3 34 FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND present, and she and the soldier danced and sang together the whole evening. While thus heated by the toddy and the dance, they left the cottage, and after the lapse of an hour were found together in a glen, in a state of utter insensibility, from the effects of the former festivity. The consequence of this interview was the birth of an idiot. He is now [says the narrator] nearly six years of age, and his mother does not believe he is able to rec- ognize either herself or any other individual. He is quite incapable of making signs, whereby his wants can be made known — with this exception, that when hungry he gives a wild shriek. The parents are both intelligent, and the fatal result cannot be otherwise accounted for than by the almost total prostration or eclipse of the intellect of both parties from intoxication." The above case is one from which we may gen- eralize. If such is the result of an extreme de- basement of both father and mother, what follows but that in all the lesser and minute derelictions from the law of strict rectitude, — in all those nameless variations of the conditions of human life and activity, the results to the offspring are none the less sure and exact, though we are not able BOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL THEM. 35 to trace them ? Does it not show the mighty and omnipotent sway of the parentage — of the states of the affections, the thoughts, 'the superinducing elements which enter into and form the infant er- ganism even at the time of conception ? If this is an extreme case, let it speak to us all the more powerfully of how the whole nature — the whole soul, may be affected and over-borne by a pre-natal condition in the parentage, and this even before the quickening of conception in the womb of the mother. It is melancholy indeed ; but so much do human beings, with their fearful agency, have to do with extinguishing the very first spark of the life of God in the soul of man, and dragging down all that is heavenly and immortal into hopeless and utter darkness. On the contrary, what may not an entirely op- posite condition effect — those high, saintly, and exalted states, such as all should strive after, and a few attain to, in the inestimable privilege of earthly parentage ? What wonders of generation may not be effected by compliance with the eter- nal and inevitable laws 1 " In conversation on this subject with a distinguished Judge," says O. S. Fowler, in his ' Love and Parentage,' " he said he 36 FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND employed the principle here involved in regard to his youngest child." That is, like a sensible man, he made a practical application of it. "Deter- mined, at the end of several sessions, to dismiss business, and recreate a while with his family, he invited several of his legal and other intimate friends to accompany him for the purpose of hav- ing a delightful festive occasion. Meanwhile, his wife had ordered out the carriage, and came to escort him home. All entered, heart and soul, into the dance, mirth, and music of the occasion. In the exceedingly agreeable frame of the minds of its parents thus induced, the child received exist- ence and character, [was conceived] and accord- ingly, rarely cries, frets, or complains, but will sit on the floor for hours together, and amuse herself, always appears perfectly happy, and is one of the bestnatured children in the world." From this we may learn the importance of pro- viding every cheerful circumstance — all that can destroy melancholy, give buoyancy of spirits and suitable elevation of mind to the young being who is so soon to be ushered into the world, and whose happiness or misery can be largely promoted by a wise precaution on the part of the parents, before BOW FAS WE CAN CONTROL THEM. 37 the period of conception, at the time of it, and dur- ing the whole progress of gestation. It should be remembered that it is the period between concep- tion and birth, that is the most decisive in regard to the natural character of the child, and during which more can be done for it than frequently a whole education amounts to, in shaping and de- fining its earthly destiny. The exceptions, of course, are here taken of the providential means which are furnished in the ancestry, and in the character of the immediate parentage before con- ception; but for shaping, impressing, and moulding what is given, the period above denoted is fre- quently the most important. It may be made much more so. No mere education, after birth, can equal what is here effected, and organized into our very being. It becomes us, therefore, to take due notice of a time so fruitful of conse- quences, and conform our action accordingly. Another interesting case which may be men- tioned, is that of a boy whose parents I am per- sonally acquainted with. They had lost a precious and favorite child of most remarkable promise, dis- tinguished for its beauty and its noble organism, its fine brain and temperament, and sweetness of 38 FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND disposition. It was the admired of every beholder. He died at the age of twenty months. Profoundly pained at this instance of bereavement, yet bear- ing it with a Christian and philosophic fortitude which few could summon, it was now, after two years, their hearts' desire, their religious deter- mination, and their systematic effort, to supply the breach in the family which this death had occa- sioned. Accordingly, they prepared themselves for the purpose, as every^parent should. For sev- eral weeks previous to conception, with the father in particular, who understood this matter, it was his thought, his prayer, his noble aspiration, to obtain from the Creator a child to replace the one they had lost. And by inducing a proper state of mind in himself, he thus sought to impregnate the germ of a new being. It was the good fortune of these parents too, to know of the nearness of the angelic world, and the sympathy which the heav- enly beings have for the offspring of earth. And in the holiest and purest consecration of them- selves to the hymeneal act, who shall say that the Divinity would not honor it, and crown it with his especial blessing ? It was by this process that the very seed of the father, and the first germ of life BOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL THEM. 39 in the embryo with the mother, were magnetized or spiritualized with a divine force and substance, by the predominating affections, thoughts,- will, and effort of both parents ; and through their organism, first in the spiritual, and then in the natural or material, the vitalizing properties of a new being were transmitted and fixed in the original form ! Behold the result I Not an angel, for there are no angels in this world ; but a child of love, not of lust, was produced ; — an ethereal, beneficent, heav- enly principle was conveyed to the mother ; — the Christ principle ; — not as He had it, but as we may have it, and by which our households may be blessed with angelic natures, and the whole world greatly reformed and redeemed. The child so born to these parents was remarkable for sweet- ness of disposition, for beautiful intellect, for a fine, impressible temperament, and this too in a family where the other children, born of the same parents under different conditions, were distin- guished for opposite qualities. The little boy I speak of had a decidedly spiritual and intuitive turn, and most richly supplied the place of the little boy that died. Another case of marked character I had related 40 facts of transmission; and to me by a gentleman who received the account from a lady who was personally knowing to it. A female member, in good standing with a Presbyte- rian church in the city of New York, was treas- urer of a benevolent society connected with that church. During her pregnancy, she was tempted to, and did, embezzle a large portion of the funds intrusted to her. Her child was born to become a thief. Its first manifestations were acquisitiveness and secretiveness in marked excess. One of this gentleman's own children too, he assured me, to his great grief, had inherited the perversions of his mother's state during pregnancy so much, as to grow up to the practice of stealing, repeatedly and persistently. None of the other children had this peculiarity. But during the ges- tation of this child, an unhappy division occurred between the husband and wife, which issued in separation, and ultimately in divorce ; and the mother in this time taxed her whole mind to ap- propriate as much of the property as she could — was consulting lawyers, and using every means to obtain an unjust share of it, and the consequence was, a thief in the character of her child. And the father assured me he felt greatly resigned on SOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL THEM. 41 account of it, when the little son was removed by death at the age of nine years. Take another case of a different character, which I heard related not long since by a lecturer in one of our cities. A man of great energy and decision of character — an engineer and machinist, was em- ploying himself most intensely for several months, in the construction of a huge steam-engine and other apparatus, fitted for a very large experiment in the line of water transportation. His whole days and evenings were frequently given to con- centrated study to perfect the powers adapted to propel the mighty vessel, and it was during these months that his daughter received her embryotic life, and was undergoing the process of gestation, doubtless also with the sympathy of the mother somewhat in the same work ; and the consequence was, a female child of huge mathematical and me- chanical powers — of great tendency to invent and construct — great powers of propulsion — as the lecturer expressed it, "a regular steamboat of a girl," who will no doubt take her place in the midst of the powers that be, and be of very essen- tial service to some cause on the woman's side of the question. 4* 42 FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND Take two or three more cases which I find re- lated in a little work entitled " The Empire of the Mother," by Henry C. Wright. One is concerning an organic tendency to useful labor. " D. P. is a woman whose experience is instructive. She lives but to labor ; not for love of gain, but from the love of useful action. She never wastes her ener- gies in labors that benefit no one ; but they are ever directed to something useful. A restless, anxious spirit, which she cannot control, is ever prompting her to useful and benevolent action, in household labors, in outdoor exercise, and in ac- tions that are beneficial to her neighbors. From childhood, the same uncontrollable desire to be useful to somebody, has led her onward and gov- erned her actions. The cause. From her concep- tion to her birth, one irrepressible desire governed the activities of her mother. All her energies of soul and body were directed to useful ends. She was ever on the alert to find opportunities to do good to somebody. She literally went about doing good, and ever found it ' more blessed to give than to receive.' The same tendencies appeared in her child at a very early age. Even as a child, she was ever devising some plans that had in view the HOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL TEEM. 43 good of others, and had an extraordinary aptitude to execute her own benevolent purposes. Hers was a rich and glorious inheritance. "' The Child Visitor. Another fact, to illustrate the power of the mother over the organic condi- tions of her child. L. F., ten years old, never can rest at home. She is ever running here and there, restless as a wild bird in a cage, just from the woods. She ever pines to be abroad. Is ever teasing her mother to let her go visiting. Knows no rest, no enjoyment, except in going from house to- house, making calls, and getting up parties among her mates. Visiting seems to be the one overmastering thought and passion of her life. Cause. The father was a hard man, a drinking man, and the terror of his wife. During her child's entire pre-natal life, to avoid him, the mother was abroad, making calls, going from house to house, getting up parties, and making visits. Her entire waking hours, during that period, were thus spent. She saved her child [which was probably her mo- tive] from the drunken father's influence ; but she stamped upon it the stamp of a restless visitor, and unfitted her for any steady, useful employment. It -jwill prove a sad legacy to the child as she passes 44 FACTS OF TRANSMISSION, AND on to womanhood and enters into the natural rela- tions and encounters the stern realities of life as a wife, a mother, and actor in the great drama of humanity." Once more : " the following sad incident," says the same author, " occurred in my experience. I had lectured in a country town in New England, on the pre-natal life and education of man. A woman, a mother with her ^on of three years old, called upon me. I was much interested in her boy, so perfect in its physical organization. The child stepped out of the room, attracted by other children. To the mother, I said, ' What a healthy, noble boy you have. One of whom any mother might well be proud.' To my amazement, she, bursting into tears, exclaimed, 'I long and pray for his death ! It would be an infinite relief to me to lay that form, so healthy, strong and perfect, in the grave.' 'Your conduct,' I replied, 'seems most unnatural and monstrous.' ' I know it must seem so to you, sir, still I long to see him draw his last breath in childhood, for so surely as he lives, he will become a murderer, and meet the murder- er's doom on the gallows.' ' On what do you base your unmotherly, unnatural prophecy?' I asked. BOW FAR WE CAN CONTROL THEM. 45 ' On my own conditions before his birth,' said she ; 'from his conception to his birth, I longed and labored fsr his death. I did all I could and dared to do, to kill my child without killing myself. My heart was filled with the spirit of murder against the life of my child. He struggled into life against the spirit of murder in the heart of his mother. That he was born a living child was my deepest anguish, for, too truly, my spirit foreboded what he must be, whose pre-natal life and education was completed beneath a heart whose every throb was a threat of death, and a protest against his exist- ence.' 'But,' I asked, 'does his post-natal life thus far correspond with your conditions during his pre-natal life ? ' ' Oh, too truly, too fatally,' said the weeping mother ; ' I cannot awaken in him the least sympathy and consideration for the persons of others. He is utterly callous about inflicting wounds and death on others. If his parents, or anybody, offend him, he strikes at their faces or persons, with whatever sharp or deadly weapon ' he may happen to have, or that lies within his reach. I dare not leave him alone with other chil- dren, for fear he will kill them. God forgive me ! ' cried the poor mother, 'I knew not what I was 46 FACTS OF TRANSMISSION. doing ! I knew not that my conditions were being stamped on my poor, unconscious, unborn child. " We might recite more cases, but the foregoing are enoflgh. Now, what does all this prove ? It proves, if any thing is proved, that the first or natural birth is quite as important, or may be made so, at least so far as this world is concerned, and in some respects vastly more important (hav- ing connections that run into eternity) than the second or spiritual birth, which is made so impera- tive in the Christian experience. And it is quite as much under our control 1 IV. CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. HERE let us be very careful. I would not, for any consideration, lessen the importance of the new and second birth of the Christian, for I hold to it most radically. I see it as a necessity grounded in our hereditary nature, and I see also its philosophy in a most affecting and humiliating spectacle of a fallen and degraded, and divinely uplifted humanity. But is it not easier, generally speaking, to accomplish this new birth, and when accomplished, is it not infinitely superior, in ves- sels more cleanly, nobly, and originally prepared, than it is in souls shockingly neglected and de- based by a natural parentage ? Here, I know, a question may arise as to the immortality of such souls at all, as only receive a natural birth from natural parentage, and do not experience the new birth of the Spirit. 'It is the 47 48 CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH faith of many that only regenerated souls attain to immortality. The merely natural life is so utterly defiled with selfishness and wickedness,'that, if the powers of the heavens are not ingrafted on it, it may only flourish a while in these earthly domin- ions, and, after death, inevitably sink away into utter destruction. This, I say, is now the belief of many Christians, of various denominations, and of some even of the most intellectual and rational sects, and is growing among them. And all such may ask the question — How can it be possible, with this view, that the merely natural birth can vie at all in importance with the spiritual ? Is not the spiritual the only one that is crowned with glory and immortality? But without committing ourself to this or that view of the question thus proposed, it is to be observed that our subject can be prosecuted to all its practical conclusions without it. For, with or without the immortality of the natural soul, it is certainly a vast security of the new and spiritual birth, to provide vessels of nature so pure and noble that they can easily experience it. And indeed, may not the subject be pushed to an abso- lute certainty, that generation itself may become, WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 49 by the power of Christian truth and practice, so eminently holy, that the natural birth shall in- sure the spiritual — that the power of hereditary evil shall become so broken, (if not utterly abol- ished, in the far distant future — in the day of Messiah's perfect reign upon earth) that the grace of the skies shall descend without obstruction into a sufficiently purified natural humanity, and raise it, en masse, to the glory of the angelic state, and to fellowship with all that is divine, imperishable and immortal ! This is the faith which assures and comforts the writer. Certainly, a purified natural soul must invite and attract all spiritual influences, and the first and second births may thus become so at one — so in harmony from like spiritual causes, as to be somewhat identified in their na- ture, when a regenerated parent may say, as he looks upon his new-born child — Behold, the fruit of the womb is holy, for the Spirit of God hath sanctified it to me 1 But more of this in the sequel. No one, cer- tainly, can avoid this conclusion without affirming an utter disconnection and non-affinity between pure natural vessels and the influx of the heavens into them. And if any should go to the length of 50 CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH this absurdity, then we should posit our argument upon those souls who do escape the second death, and rise in the regeneration. For though the purity of their natural life may have not been the cause, or had any power in attracting the spiritual influences, (but who can suppose such a thing !) yet it cannot be said that when those influences enter and oper- ate in the soul, they do not connect themselves with the natural organism they find there, and that it is not all the better for the new life, the better that organic foundation is prepared for it. And further than this, we should also argue for the practical result of an improved humanity in this world — ■ should aim a blow at the foundations of all crime, impurity, sin and misery, here upon the plane of our earth-life alone, — leaving the question of im- mortality entirely out of the subject. But I wish the reader to understand that we do hot shrink up into any such needless and diminutive proportions. "We allow to the subject all its scope — all its grand and glorious expansion. We renew the question, then — Is it not easier, generally speaking, to accomplish' this new birth, and when accomplished, is it not greatly superior, in vessels so cleanly, nobly, and originally pre- WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 51 pared ? Let us do our best, we can only, in the present state of the world, make an approximation to purity. Human n,ature will come into the world more or less defiled and imbruted. The refine- ments of selfishness are too deeply embedded, even in the spiritual nature, to be rooted out by one or many generations of ever so perfect practice ; and therefore, the second birth, with its regenerative consequences, will ever be a necessity, through struggle and combat, until sin is entirely finished, and everlasting righteousness brought in. And even then, there is progress from natural to spirit- ual, without conflict, for ever and ever. But it is precisely to this pitch of human perfection that our nature, in " the restitution of all things," is to be brought ; viz., to the end of hereditary evil, — when children shall be born into this world with- out any bad .tendencies — without any malforma- tions of soul, brain, or body, and when the whole effort of religion and education will only be to refine more and more, and spiritualize, enlarge, and elevate the nature, freed from all conflict with absolute evil. " The Lord of hosts will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all 52 CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH nations. He will swallow up death in victory, and the rebuke of his people shall He take away from off all the earth." if I speak not, of course, with .regard to time ; I am upon principles now ; and I say, the sooner we see this — the sooner we understand and practise upon the principle of improving the births, and this by improving the marriages, and by regu- lating scientifically all the duties of marriage, (with the other regenerative means to be men- tioned afterwards) the better will it be for the human race, and the sooner shall we strike at the foundations of all discord, of all good and truth, all happiness and misery. And let none say that nothing, or but little, can be done in this respect, — that it is very fine theory, but, like many other good and true things, has the misfortune of being a thousand years, more or less, in advance of the age. No matter if it is a million years in advance. It is true I It is most primal, radical truth, and lies at the founda- tions of all human improvement. I hold up this truth. I wish I could devote my life to it. I wish that schools could be established, where classes of adult men and women, separately or combined, WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 53 could be taught these fundamental truths, and in- duced to practise upon them, and to love them better than silver and gold. Let the experiment be tried. Let only a few, two or three, if no more, or a dozen, start out upon these principles, and by prayer and faith and self-denial, see what can be done. Suppose, for instance, the mother whose melan- choly case was last referred to, who was instru- mental in bringing a child-murderer into the world, had pursued an entirely opposite course. Sup- pose, instead of seeking continually the death of her child, she had been filled with a spirit of ardent devotion for the child's future honor and useful- ness. And suppose, for this purpose, she had prayed earnestly to God, night and morning, each successive day, during the whole time of her preg- nancy, that He would so overshadow her with his presence, so influence all her affections and thoughts, and cause his angels to attend her, as that her whole soul might be penetrated with heavenly influxes, and that even her unborn babe might be made to experience the purifying and refining influences which flow continually from the sanctuary of the Most High. And suppose, in 6* 54 CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIKTII compliance with influences which could not but be given to such a state of mind, she had fixed her eye upon some noble height of possible attainment for her child, associating nothing with it but im- ages of purity and beauty, or at least repelling every hostile influence or image which might in- trude itself, and so dwelt as it were in a glad and happy atmosphere, with an imagination, for this future being, of continued usefulness, honor, and promotion. And in addition to this, suppose she had engaged, herself, in acts of beneficence and love to others, continually living and practising the ennobling virtues and graces which she would see inscribed upon the life of her child. Think you she would have given birth to a child-mur- derer ? Forbid it, high and holy Heaven ! Ah, how little have we yet conceived of the power of the mother over the yet unborn being which she is intrusted with at a time so fatal ! Surely we may say, from what the fact itself warrants us, that just the opposite character would have been as likely to have been produced, as this young monster of cruelty. Shall we undertake to say, then, that this is an impractical subject ? — that nothing, or next to WITH TEE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 55 nothing, can be done with it ? I affirm that noth- ing is so effectively and radically practical. If it was practical to produce a murderer, it may be practical to produce a saint. If it is practical to cure, it is practical to prevent. If it is practical to reform, it is more practical to form. The truth is, men and women are so ail-sufficiently selfish and lazy that they will not exert themselves even according to their best knowledge. And the devil has such a hold upon all this world's institutions, especially enthroning himself in the family rela- tionship, that money and fashion and pride and lust and vanity will yet marry and give in mar- riage, while love and the spirit go begging for existence. . Sometimes, nay frequently, we hear men and women regretting that they have no worthy and laudable object of ambition — nothing commensu- rate with their immortal powers. Some will say, Oh ! if they could only write a book, and embody what they do know, and let that go travelling through the world, a silent, powerful instructor. That would live when they are dead, and work when they are gone. How strange it is that so few have ever thought, or so little tried, for the 56 CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH production of a work of more living genius — a volume more heavenly and practical — whose pages should contain the lore of a more active intelligence — whose style should be more beauti- ful, contents more rich, fame more lasting, than that of any volume now in the libraries of the world, — nay, which should be absolutely immor- tal in its duration and influence ! An ever-fresh apocalypse of celestial verities I The Word itself, of the Old and New Testaments, embodied in a living organism, beautiful, scientific, pure, of his- torical accuracy and scholarly elegance, destined to be read by millions upon millions, to act upon untold ages, to be made even the companion of angels, and to circulate joy and peace and instruc- tion forever ! Such are the works which most any of us might produce. But instead of this, how we grovel in the midst of low romance, and a fictitious, perverted life, — the " books that are books," and the boys that are boys, being equally scarce in the comparison here instituted ! But before any thorough and complete improve- ments can be effected in this way, some better attention must be paid to the subject of Marriage. Here is the rock on which the ages are built ; here WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 57 is the Truth of truths, and the beginning of all good. If clergymen would only preach the gospel of salvation here, — tell what true marriage is, and encourage it to their congregations, — at least en- courage the truest approximations to it ; — if they would, only occasionally, which they might with the utmost propriety, unfold the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, in the spiritual and physical connections of human pairs, they might dispense with a large part of their theology ; for nature itself would become so practical, exact, and regular, that the God of nature would work through it without obstruction, and the Holy Spirit find an almost involuntary entrance. But now, what is marriage ? Not any thing in the minds of the masses, — not any thing even with the churches in general, at all commensurate with its mighty magnitude and far-reaching influence. Confessedly the most important act for time and eternity, yet with how many the subject of mere fancy, caprice, and passion! Or worse ; — a bargain entered into as a man bargains for an estate; — two immortals pledging themselves, body, bank-stock, houses and lands, and what souls they think of, to live together £jr a few years, and share the joys 58 CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH and sorrows of life. The children of this union have souls. But the partners never thought of that. Theology and the clergy have to do "with souls ; and for all the deformed and suffering speci- mens of humanity brought into this world, there is the same old perpetual lamentation, and the same blindness to all original and fundamental princi- ples. I own, that in the present state of society, it is almost impossible to secure those partners who are most fitted by nature to enter into the marriage relation with us. It must be more or less of chance and circumstance, at the best — save in a very few rare instances. And human nature is so fallen and degraded, that the absolutely true mar- riage — the spiritual union of souls for eternity, is scarcely known or thought of. But with all our disadvantages and ignorance, we might do vastly better than we do. Spiritual congeniality — simi- larity of tastes and tendencies, is the law in gen- eral ; and if there is no marriage in nature and the spirit, there can be none by our law-making, only artificial, external, permissive, (but by no means to be disregarded) and the fruitful cause of discord, sin, and misery. WITS THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 59 Even taking the most natural views of mar- riage, that is, eschewing the spiritual altogether, and looking at natural character alone, and what grows from it, how palpable are the facts of human life and interest as founded upon the off- spring of suitably married partners ! It is safe to say, at least, that those children who spring from a proper and well-adjusted parentage (say nothing about the marked cases of extraordinary genius) will be two or three centuries in advance of the -children of so many hap-hazard, harum-scarum mar- riages, in all that constitutes the perfection of civ- ilization, and the beauties and conveniences of a well-ordered life. And what a waste of effort, and useless application of spiritual and theological ma- chinery, upon such abortions, and pygmies, and crudities, and fag-ends of humanity, compared with what might be effected upon God's nobility as first born ! Would that every clergyman could have a trumpet put to his mouth, to sound the truth with a voice of thunder to his sleepy, dozing, lacka- daisical, would-be-spiritual hearers. It is in this sense that the modern reformers are right, in de- claring, as we have quoted in our preface, that "the life and happiness of individuals, the love and har- • 60 CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIRTH mony of families, the prosperity of states and king- doms, and the protection of life, liberty, and per- son, are more dependent upon influences that bear upon human beings, before birth, than on any influ- ence that can be brought to bear on them after- wards. What is organized into us, in our pre-natal state, is of more consequence to us, and more vital to our triumph over the temptations and obstacles that impede our progress towards perfection and happiness, than what is educated into us after we are born." The truth cannot be too often re- peated. As to all the natural interests of human- ity, the concerns of this world, moral and temporal prosperity, it is all true without qualification. But as there is a spiritual nature within this, and a cleansing operation to go on from above, and a possibility of ruin and loss to the soul too great to be estimated, unless we experience that pro- cess, there is much to be said of the evils, sins, and liabilities of our poor nature, and of the supernat- ural system that so surrounds and interpenetrates the natural as to cast up before us another and a different view of our dependences and destiny. And this we propose to glance at as we proceed. Here I will only say, that the time is coming — WITH THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 61 should be realized now in a measure — when not only a proper regard to the natural character, soul and body, will be observed in the selection of part- ners for marriage, but when none but more or less regenerate persons, or persons seriously de- termined upon that end, will think of entering the marriage state together, on account of the evils of one or the other, so disastrous to the offspring of such a union. But of this no more at present. "With a true philosophy of the relation of the sexes, we come at once to the foundations of all that is high and noble in humanity. "We can do nothing thoroughly without it. But to expand upon this subject as a thorough exposition of its nature Would require, would be to double the size of our little volume. And besides, the very heights and refinements of the subject, to which we should be obliged to carry it, would meet many unpre- pared minds to whom the present treatise will be more welcome and profitable as it is.* It must suffice to say, then, that although, in this life, we may not, from the very confusedness and difficul- ties of our worldly condition, come into the enjoy- * See, however, for a full exposition of this subject, the author's work entitled " God in his Providence." 6 62 CONNECTION OF THE NATURAL BIBTE ment of that perfect union which the Creator of souls has yet in reserve for us, yet, with a knowl- edge of what that union is, we should be likely to come much nearer to it than we now do. At pres- ent, the young and unmarried have in general nothing to guide them but the suggestions of na- ture, and the dissolution of the holiest of all ties at death. Let them only know that there is a mar- riage of the spirit — that, in perfect consistency with the Saviour's announcement of the absence of all marriage in heaven, eternity does recognize an indissoluble union of male and female souls, analogous to the marriage of Love and Wisdom in the Divine Mind ; and then, though in a confused human society they could not approach the holy of holies itself, and it would not be even desirable to, unless both parties were equally or suitably prepared, they would not blunder, as they now do, in the most indiscriminate connections — tyings- together, not marriages, with the most horrible consequences to the body and the soul, and the souls of unborn millions. But we cannot amplify upon this subject here, only to say, how are parents accountable for the WITS THE SPIRITUAL; MARRIAGE, ETC. 63 encouragements and sanctions they give to their children's matrimonial alliances ! And what incon- sistencies are they gnilty of I These same parents will frequently send over a whole country, and into other countries too, to procure good seed corn, fruit grafts, and other seed, to replenish and enrich their granaries and orchards, while they will encourage the most pitiful and indiscriminate marriage of their children, thus producing a har- vest of discord extending indefinitely beyond the bounds of time. What they will do for a potato- patch, or a field of corn, they will not do for their own eternal sons and daughters I And if we en- force this law of human generation by going into particulars and details, or if we bring it into the pulpit, we are accused sometimes of a disregard to delicacy and custom. It is more delicate to grovel in the mire of sensuality and say nothing about it. Yet I know not why an earnest and pure-minded man may not delicately touch upon these foundations of life, even to the unfolding of many particulars not at all unbecoming the dignity of the pulpit, and the dispensing of much saving wisdom. The simple truth is, with purity and 64 MARRIAGE, ETC. knowledge and faith in our own hearts, we can say many things, which, without these requisites, we should neither find grace to say, nor ability in the hearer to receive. POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES OF HUMAN PERFECTION, AS BASED UPON TEE LAW OF HEREDITARY DESCENT. LEAVING the subject of Marriage, for the present, let us proceed to speak of the high possibilities of human perfection under the right observance of its laws and conditions. And here comes up the old question of times and seasons. Christians have much to say on the time of one's conversion, — even the hour, the day, or the year, when such a one received salvation. And no doubt, there are times and seasons when many persons become peculiarly impressed — when the spiritual nature is aroused, and a true and genuine conversion, that is, turning-point, is realized in the soul's experience. Sometimes this matter is de- ferred to the last of one's life, and even to a death- bed repentance. And some may be disposed now 6* 65 66 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES to inquire, in consistency with the principles here unfolded, What is the time — the most hopeful and important time for a man's whole life, and eter- nity ? And in reply I say, all times and seasons, for a result of such magnitude — such as can be crowded into a few days or months — more espe- cially, intensified and fatal hours, and moments, are altogether out of the question. All seasons are important with God, and all have infinite con- nections, with man. Sometimes the crisis of a man's salvation, humanly speaking, may turn on one thing, sometimes on another. It is not for us always to say. With God, the whole of eternity is as one hour, or one moment, in which every thing for man is infallibly done,, and done in the very best manner. Stand off ! — all meddlers with theo- logical machinery. But as the world is so much given to meddling, and persons will seek for times and seasons ; and as there are, frequently, impor- tant crises in our destiny, turning-points, and deci- sive periods, let us say here, that were all other things equal, — the conditions below and the pow- ers above, — and were nature itself in its true and perfect order, — the first birth of man would be invariably the most important crisis to him, even OF HUMAN PERFECTION. "67 in his spiritual course ; especially when we take into view the marriages entered into, and the all- comprehending substance and qualities of charac- ter which are here so largely secured. If one had power and wisdom to regulate the marriages of the world, he might, I had almost said, dispense with all the theology of the world. But no, we say no such thing. We only see this one thing loom up into overshadowing importance. Let us rather say, theology would then come as a blessed bride from the skies, purified and transparent with celes- tial harmonies. But inasmuch as this first birth is now so over- clouded with evil ; that is, the natural mind is so full of hereditary corruption, with so much discord in the spiritual and physical organism ; and the good traits which we receive from our parent- age are so liable to be overborne and crushed down with this evil, the spiritual which might operate from very infancy is not sufficient, in itself, in all cases, to be what is called the leading crisis to a sure and steady progress in the re- generate life. But I have no hesitation in saying that the time is coming — the possibility is in the race, of just this truth — if there are not some 68 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES who realize it now. (More of this in the sequel.) Children sanctified and saved from birth ! Has it not long been cherished as a delightful thought in the Christian church ? Let us, then, approach this subject somewhat from the prospective. And I say, if the salvation here spoken of is to be viewed in the most extensive sense, as connected with what goes before as well as with what follows, — with the natural, as purified and coalescing with the spiritual, — if it can be viewed in connection with the whole man, his whole genius, amplitude, and variety of moral and intellectual character ; and if we may speak of what may be, rather than what is, and what the true order of his life should justify us in expecting ; then I say, the time most spiritually dear to him may be the moment of conception, and the period before birth. For then is determined the very ground and organism of humanity — its distinctive form and fashion — its expansion or littleness — its majesty or abase- ment, as the plane of operations for the new and second birth of the Spirit. I do not mean to say that more can be done then for the glory and ex- altation of character than can be done in all time aftei", but that this may be the crisis period — the OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 69 few months of greatest consequence. And, sepa- rating the subject entirely from the consideration of mere natural character — for there can be no doubt about the time here mentioned for that — and viewing it solely with reference to salvation in eternity, deliverance from the second death — whatever that may be ; I say, here, in the sancti- ties of this sacred crisis, may be the causal poten- cies, in connection with other divine means, for a certain and everlasting security. But alas ! we know it is not so now, just be- cause of the prevalence and extent of hereditary evil. We only point a hopeful finger to the future. It is well to see and realize the high possibilities of our nature. It is encouraging to all high en- deavor. The prophet should always be before his time. The time is coming, undoubtedly, when all will be secured to eternal salvation by the inher- ited grace of childhood at nativity. The power of hereditary evil is to become just so broken by Messiah's reign. And if we are looking already too much to that future — to the prospective glory of the race, we may be pardoned, at least, for ap- pearing a little too much in a hurry, while the great truth we are here laboring at is gradually 70 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES developed and illustrated in all its supreme and fundamental importance. At all events, the reader will follow me on to further and more comprehen- sive details, and to the final conclusion of the whole matter. I overlook not here the original germ-soul which came forth from the Creator, and which, long pre- vious to its incarnation in the flesh, was distin- guished for its specific character, and designed to act a particular part in the world. Earthly pa- rents do not create souls, but the germs are passed through and modified by them. Statesmen, Philos- ophers, Poets, Artists, Geniuses of every grade and character, with every individual soul of man, must be contemplated as pre-fashioned and pre-impressed with a distinctive form and tendency, which nat- ural birth cannot wholly overpower, and which, at some time or other, after all the ravages and de- formities of evil, must shine forth in them in all their predestined glory and brightness. (Though, some may have to pass through the awful expe- rience of the second death.) But still, this must not blind us to the truth of how much natural gen- eration accomplishes, even in this specific purpose of the. Creator. What He has designed He accom- OF BUMJ.N PERFECTION. 71 plishes by certain means. AdcI natural generation is a part of these means. Our agency co-operates with his agency. And here, in a pre-eminent de- gree, I say, is the proximate ground and organic foundation of humanity. Here is the natural and ultimate plane for the operations of the Divine Spirit in the regeneration. And how much we may alter that, or interfere with it, by our observ- ance or non-observance of the pre-natal laws — that is the very question. Every one can see how great is our agency in the production of some marked and occasional specimens of humanity, and bow strong is the tendency to follow out the original bent of genius or disposition, be it good or evil, mighty or imbecile. There is a certain amount of fate in it. That is to say, a Socrates cannot convert himself into a Nero, nor a Newton into a fool. And the proportions hold with all human beings. We may even say, with the excep- tions and qualifications soon to be pointed out — for no truth is mqre conspicuous — that there is more of character, more of virtue, more of influ- ence and power, more of every thing which goes to constitute the greatness and grandeur of this world, dependent upon what a man may receive in 72 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES his pre-natal conditions, than all that education or the Spirit of God can frequently do for him in a whole lifetime. If you do not believe this, look around you. Who are our most influential men, our most eloquent men, our great writers, teach- ers, statesmen, philosophers, poets, and divines? They are men, chiefly, who have been born so, and for whom education and regeneration had a deep and splendid ground prepared for them in the or- ganism of the infant. And all the little runts of humanity — men of no force, no talent, no promi- nent importance in the community, cumberers of the "ground frequently — whence and how came they? Let nature in her powerful laboratories answer. But it is to be distinctly understood here, that when we speak of the character or quality given to the soul at birth, we invariably include all that which has been accumulated by the education, training, regeneration, and all the discipline of the parentage and ancestry, and transmitted to the offspring. For if we do not bear this continually in mind, we shall be in danger of ascribing too much to the mere natural character, and not enough to the more spiritual activities of the life OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 73 itself. Personal discipline and experience is in- deed a vast and solemn matter. We can hardly overstate its importance ; but what I wish to press upon the reader's attention is, how all this runs into the natural constitution of the children who are born from out its influences. There are two ways of speaking of this subject, viz., individually, and collectively or in the race. Individually, it is undoubtedly true that the soul frequently receives more of all that which gives it character and influ- ence, and insures its safety in after-life, from its natural parentage — from what is organized into it, (and other influences soon to be mentioned) than it does from all the influences of education, or all training and discipline afterwards. There are many exceptions. Education and discipline undoubtedly do more for some, who are fortunate enough to receive it, than their natural characters do. Many that would be nothing, or in great ob- scurity, without an education, arrive to eminence with one. But allowing for all the exceptions, and considering too that the best native qualities can be educated, as well as the poorest, we must cer- tainly allow the marked force and impetus of the original character, and the sure success with which 74 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES it marches on against all obstacles, which no mere education could ever fit one to do without it. And sometimes in spite of the grossest lack of educa- tion. And how often too will it secure of itself an education, which the inheritance of mere medi- ocre powers will fail to do. Granting, then, the force of this original character in the individual, still, in the race, (and frequently of course in the individual) the effect of education and regenera- tion must be allowed to be pre-eminent. For with- out this training and discipline of mankind collec- tively, we could not have these high and improved results at birth. This is one way in which human improvement is held and secured in the race, with- out which, each individual, as to his native capa- city, would be as though no one had lived before him. The whole education and culture of man- kind is, in fact, in a constitutional way, rolled into the substance and organism of the soul at birth, each generation becoming more refined and per- fect from what has preceded it. This, of course, when no counteracting and adverse influences have operated to obstruct it. And in this view, education assumes an importance, irrespective of its more immediate effects upon the individual life, OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 75 which is grand and conspicuous in the cause of the elevation and advancement of mankind. There is, in fact, a continued circle of mighty and recip- rocal influence. Generation and regeneration, na- tive character and highest culture, become rolled into each other, with every advancing wave of hu- manity. This is what we would have the reader bear in mind whenever we speak of original and native character. This is the importance we would attach to education, and this also is the meaning we would give to natural endowments. And while, in the individual, his native and origi- nal constitution is so frequently the prominent thing which carries him to fortune and success, or to degradation and ruin, and which cannot be fully outgrown or overpowered by the most assiduous efforts afterwards, (in this world at least) yet, in the race, sometimes in the course of a few genera- tions, education, discipline, and regeneration can overpower it — can change and perfect the whole organism, and insure to us a humanity, even from the mother's womb, of a pure, and beautiful, and heavenly origin. And the individual cases of a highly operative Christianity in the course of a single life are of course included. 76 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES We do not, then, commit the error that some of our modern reformers are prone to, when they ascribe to the mere natural birth more importance than they do to the spiritual, and more than all other influences put together, in all time. When they make such assertions, which they do upon the conspicuous facts of great talents, genius, and moral power, communicated at nativity, they do not consider the possibility of the loss of all this — for a long period in eternity at least — from the tremendous overbearing surge of evil which makes such headway in all of us. They do not consider, neither do they understand, the neces- sity of spiritualization and cleansing by the spe- cific application of a divine power, and the gifts, for this purpose, of holy anointing and outpour- ing from above. It is in the exercise of this power that so many eminently widked men and women are sometimes visited by miraculous grace, and from some tender and susceptible qualities in their own sin-incrusted spirits, start out afresh, and rise in the new life, and make rapid strides in glory, far out-distancing many others in the race, who have received better natural organizations, and, according to all we have said, might be ex- OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 77 pected to start first, and keep in the advance col- umns. These are the exceptions to what we take for the general method. These are the special tro- phies of divine grace, showing how great are the supernatural powers above us, and how they can, when God chooses, overpower the more common and regular course of law, and assert the new life with supreme control. Though of course there is some law in all of it, and an unseen philosophy for- ever. And we should say that, all other things be- ing equal, those who receive the best natural organisms at birth, the largest amount of heredi- tary good, were invariably most likely to experi- ence the assistance from above. We, however, expect mor,e of these apparently exceptional in- stances. We know not why we may not look for a special dispensation, more marked than usual, to the suffering and the needy, the poor and lowly, in the great day of God's power, in the crisis which seems so near at hand. Let God select, whenever He can, and thus abase the pride of man. Now, in all such cases, and in fact in any case of spiritual salvation where, otherwise, ruin for ages in eternity might have occurred, what avails 1* 78 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES it to inherit splendid natural organisms, and mighty talents and genius, only to make the ruin more conspicuous? Which, under these circum- stances, is the most important — the natural birth, or the new birth of the Spirit? What doth it profit a man, to gain the whole world, whether in wealth or talents, and lose his own soul ? Be it observed, too, that the very way to secure these good natural births — these noble inherited organisms, is to educate and regenerate the human race after birth. What folly is it, to talk so much of a mere birth and beginning — a solid, splendid foundation of natural character, and to magnify this as more important than all other influences that can be brought to bear upon it afterwards, when this very character is so largely the fruit and consequence of all this stir, and activity, and exertion in the human race, assisted from the skies, which, generation after generation, becomes rolled into the substance and organism of man at his nativity ! " A good first birth is the main thing " — say these reformers. Yes, but how does this come about ? By ages on ages of regenera- tion and improvement in the race after birth ! But if rightly considered as the most important OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 79 starting-place, as the crisis which may be made spiritual and clean, as the foundation of God in the human soul for all the after glories and graces which He may ingraft upon it, and which may become so pure as to secure eternal salvation from the very beginning, then it is an important thing indeed. Then there is no birth which can come after, of which it can be said, it is any more impor- tant. Both, then, become rolled as two spiritual crises into one, — one grand and superb character, all of God and his Holy Spirit, — the divinity and nature meeting and blending in human unison. Such will be the music of the age to come. Such indeed we may commence and approximate now. This is what I would make prominent ; and it is for this purpose, and to show the control we have over this human crisis, that this little volume is sent out into the world. Much may indeed be done for this first and nat- ural birth at any time, without waiting for the future. Much may be done now, and always, to secure the best natural characters. But the chief of this is by a more proper attention being given to the marriages of mankind, and by states of preparation before conception, and during the 80 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES whole process of gestation. Of these we shall speak more largely in the sequel. All the rest is from regeneration and improvement before and after birth, in the race, and in the individual. Another distinction may be noticed here. We allude now to those unconscious influences which come to the very young infant, both by influx from heaven, and from parents, nurses, and all its surroundings. The truth is, if the child had no education at all, but was left in utter neglect, it would grow up little better than a wild animal. Its hereditary evils are so great that they would be likely to overpower the good which was of nature only, and produce a growth of passion and depravity scarcely human. God has provided against this by ordering the pure influxes of heaven to flow into the new-born being, so that it is not in poetic phrase only, but a sober, literal truth, that " heaven lies about us in our infancy," in a special and most intimate manner. The hereditary evils not yet being active in the infant, "their angels," who "always behold the face of the Father in heaven," can draw very near to them in their state of innocence, and infuse into them an abundant measure of the pure, celestial OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 81 influences. And what they receive in this way, and from the kind attentions and loving caresses of parents and nurses, is of immense service to their future character, without which the mere natural endowments they receive at birth would not preserve them from downfall and ruin. It is these remains of things celestial, not only of first infancy, but of after-childhood, which secure to them a successful foundation for their spiritual regeneration. Then again there is the possibility of what can be done by a thorough and systematic work of ed- ucation and regeneration from the very beginning. It is impossible to say how great the triumph would be over the worst and most hopeless cases, by beginning very early, in a more patient and perse- vering way than has ever been done yet, and con- tinuing with unabated vigor. Whether the most malformed and perverted organisms could be en- tirely overcome as to their prominent defects, and the children reared in at least passable and respect- able virtue and intelligence — this is the question. We know that under the present general system they are not, but are generally doomed to infamy and ruin. What might be done is a very powerful 82 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES question. We do not believe that every thing can be done that some people imagine, but we are quite ready to allow the most favorable construc- tion of this theory, and to accord to such educa- tion all that can possibly be claimed for it. The case of Fenelon with the Duke of Burgundy is an example of what may be effected in later life. The young Prince, being heir apparent to the Kingdom of France, had the most assiduous training be- stowed upon him by this excellent man of the church, and with the most signal and triumphant success. The Prince was a very hard and difficult case to manage. In his earliest youth, as history says of him, he showed symptoms of character suf- ficient to excite the deepest fears. He was natu- rally cruel, ferocious, inordinately proud, unfeeling and irritable, exhibiting his spite even towards in- animate objects. To his own brothers he felt no common fraternal bond of attachment, while he ac- counted mankind in general as mere atoms, not united to him by any resemblance. But by the thorough and persistent efforts of Fenelon, he was transformed to a mild, amiable, humane, and mod- est person, the subject of admiration to the whole nation. Other instances of even more marked OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 83 transformation might perhaps be given. So that mere natural character, produced by birth and or- ganization, must not be allowed to overpower our perceptions of what a mighty and well-ordered discipline can effect upon it; and it is not from any disposition to disparage the latter that we seek to make the former so prominent. Were we writing a treatise on Education, we should give to that subject all the prominence it deserves. But surely we need not suffer our eyes to be diverted from the important truths of the pre-natal condi- tions, and causes too that we can control before birth, by any admissions of the power and effect- iveness of post-natal instrumentalities. Offsetting the above case of successful educa- tion, we may here adduce an example of an oppo- site character. A family in which the authoress of the work before mentioned* was extremely inti- mate, affords the following instance. " The father was a man of talent, but had, until the age of forty, made pleasure his pursuit, and lived only for him- self. At that period, having inherited a fine estate which he wished to transmit to his posterity, he reformed and married. * Intellectual and Moral Qualities Transmissible. 84 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES " Although a highly educated man, Mr. A appeared to possess no knowledge whatever of the conditions necessary to be fulfilled, in order to in- sure a healthy and strong-minded progeny ; and was guided in his choice more by the animal pro- pensities and selfish sentiments, than by enlight- ened intellect. Hie dissipated life, having brought him in contact with women of loose morals, had in- duced a mistrust of those who live much in society; he, therefore, chose what he termed ' an unsophisti- cated child of nature ; ' but in fact, an immature, half-educated girl of sixteen. Immediately after his marriage he retired to his estate, remotely sit- uated, the neighborhood of which contained very few inhabitants with whom his refined and culti- vated taste could assimilate. His active tempera- ment and versatility of talent, however, found suf- ficient excitement in improving his newly acquired property, in frequent excursions to the metropolis, and in anticipating the birth of an heir whom his ardent imagination invested with the beauty and grace of its mother, and the talents and enthusi- asm of its father ; to whose dawning intellect he proposed devoting his leisure hours, his scholastic lore, and his knowledge of the world. OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 85 " But alas ! all those bright anticipations were doomed to bitter disappointment. For his youth- ful wife, having few tastes and pursuits in common with her husband, was necessarily left much alone ; her mental faculties being little exercised, her physical system immature, the brain of her child was imperfectly developed, and his system weakly organized ; hence the efforts of his father to be- stow a liberal education were fruitless ; and after years of anxiety, vexation, and mortification, the unhappy father was constrained to admit the men- tal imbecility of his son." How evident it is, therefore, that there must be something to educate, both in moral as in intellect- ual culture, or all our efforts must be fruitless. "We cannot make brains, nor manufacture spirit, very extensively, after the child is born. We can, however, to. a certain extent, and we can turn what we have into more or less of heavenly order. And while we are disposed to allow the largest influ- ence and the most miraculous and heaven-aiding success to the cases like Fenelon with the young Prince, and many others which might be produced, yet we must never forget that God required even the Messiah himself to be begotten, not of the flesh 86 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES ■ — not to descend from any earthly lineage on the father's side, for this would have so entailed the evils of many generations upon the inmost soul of the Son of God, that they never could have been expelled, even by divine power, so as to have glo- rified the whole humanity, (different from any mere human being) and presented the Divine Man to an adoring world.* And in reference to all these human cases, there is one thing we wish to keep specially prominent here ; and that is, that notwithstanding all the heavenly influences upon infancy and childhood, — the unconscious and powerful moulding of the character in this tender and susceptible state, — and notwithstanding all that education does mani- festly do, and the wonders besides that it might do — heaven only knows how great, — yet still, the best of these natural organisms are as capable of all this as the poorest: and if so much can be done with the poorest, how much more can be done with the best ! — showing, after all is said, the pri- mary importance of securing good native and ori- ginal constitutions for the groundwork of all that * See, for a full illustration of this Christian doctrine, the author's work — " Compendium and Life of Swedtnborg," Section 4th, pp. 25-53. OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 87 can be built upon them. And who would not rather build upon splendid and magnificent organ- isms — the foundations of God in a clean, pure, ample, harmonious natural humanity, than upon souls crushed and mutilated from birth, full of all manner of obstruction? Nay, would not heaven itself, generally speaking, look down with more complacency upon such souls, and open more fully into them from infancy? Let us be careful, then, in our estimate of the comparative importance of native and acquired abilities, that we do not at- tribute undue influence to either. With these ex- ceptions and qualifications, we trust we may now go on without danger of error, with the main sub- ject under consideration. And be it observed again here, that we do not forget the distinction between what the original germ-soul was in its emanation from the eternal divine essence, in its passage through the heavens, and what it has acquired frpm the natural parent- age and the orderly or disorderly observance of the laws of generation. The differences which we see, after all educational and regenerative influences are deducted, are not, all of them, the consequences of pre-natal conditions in the immediate parent- 88 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES age, nor the remote ancestry. Human souls dif- fered in their germs and first beginnings from all past eternity — if we may use the word eternity in regard to them. (I wish I could give the testi- mony of the Seers here, but it would not meet the purposes of this treatise.) They differed — they must have differed, in their first emanations from the Divinity. The soul of a Shakspeare, it would seem, must have had something more in it than that of an ordinary or inferior person, in its first emergement from the infinite Essence. And yet, when we see how the abuse of nature's laws even in the immediate parentage, can quench all the light and glory of the spirit, and turn God's image into a shattered, vacant, melancholy idiot, let us not be too ready to assign any limits to the influence of good pre-natal observances on the part of the im- mediate parentage. I say, we know not how great, or how far-reaching, is our agency here, nor the tremendous responsibility that rests upon our act of begetting a new being. When we think of the marriages too, that we have in our power to regu- late ! What masses of filth — what reeking, rot- ting humanity, born from mere lust of the animal nature, in the sties and pens and cellars — OF human perfection: 89 heaven forgive me ! — for I might as well say — opulent and princely chambers of our great cities 1 What can we do for all these people? What can we educate or train them to be ? Much, by the work of the philanthropist. Great improvements indeed, by faithful missionary labor. And especially if we could take them from infancy, which, alas ! for the most part we cannot. But we might as well im- agine the scene changed. Imagine all this sad and sorrowful humanity — this heritage of filth, to be the clean and orderly offspring of a sanctified and holy marriage, and the best production of a systematic obedience to the pre-natal laws and conditions. How would education, and Christiani- ty, and every heavenly influence come as it were voluntarily to its own, seeking by a happy affinity to lift its subjects to the skies ! Instead of an effort to force the healing and blessed influences upon them, it would rather require an effort to prevent them; for as genius will tend to the devel- opment and manifestation of its own peculiarities, so will moral and spiritual proclivities arise with an inherent force, and seek the corresponding qualities of their own native Fountain. But it is impossible to conceive how human 8* 90 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES beings of the very lowest order — the worst and most imbruted of men, born like swine in the pest- houses of wickedness, can arise by any process, natural or supernatural, to the supremest heights of virtue and perfection. And yet they should be able to do so, to constitute with full force an argu- ment against our main position. What will not apply in an extreme case will not apply in any. The slightest influences must be the same, in pro- portion, as the greatest, and vice versd. See, then, the result. A man or a woman born so, unless very happily educated and cared for, must to a great degree live so. They may be converted and saved, but the most likely thing is, that they will die as they were born, mere sensualists, cor- rupters and corrupting. Even granting that the most unfavorably born could, by any appliances, be turned to a decidedly Christian and honorable course, as some of them are, yet certain it is they must remain comparatively low in the scale of per- fection, and the law extends even into eternity. An idiot born certainly does not bloom out into a Shakspeare, or a Bacon, immediately after death ; and we should think not for a long time after. And the same law holds in morals, and in propor- OF human perfection: 91 tion, with every one. Great things may be ac- complished, undoubtedly, — marvellous transforma- tions may take place in the spiritual world, when all obstructions of the flesh, of materiality, and surrounding circumstances are removed from the soul ; and many that are here idiotic and inferior may expand there, by time and culture, into won- derful amplitude and beauty. But is it not gen- erally recognized that what is first implanted and first shaped, by conception and birth into this nat- ural world, remains so to a certain degree forever? The same as the effect of a man's whole lifetime here — his experience as a moral agent and actor, stamps him morally for the life beyond the grave. There are born poets, and born mathematicians, and mighty intellects of various character. It is rational to suppose that they preserve their dis- tinctiveness — that is to say — they do not drop into fools and pygmies by passing into the spiritual world. If it is true in intellect, in any one depart- ment of intellect, it is true in morals. A good seed, a good germ; it is impossible, without gross blundering, to raise a bad stock out of it. And so it is impossible, with an injured or inferior seed, to raise a fair and full production. It is true in our 92 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES wheat-fields and orchards ; it is equally true with our children. Now therefore I say, although a man may be converted and saved, (whatever theory of salva- tion any one may adopt) who has received ■ his earthly existence under the very worst conditions and circumstances, and that may be therefore to him the most important and hopeful period of his life, yet if this same man had been born morally as our great intellectual geniuses are intellectu- ally, or if the utmost possible perfection had been secured to his native organism by careful observ- ance of the pre-natal laws, he might have been so much in advance of his position and attainments at any given time, as to cast in the shade all that he could then have gloried in. And what shall I say further ? — that it would have been impossible that he should ever have gone the downward course ? I will say, that for all you or I know about it, it would have been. Nay, that nothing is more rational than that it should have been. Could Shakspeare have possibly been a fool, or a block- head, with that splendid native endowment? Could Bacon have possibly led an obscure life, once born as he was ? Could Franklin have possi- OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 93 bly been a weak and drivelling character, with that magnificent brain? He needed an education. But such characters find for themselves an educa- tion. Could Swedenborg have possibly been a murderer or a villain ? Could Washington, How- ard, Melancthon, Fenelon, and a host of others, have possibly been among the ruflians and outcasts of humanity, after the splendid endowments of their first birth? My answer is, that the Provi- dence which required the peculiar mission of these men, required a definite, original organism at birth, as well as education and training after- wards. I know not what certain nice metaphysi- cal casuists may say against this presentation, but I say, after making all allowances for a certain, un- mistakable, practical freedom of the will, I am compelled to recognize a Destiny among men — a destiny in every thing. There is not a sparrow that falls to the ground, not a single motion of the obscurest human mind, not a particle of flying dust, not the least step, or movement, or exertion of any kind put forth, but is just as much under law and sovereign destiny, as the rolling of the planets, or the rising and falling of the tides. Freedom is practical and rational, but not absolute 94 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES in the sense of entire origination of any act of the mind. Every thing has freedom in proportion to its nature — one thing no more than another. Man has no more freedom in proportion to his nature, than any thing beneath him. But man is higher, mope complex, and his motions more difficult to be traced. Man has reason; therefore he has free- dom according to that reason. But even that rea- son has its laws, as inevitable and necessary as any thing else. There is as much necessity, or certainty, in choice as in no choice ; that is to say, as much in voluntary efforts as in involuntary, only of a different kind. A man must choose that which, all things considered, is the most desirable to him at the time. He cannot choose any thing else. And inasmuch as we are obliged to recog- nize first settings out, periods of decision, turning- points, moments of destiny in every human being, so it must be recognized, in perfect consistency with all Christian truth, but always with the ex- ceptions and qualifications before stated, that this first birth, and the fetal life that precedes it, is or may be the thing — the event, most important and most decisive in the whole earthly history of indi- vidual man. No one will certainly misunderstand OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 95 me now, even though the cases of absolute spirit- ual security may be but one to a million. I say, there is this possibility in the human race, and may be a large approximation to it now. And the cases of horrible ruin and misery which so fre- quently occur in society, and which run far into eternity too, I believe, I know, are traceable many times to this terrible depravity organized into a man from his very infancy. Bear with me till I illustrate and make clear my position. I pity hu- manity, more than I blame it, in the ordinary sense of that word, for the terrible fate that hangs over it ; but this pity is greatly comforted by the assur- ance that all will be well at last. Look ye, broth- ers ! If, after such a birth, a man becomes a " devil " who might have become an angel, then, in spite of all argumentation, and the most misunder- stood mysteries of religion and the Bible, I find the chief, the most radical cause of it, in this fatal organism of the baby's brain, spiritually and physi- cally considered. After that, perverted education and training. But with a good first birth, the whole thing might have been prevented. Stop, now ! Be not too hasty in drawing Con- clusions. Say not that this is to overthrow the 96 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES whole moral nature of man — to abjure all free- dom, and consign him to a ruthless and unmerciful fate.- For, whatever the writer may believe con- cerning the freedom of the will, which, for want of space, and not being necessary, one way or the other, to the main subject, we cannot here go into at full length, — be it observed that it is not said that this inbred constitutional evil was such that the man could not resist it if he would. It is only said that if, after birth, a man becomes a devil who might have become an angel, the chief and most radical cause of it is recognized in the infant organism. You may say he might have resisted this tendency to evil. Perhaps he might. Call it then the occasion of sin. Still, if this evil had not existed, there would have been no sin. It matters not to the argument here, whether he could have resisted or not. I only say, the fact that this evil was in him was the cause or occasion of his weak- ness, temptation and fall. And was it'tiot? Had he been perfectly pure and holy, with no tendency to evil, would it have been possible, for him to have gone that way ? It must have been so even with Adam, or whoever the first sinner was. " Subject to vanity " from the first — was he not ? If not, in OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 97 some degree or other, — if there was no hidden germ of inclination from the supreme good, it would require, I think, more than a theologian to account philosophically for his fall. What a matter of sim- plicity this is 1 In the name of common sense, is it any thing, can it be any thing, but the stuff that is in us, that causes us to assent to evil? Fortunately for the subject, it is not whether a man has power to resist or not ; the simple truth is, if he yields, it is on account of this inborn corruption. Or, call it imperfection. Or, it may have been at first, igno- rance, unsuspecting simplicity. No matter what it was, it was something in the man — in the organ- ism. Now therefore I say, he that is best fortified with a noble organism at birth, all other circum- stances being equal, is least liable to fall ; and he that conies into the world with the poorest, most malformed, most animal and brutal structure, with least of the spiritual and divine, is most likely to realize all the sad and bitter consequences of sin and misery. This, I say, is the chief and most rad- ical cause of it. At least it is the occasion which makes it inevitable. And if we see a certain sort of fate in it, we must not reflect too despondently upon the Creator, for, 98 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES though sin and misery extend their dominion far over the tract of eternity, we must remember that God is good, and good only ; and that even evil is but an instrument in his hands to increase and magnify the amount of that good, with the ut- most impartiality, to all who experience it. The Devil himself — the Prince of all the rebels, if there be one, (and I am strongly inclined to think there is, though not of Milton's pattern; shall finally, after the second death, see his own existence and mission in the light of an all-comprehending and beneficent wisdom which shall shame all the patch- work theology in the land. Forgive me if it is not so. But we must not depart from our main subject. With a good first birth, I say, -all this train of evil might have been prevented. " But how so ? " in- quires one. " Can you have people born better than were our first parents? Can man come into the world with a more perfect moral and spiritual con- stitution than Adam had ? And yet he fell. What is to prevent the same catastrophe from occurring again, but such an operation after birth, from the supernatural heavens, as shall secure him forever?" Here indeed is involved an interesting point in OF HUMAN PERFECTION: 99 theology. And we reply by saying that it is un- doubtedly the plan of the divine providence to produce a humanity on this planet, in the far-off ages, which shall be so grounded in the spirit and the life of Christ, and so settled on the eternal foundations, as to be utterly impregnable to evil and all its charms. Yes, by the very experience through which the human race is carried, all the way from Adam, to have it firmer set in moral rec- titude, in the whole natural and spiritual mind, with regeneration so perfect as to be absolutely invulnerable to Satan, and beyond the possibility of fall ! And this is no wild dream of ours. It is the grand possibility of the human race, when Christ shall have triumphed completely over all the world — made a thorough and universal work — abolished sin, and brought in everlasting right- eousness. It must be remembered that our first parents, and their immediate descendants, were in the infancy of the human race, tender, inexperienced, more like children than grown men ; and it was the great God's providence that they should pass out of that comparatively infantile state, and by the conflicts and battles with evil, know what it is, put it away, 100 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES come into more external states of mind, even into the sensual and outermost degree of it, and so live in the enjoyment of entire nature as to be the full- grown, manly representatives of the highest possi- ble human perfection. All this could not be with- out evil. But evil having accomplished its mission, and the human race re-instated in more than its original glory, it cannot fall again, for the Lord in his Divine Humanity has made provision against that, and on this Kock we stand forever, securely blessed, beyond the touch of sin. So that the futile objection is done entirely away with, that a good first birth could not prevent this train of human evil. It could not at the creation, but it can in the redemption. It could not in Adam, but it can in Christ. It could not with our first parents, for they had not the experience that we have ; but after having tasted of the bitter fruits of evil, and put it away from us, and become strong in Christ, and gone on to perfection, there is no longer any falling away to sin. There is the possi- bility of complete redemption, both of soul and body. Glory be to God Almighty — Father, Son and Holy Spirit ; and everlasting praises to the Lord of glory forever I OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 101 Now, although it he myriads of ages before this consummation is fully realized, yet the principle of it we can see now. We can realize in part now. And we can so order the births of our children, by purity and wisdom in our own souls, and espe- cially by suitable marriages, and an accumulation of the heavenly life in the lineage of successive families, as to impart to them, from very infancy, a principle of saving efficacy, even an organism of controlling power, which shall be more to them than all the preaching and theology of Christendom can effect for them in any crisis afterwards. It may even be to them as the second birth of the Spirit, which plants them securely in the Kingdom of heaven. And still the efforts after this are in- dispensable and inestimable, and can be reckoned only in eternity. Education, even, can effect mira- cles. And as before said, what may not an early, infant education do ? We cannot conceive of the power which lies hidden in the parental sphere, especially in the mind and heart of the mother, over the tender susceptibilities of the infant. As soon as the child is born, it is in constant reception of influences, invisible and real, which are very much characterized by the prevailing disposition 9* 102 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES of the mother. The quality of her spirit enters even into the milk which is drawn from her. An angel only can see the difference between the sus- tenance furnished by a regenerate, Christian, pure and heavenly attempered woman, and one whose very flesh is corrupted with evil, and all the sources of whose life flow with secret poison. Then there is the spiritual sphere which envelops the child. The very touch, the looks, the voice, are all potent with character and influence. And by beginning early (we cannot begin too early), with such les- sons of instruction as the child can be made to feel, to see, to sense in many ways; — by instilling a quick sense of right and wrong; by checking all bad tendencies and encouraging all good ones ; by patience and perseverance and faithfulness, with a deep sense of parental responsibility; and in successive years, by following this child up with what might be done, and what ought to be done, and what, some day far in the future, will be done ; — what marvels of transformation may be ac- complished — what floods of iniquity checked and thrown back forever ! " Oh that mine head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears," if weep- ing would do any good, for this culpable, shameful, OF HUMAN PERFECTION. 103 heaven-daring neglect of parents towards their own children ! Yes, the influence of education is acknowledged, and we never can make too much of it. It is even possible for a splendidly organ- ized child, with every natural encouragement and promise, in his brain, his body, his temperament, his noble soul — it is possible for such a one, by neglect or perversity of education, to be reared into a monster of wickedness, and perhaps to find his way to the gallows ; while an unfortunate and pitiful specimen of native organic depravity, by such a training as might be given, would ascend by direct gradations to heights of honor and useful- ness. But what does this prove ? Only, that if the superior organism should have the same advanta- ges, the native and primitive superiority would also keep the advance through the whole course of life. For it must be remembered that education may as well be bestowed on the best as on the worst materials ; and this being the case, and all othep things being equal, where is the period of highest and most radical importance? Between conception and birth, most evidently. The spirit- ual qualifications and exceptions before mentioned the reader will of course bear in mind. VI. REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE BY NATURAL DE- SCENT TO THE CHILDREN OF REGENERATE PARENTS. REGENERATION by the Divine Spirit may indeed go so far, either in this world or the nest, as to effect the removal of all hereditary evil. This is its special work. But what I would have understood is, that even this work is trans- mitted by natural descent to the children of regen- erate parents. And they are born, not merely with good natural qualities, but, in so far as they par- take of the renewed temper, disposition, and affec- tions of the parentage, may as truly be said to be born of the Spirit, as when the divine grace de- scends in its most copious effusions upon the hearts of its immediate recipients. And here may be laid open a point in theology interesting to many believers, who are yet too apt to believe only, and in a narrow way, and not to see, with a wide ex- 104 REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE. 105 tended vision, the truths of a beautiful philosophy. It explains how it is that so many excellent men, of high Christian attainment, preachers and theolo- gians, frequently, of great eminence and piety, have become anxious and troubled on account of not being able to fix upon any particular time of their own conversion. And the fear has wavered in their minds, from this cause, whether they have really experienced the necessary change. This cause might indeed exist even if the change was wrought entirely in their own living, conscious ex- perience. For it is not necessary that we should be able so to time this experience, as to designate it by the year, the month, or the day. Influences which are so gradual may surely accomplish their silent work, and much more effectually, frequently, without our consciousness of sudden gusts, or pen- tecostal powers. But when it is reflected that the change so much relied on is not necessarily wrought wholly in our living experience as men, but may have been in part the heritage of a gra- cious birth from a regenerate parentage, which kept the sacred current flowing and widening all the way through life, it is apparent at once that many a favored mortal may have received so much 106 REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE even at his nativity, that nature itself was all redo- lent with the Spirit, and the consciousness of time thoroughly obscured by the light of eternal reali- ties. Here indulge a passage or two from the Rev. Dr. Bushnell : "The children of such a stock are born, not in the flesh only, or the mere natural life of their parentage ; but they are born, in a sense most emphatic, of the Spirit also ; for this parentage is differed, as we are supposing, age by age, from its own mere nature in Adam, by the inhabiting grace of a supernatural salvation." Again; speaking , of the possibilities of this grace — " The child is not to have the sad entail of any sensuality, or excess, or distempered passion upon him. The heritage of love, peace, order, conti- nence and holy courage is to be his. He is not to be morally weakened beforehand, in the womb of folly, by the frivolous, worldly, ambitious expecta- tions of parents to be, consecrating all this non- sense in him. His affinities are to be raised by the godly expectations, rather, and prayers that go before ; by the steady and good aims of their in- dustry, by the great impulse of their faith, by the brightness of their hope, by the sweet continence BY NATURAL DESCMNT. 107 of their religiously pure love in Christ. Born, thus, of a parentage that is ordered in all right- eousness, and maintains the right use of every- thing, especially the right use of nature and mar- riage, the child will have just so much of heaven's life and order in him beforehand, as have become fixed properties in the type of his parentage ; and by this ante-natal nurture, will be set off in a way of noblest advantage, as respects all safety and success, in the grand experiment he has come into the world to make." — Christian Nurture. How manifestly true and admirable all this is 1 To what extent this work of purifying the natural humanity may be carried, is a question which may meet with different answers, according to the faith and reason of men. Why not to the utter extinc- tion, some day far in the future ■■ — in the great day of God's perfect work upon the earth, of the evil he- reditary principle ? This is the faith of the writer. We see no more reason for the endless continuance of moral evil in this world, than we do for the same continuance of poverty, sickness, or any other evil. We believe this world is destined to become a perfect heaven in ultimates. We believe that all the interests of virtue will eventually be as safe, 108 REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE and its triumphs as glorious, without evil as with it. But not without difficulties, struggles, and the overcoming of obstacles — which we could imagine as well in heaven itself. But there is no call for amplification here. We know very well what the hereditary now is, and the weight of oppression it entails upon us : — that the tendency is so sure, and often inevitable in its operation, as, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, to carry its possessor frequently to the heights of heaven, or sink him to the depths of hell. Not for the hereditary in itself, but for what is voluntarily acted from it. We see, at least, that it is so in this world, and we have reason to believe it will be measurably so in the world to come. I know that, in a certain sense, a man may be said to receive no punishment in the spiritual world for his hereditary evil. That is to say, as Swedenborg would perhaps say, he receives there no arbitrary, judicial inflictions from an ex- ternal source, for these evils ; but he must surely suffer, for a time~at least, there as well as here, for a diminished capacity, a discordant, angularized, un- fortunate nature, and the necessary outbreaks to which this nature is liable ; and it is the parents B7 NATURAL DESCENT. 109 who are more accountable than he is, for what they have organized into him at his first birth. Now, therefore, seeing what this hereditary na- ture is — how it spreads and magnifies itself over two worlds, we may surely demand the most se- rious consideration of it. The great problem of to-day is, how to inaugurate a new style of human- ity at birth. The Christ child — born of the Di- vine Spirit, not of impure lust, — the second ad- vent of the Lord in a new first birth. For, be it well considered, this second birth of the Christian nowhere gives such hopeful and substantial fruits, as when, by hereditary descent and special efforts to that end, it culminates in a beautiful and com- paratively pure child, fresh from the Creator's hands. And if Christians would only see this, and think more of their offspring as well as their own souls, and so behave, with what a tremendous im- petus would this second birth be invested, going down to the generations of men, and springing up in noble armies of God's elect, to do battle with the hosts of hell, and " beat down Satan under our feet " ! I repeat, then, without fear of contradiction, that all the preaching and theology of Christendom, 10 110 REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE cannot step in after this fatal first birth, to produce the glories and wonders that might have been pro- duced before it, and reflected with incomparable magnificence and splendor after it. If they can, let Shakspeares, Bacons, Miltons, Washingtons, and Swedenborgs, be produced from Ann Street and the Five Points. No, no ; even the natural character — the genius of a mighty mind, affords an equal argument for the spiritual of this subject ; for re- generation goes down the channels of a natural humanity, glorifying all its faculties, as the blood of ancestry runs through the families of man. So, then, the clergyman has his office, and it is a glo- rious one : and the Physiologist, Psychologist, and Philosopher has his. Clergymen have too much overlooked the order of nature : — " Nature, that never swerves nor bends, To suititselfto sacred whims." Conceiving of spiritual things as quite discon- nected from physical things, — having no systematic pneumatology, or philosophy of spirit at all, — un- able to tell how it differs from matter and how it does not, save in its manifestations and effects, — and seeing not the organism of the soul as well BY NATURAL DESCENT. Ill as of the body, and how it is transmitted by heredi- tary descent in and with the body, and modified by a subtle and potent psychology there ; they set a value upon the new birth, the second birth, as en- tirely disconnected from the first. Or, if we do hear in the churches, of the " children of believing parents," it is faint, and has a dull, ecclesiastical sound, and is almost entirely destitute of the deep importance of the subject. It is a mischievous heresy, fraught with danger to the soul. It is not alone in the marts of business — in the halls of pleasure — in the resorts of wicked men, and in the enticements of youth and of the senses, that perdition opens its gates and hurries off its thou- sands. Damnation is at the birth of the infant I and the great God's salvation shines forth nowhere more conspicuously than here. Nowhere, more powerfully, does his Spirit operate upon human nature, than in this most miraculous first birth. One is as miraculous as the other. They are both under sovereign law. Whoso is not prepared to preach this has no commission from highest sources. The Bishop may lay his hands upon his head, but futilely. We have a more authoritative " establish- ment" — a higher and more demonstrative "sue- 112 REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE cession," here in our plain men and women. The head of the infant, the body, the fine integuments of his physical organism, the very quality and structure of his soul, are determined by a pre-natak process, and here are the scriptures of GodVtruth to man. We may do much, I have said, by careful "watching, faithful nurturing, training and unfold- ing; but all our efforts are now limited and condi- tioned, both in degree and kind, by this fated or- ganism which lies here before us. This is the fruit of our obedience or disobedience to the laws established. Not ours only ; the people before the flood were engaged in the production of that or- ganism; and the thousand generations to come cannot entirely undo what the thousand previous generations have been doing. Eternity itself will witness to this act ; and the very angels of heaven stand, some higher and some lower, for what the earth has contributed to their quality and genius. The most important question, then, I say, — the question of questions, is how to inaugurate a new style of humanity at birth. " There are people," says Dr. Holmes, "who think that every thing may be done, if the doer, be he educator or physician, be only called in season. No doubt — but in season BY NATURAL DESCENT. 113 would often be a hundred or two years before the child was born : and people never send so early as that." But let us see, notwithstanding the great truthfulness of this somewhat satirical remark, how really hopeful a case we have here for human- ity's practitioner. And here I am anxious to im- press upon the mind, not only that these control- ling and powerful pre-natal conditions exist; I think the assent to this proposition may by this time be fully accorded : but what is most practical and experimental is, that they are so largely under our power — that we ourselves can so easily con- trol them. This is manifest from the cases which have already been given, and many more of a well- authenticated arid interesting character, where not only the whole nature seems to have been affected by the previous condition of the parents, but where particular traits, both of a moral and intel- lectual character, have been prominently intro- duced into the genius of the child. How slight are the causes which serve to throw the whole force and current of nature out of its accustomed and expected order; and what variations of form, dispo- sition, and talent, in the same family, under differ- ent influences ! As before said, it is not all charge- 10* 114 REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE able to the immediate parentage, or even the most continued lineage. Causes undoubtedly existed in the Eternal Mind — in the first germs of souls, for the most diversified forms and characters of men. Without this, it seems, the varied and spe- cific uses of the world could not be provided for. And as there are so many varied qualities in the Divine Mind, it is reasonable that different propor- tional combinations should have entered into the original essences of different human souls. It is not at all reasonable to suppose that all the mighty hosts of intelligences, on all worlds, with all the differing grades — rank on rank of genius, quality, and power, — and in the angelic heavens, of cher- ubim, and seraphim, and beings of supernal glory and brightness — the varied ministry pf an infi- nitely varied and stupendous providence, all sprang forth from an absolute equality of origin. We can believe more easily the story of the seers and our own rational imagination. Still, with the facts at command, we cannot tell how much the original tendencies may have been subverted, nor how much may have been added, or what particular traits may have been quickened to prominency or marvellous proficiency, as in the prodigies and BY NATURAL DESCENT. 115 marked cases continually occurring amongst us. If a rounded common sense may have been all crushed to idiocy, if the happiest dispositions are so easily produced by experiment and calculation on our part, if spirituality rather than inertness, intellect instead of dulness, mathematical and me- chanical genius, and distinguished beneficence, and roving and restlessness, and theft, and even a murderous hate and ferocity, can be traced so di- rectly to causes which we can control, what may not be done by the most assiduous study, and chris- tian application of this subject? Parents, what can be done ! I put it to you with all the force and moral importance I am capable of commanding. Are there not, indeed, special and proximate causes within our power, of almost miraculous reach, by which we can mould the new-born being at will, thereby laying a better foundation for his second birth than all other efforts can effect afterwards ? Nay, without which it would seem, in many cases, there is little or no hope of ever effecting a very great deliverance from the filth and iniquity of the world. And consider what the effect must be of a con- tinuance of such practice from family to family for 116 REGENERATION TRANSMISSIBLE. several generations ; — what a determined and per- sistent course of high Christian living, purity and piety, — a rolling-on of the stream of divine grace and healing, from sire to son, and into all branches of the lineage, from year to year and from genera- tion to generation, might bring to the households of faithfulness 1 What more than royal privileges — heaven save the word ! — what a nobility of God's own choosing — what a durable aristocracy of honor and glory ! Can we ever have it so with our present habits ? Can we think of it for a mo- ment without utter faithlessness ? vn. LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF SEXUAL INTER- COURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. WHAT then shall be done ? Bear with me now, if I come into immediate contact with the most private and responsible practice of hu- man beings and of parents. For ' if the sexual in- tercourse of parties cannot be regulated and hon- ored by a higher law, and nobler considerations suitable to its sacredness, then we must forever despair of any thorough and radical reformation of the masses of mankind. Here is the great source and fountain of depravity, or the initiation to purity and beauty of the sweetness and order of heaven. Until the nuptial act itself is made holy, in vain do we look for holiness in the temple of humanity. And yet there is nothing, perhaps, of any approaching importance, which is so over- clouded with utter vacuity of mind, divorced from its sacredness, and surrendered to earthliness and 117 118 LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF vanity. The sin of it is scarcely contemplated from the utter indifference to its virtue. And yet is there an act delegated to mortals by their Crea- tor, of higher or more hallowed import? Is there any worship more sacred or divine ? One hardly knows how to express himself here. The real truth is so at odds with the common esti- mation and practice, that the charge of affectation is apt to be made. I shall relieve myself at once, then, by quoting from a very questionable book, and from very doubtful authority. Of course I have reference to seership, and to statements made from a professedly higher view than mortals are generally privileged to make. But what I wish the reader to observe is this : — that though he may not give the least credit to the source of the state- ment, and disbelieve utterly in the possibility of any condition which would qualify one to see and say as much, yet the language employed is certainly admirable, and if not the description of a reality, it is what ought to be such, and what, I am per- suaded, will be, when this earth is redeemed from its corruptions. Speaking of a planet far distant from the supposed boundaries of our solar system, where the inhabitants have preserved themselves SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 119 in a pure and unfallen condition, the author says — " They are taught here that there are signs from the Lord which precede conception, and that, in the nuptial sanctuary, there is present a light which descends from the Lord Himself. This light is visible for seven successive diurnal periods of repose, during which they sanctify themselves in an especial manner, both husband and wife. At the end of that time the conjugial ardors descend from the Heavens, while the wife is absorbed in celestial communion, and the bridegroom receptive of the Divine sphere. So their children are born in holiness and shapen in sanctification, and the fruit of the womb is called holiness. " Here I saw a fair-haired young maiden, robed in spotless white, kneeling before a golden altar. She was in speechless devotion, and unconscious of my presence. In her genius she was celestial, and one of those who know truth from good. I was permitted to explore the quality of her mind. She was worshipping the Lord and beseeching Him that He would so pervade her future spouse that all the fruits of their union might be holy in their initiament; that they might be called holi- ness from their first state ; and that she might be 120 LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF a mother to such only. She had been instructed in the arcana concerning the subsequent state of the embryo after the conception. Her thoughts were of the utmost intensity of purity, as it seemed to me, and although in her thought she was only conscious that she herself was desiring the things which she sought, I was enabled to see the Lord in His Divine Operation present in her interiors, in the crystal palaces of the will, and in the un- derstanding also. "What is called passional attraction on our earth is an inversion of Divine order. Conjugial attrac- tion is entirely different. The diffused joy of the Divine Presence is in all the breathing frame. The pulse is slow and rhythmical. The melting look of the eye expresses chastity mingled with unuttered fondness. The soft night brings no delirium. The yieldings of the bride are in obedience to the de- scent of a direct influx from the Lord Himself; but more than this I am not permitted to narrate. " The existence of married associates upon un- perverted orbs is one perpetual festival, during which the first ardors of youthful love, free from all the disorders which attach themselves to the sexual passion in our subversive race, ascend in a SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 121 continual succession of the most serene and inte- rior, yet sensationally exquisite delights, from the natural, through the spiritual, to the celestial de- gree. The children born of such unions are like the blossoms of the tube-rose upon its stem ; and their external bodies, free from hereditary impuri- ties, are sweet as the bosoms in which they nestle aDd the lips which they delight to kiss. Birth is a benediction, and the rite of nuptial union an act of worship."* Again I say, if this is not true, I should like to see so much wisdom practised on our poor earth. We do not ask the reader's assent to the literal history, but to the spirit and wisdom of it we most religiously do. Let us proceed to say, then, more directly, that married associates, in order to have pure children, must pay more attention to their habits of intercourse, and view it altogether from a higher principle, in the light of science and reli- gion. The begetting of children is no work to be left to mere impulse, passion, and chance. And I would ask — what greater wrong can be conceived than to bring into the world a family of human beings, (and alas, how many families !) tainted and * Arcana of Christianity, Nob. 811, 612, 616, 291. 11 122 LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF corrupted from the mother's womb, with inherited dispositions Which are sure to make them misera- ble, if not to disgrace and degrade them as out- casts and criminals? — children who have no agency in their own existence — no voice for or against the life which is thrust upon them, but who might, frequently, could they be heard in advance, and for all that this life is concerned in, pray earnestly to heaven for non-existence rather than the wretched burden they are called to bear. Such parents would not, generally, willingly introduce their children to the schools of vice and crime which this world ever offers with open doors to all who will enter. They would not willingly throw in their way any moral obstruction, or tempt them aside into forbidden paths. But they do more than this, ignorantly though it be, but from henceforth, to every reader of these pa'ges at least, let it be a conscious, heaven-daring sin. They organize into them (a work seventy times more efficacious than any education afterwards) the spirit of selfishness, hatred, theft, drunkenness, murder, jealousy, re- venge, ambition, avarice, prostitution, and every kind of evil which afflicts humanity. These pro- pensities are sometimes so strong that they are led, SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 123 as it were, irresistibly, to the practice of that par- ticular evil which was prominent in the parents, one or both of them, at the time of conception, and perhaps in the mother during the whole pe- riod between conception and birth. Consider now but one evil — to many it seems the most trying evil in the land — this vice of sen- suality between the sexes. Who shall say how much of fornication, prostitution and adultery, is directly caused by the predominance of mere lust and sensuality in what should be the holiest of all acts between the married associates? Consider how children are begotten ! Not in the spirit of a heaven-beseeching, God-regarding, spiritually- prepared state of the parents, for a suitable time previous to the nuptial rite, but with the indif- erence of the animal — with the stupid disregard of the brute beast of the field. Christian parents, too, who would deem it a sacrilege not to pre- pare for a church ceremony — baptism or the com- munion — will enter upon what should be the holiest of all acts with mere animality and thought- lessness. And the poor laborer, perhaps, who has been at work all day, with every faculty tired out and exhausted, will come home weary and spirit- 124 LAWS AND CONDITION'S OF less and stupid, and assume the dread responsibility of begetting a child ! Is it any wonder that we have sensuality, licentiousness in all its forms, and the most hopeless specimens of dulness and va- cancy, — mere runts and pygmies and dolts of humanity, with an initiation to existence like this ? Would not the wonder be greater if we did not have them? Considering all the effects of organ- ization — its power to communicate function, &c, " can there be any doubt," says an English writer on this subject, " that the peculiar state of the or- ganization, and the peculiar exercise of every function, at the moment of erotic orgasm [excite- ment of love] must exert the most powerful, the most undivided influence over the organization and function of the delicate, susceptible ens, then and by these very acts, called into existence ? * * * Can it be supposed, then, to matter little whether the new being be the product and the personifica- tion of intellectual, or of mere sensual pleasure ! or whether that pleasure be one of gentle emotion, or burning passion ! " But it is not among the lower and common classes only, to which we have passingly referred, that we trace the inadvertences alluded to. How SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 125 often is it the case, that, among the higher and more fashionable circles, the excitement of the ball-room, or the gaming-table, or the stimulant wine, or the late supper, is made the preparatory means of a like prostitution of the highest and holiest rites of humanity ! Whereas, if we should view this matter aright, and proceed wisely and religiously, while it would be divested of none of its appropriate pleasures and satisfactions, but ele- vated, consecrated, and sublimated, by the divine approbation and the influx of a higher joy from the orderly fountains of life and being, it would also tend to the introduction of a nobler and more spir- itual humanity. I need not remark, more than has already been observed, upon the nature of the preparations here demanded. Suffice it to say, that with a general information on this subject, and a realization of its importance truly becoming its greatness, no person will allow himself or herself to engage in the gen- erative act with any indifference whatever. Such a one cannot divest himself of the humanities, or all that distinguishes him from the brute creation, and see and realize nothing spiritual and immortal in it. Both parties, therefore, will endeavor to 11* 126 LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF preserve that becoming attitude of soul and spirit towards each other, by which all the acts of the body are sanctified and made holy. If a general and habitual state of knowledge and religiousness exists in the married pair, particular observances of state and preparation will suggest themselves. But most particularly, to young married asso- ciates who have not yet become parents, and to all others who are contemplating the procreative office, it is certainly the suggestion, both of duty and wisdom, that a time so fraught with the very sources of life and character should, to say the least, be invested with as much seriousness and mental concentration as the hours given to any other duty of great interest to humanity. " And .at eventide kneel ye together, that your joy he not unhallowed. Angels that are around you shall be glad, those loving ministers of mercy." I am aware of the delicate nature of the subject on which I am writing, and my words are chosen and premeditated. I am fully aware also of the duty which I owe to my fellow-creatures, and of the possibilities which may result even from this little treatise. I write, therefore, as one who knows his responsibility. And with all due defer- SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 127 ence to delicacy, and custom, and the present state of morals and manners, I must not hesitate to call that man or woman morally insensate and stolidly blind, who does not feel the importance, and act upon it, of this most responsible and far-reaching act of the powers of life and enjoyment. Let such preparation, then, be made, as would naturally sug- gest itself to sensible, refined, and intelligent men and women. Not only immediately before the nuptial act, but as a constant habit of the mind in reference to it. Also, during the whole of that most important period — the time of gestation with the mother. For it is a question with some — Which has the most influence over the future be- ing, the moment of conception, or the long period of gestation? Let all vanity, and folly, and impurity, and lust, and mere self-indulgence, be put entirely away ; and let the requisite circumstances and sur- roundings be as abundantly provided as they can, — the right food for the mind, the proper stimu- lants and excitements to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature; the uplifting of the whole soul to the sublimer mysteries and glories of eternity ; the exercise of the very best affections of the so- cial, family, and domestic circle ; the most active 128 LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF human love and beneficence for all around ; books, if they are needed ; beautiful objects of nature and art, as they may be required and commanded ; and above all, a spirit of calm, tranquil, human joy, such as proceeds from a devout trust in the Eter- nal Father ; in short, as perfect and happy a frame of mind as it is possible to obtain from all the re- sources of nature and the spirit. And if, in addi- tion to all this, both parties will make it a special point to retire in secret and in prayer to God, and beseech the Almighty for his best benediction on the prospective parents and offspring, I have no doubt that the gates of heaven would be opened, and a select and spiritual influence descend into the souls of the parties, impregnating the very germ of the future offspring, fashioning it, even In the mother's womb, after a nobler pattern, and sav- ing it from a thousand maladies of our fallen and de- praved humanity. Try it, oh parents to be, try it I Is it not strange that so few do make any system- atic effort of this nature ? They see what is done in the brute creation — what the farmer does with his stock, and how he labors to improve each breed, and how successful he is, but they seem to think (or rather not to think — to be utterly SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, PARENTAGE, ETC. 129 unconcerned about it all) that nothing can be definitely projected in the human world — that the style and character of children is a matter left entirely to chance — that parents have noth- ing to do with it — that it is a matter left entirely to the Creator, as to what the offspring may be, as though God had forsaken his method of acting by law here, and left the whole thing to human hap and confusion ! When shall we learn our vocations and duties ? I will here relate a case of actual experiment upon the principles here unfolded. I quote from the work before alluded to — Intellectual and Moral Qualities Transmissible. The author's name is not given, but it is known to be a lady. She had previously been remarking upon an opposite case, of a young mother of indolent habits, and educated for display. "During the whole time of her pregnancy she occupied herself in paying and receiving visits of ceremony, practising mu- sic, embroidery, and other fashionable accomplish- ments, and in endeavoring to attain the reputation of a superior taste in dress. Her reading was limited and confined to works of imagination. Her child was born at the full time, but so brief 130 LAWS AND CONDITIONS OF and easy was the labor, that neither physician nor nurse was present. It was plump and fat enough, but with a head diminutive in size and soft in quality. " Years have not altered those conditions ; the child in intellect is below mediocrity, and the man will be the same. In the other instance, the mother was past forty years of age, of an ener- getic temperament, active habits, and self-edu- cated. For some months previous to the birth of her fifth child, she had become a convert to the belief in the transmission of mental and moral qualities. To test the truth of this belief, she ex- ercised her own mental powers to their full extent. She attended the lectures of the season, both lit- erary and scientific; read much, but such works only as tend to exercise and strengthen the reason- ing faculties, and improve the judgment. The domestic and foreign reviews, history, biography, speak of destiny that we can control. In fact, there is no destiny, like this we are speaking of, that our agency does not form a part of. The two are wonderfully united in G-od's perfect plan. And so I apply it to this subject as to all others. Take it on any ground, — the idea of the extremest fate, or the absurdest exaggeration of free-will, it all becomes practical to him who comprehends his real duties. He is not troubled either with one extreme or the other. He unites them both, or forgets them both, in the one over-mastering thought of duty. We can listen, then, to such expressions of truth as the following, with pleas- ure and complacency. "We may even profit by them if we consider them aright. How practical they are, and how admonishing ! "We may," (says a good observer — Hazlitt, I 16* 185 186 DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. believe,) " with instruction and opportunity, mend our manners, or else alter them for the worse, ' as the flesh and fortune shall serve ' ; but the charac- ter, the internal, original bias, remains always the same, true to itself to the very last — ' And feels the ruling passion strong in death 1 ' The greater or less degree of animal spirits — of nervous irritability — the complexion of the blood — the proportion of ' hot, chid, moist, and dr^r, four champions fierce that strive for mastery ' — the Saturnine and the Mercurial — the disposition to be affected by objects near, or at a distance, or not at all — to be struck with novelty, or to brood over deep-seated impressions — to indulge in laughter or in tears — the leaven of passion or of prudence that tempers this frail clay, is born with us, and never quits us. In this sense, ' the child's the father of the man,' sure enough. The color of our lives is woven into the fatal thread at our births ; our original sins and our redeeming graces are in- fused into us ; nor is the bond that confirms our destiny ever cancelled. ' Beneath the hills, amid the flowery groves, The generations are prepared; the pangs, The Internal pangs, are ready ; the dread strife Of poor humanity's afflicted will Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.' DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. 187 The ' winged wounds ' that rankle in our breasts to our latest day, were planted there long since. ticketed and labelled on the outside, in small but indelible characters, written in our blood." But this, I say, is destiny connected very largely with our agency. Nor is it at all discouraging to human virtue to be told that, either way — in the right or in the wrong, if we once set ourselves fairly in the road, Nature assists us by this power- ful league with her fatality. All good calculators, everywhere, in every thing, only succeed by avail- ing themselves of this sure and inevitable connec- tion of the chain of human events. We would not break it for all the theories in the world. There is one fact, however, that may be noticed here, and that is, the relation that the exertion of our own will bears to this seeming hereditary fa- tality. It is sometimes said that notwithstanding all the difference in the natural gifts of men, by which some are elevated to eminence and others kept in obscurity, or some tend to vice and others to virtue, it is, after all, the indomitable will and industry that some men exhibit, that gains for them their distinction. And so it is ; this is the secret of many a fortune, and many a celebrity, 188 DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. even with moderate talents ; while very great tal- ents without this will frequently turn out but splendid failures, exciting the pity of every be- holder. And how often it is the candid confession of men of extensive reputation for genius and talent, that, if they have accomplished any thing worthy of this laudation, it is their persistent in- dustry and application, and use of every moment of time, and not any genius that they are con- scious of, which has wrought these wonders and given them their fame. But is it not strange that it no more frequently occurs to our minds, that this will, and power and disposition to apply one's self, is itself a, talent, and as often conferred at birth as any other gift ? Is it supposable that the great and indomitable will of Bonaparte, or Luther, or Gen. Grant, or Andrew Jackson, was a thing of entire and voluntary ori- gin with them? Or that our great scholars who achieve so much by patience, and perseverance, and unflagging industry, — Parker, for instance, or Prescott, or Everett, or Agassiz, — that their will and energy was not as much born in them as any other talent they possess? Much may have been acquired: we do not dispute this: all we DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. 189 say is, as much may be inherited as the starting point of that acquisition, as of any other faculty. True it is, that one, at least, of the very celebri- ties here mentioned is said to have struggled all his lifetime against an inactive disposition, or an aversion to work. But it seems the work came, and the will prevailed ! Now, I am no metaphysi- cian to deny, or even to disparage, our most divine and distinguished faculty — free moral and intel- lectual agency, as to all its practical and substantial reality ; and without getting at all at loggerheads here with the philosophers or the divines, be- cause there is no need of it, I affirm that, in so much as the hereditary is concerned — in so much as our will is a fact at all, of any kind, it is often- times the chief talent — the chief genius that the man by birth inherits ! A tremendous will is born in him. And it fires up all the other faculties, and puts them in motion. Why — if we should go into a philosophy here as to what the will itself in reality is, we should find it was made up very largely of those very faculties, — that each of them — each intellectual and moral and affectional power of the soul was itself a will — and they all combine in so many little wills to help make one 190 DESTINY AND THE HUMAN WILL. great one, to urge the man on to the gratification of the whole nature. Is there such a thing in man as a will — a thing not connected with any other faculty or feeling at all, only by proximity, whose office and function it is to say, go here, go there, don't do it, do it, go on, stop ? If there is, we have not discovered it; and should it at any time appear, it would undoubtedly be more like Will-o'-the-wisp, only not so luminous, than any other imaginary thing! The will, as we see it, is the tendency of all the faculties, sentiments, and affections of the mind, singly or combined, wholly or in part, to exert themselves. And it is stronger or weaker, according as these faculties, sentiments, and affections are greater or less, quicker or slower hy the temperament. True, the moral and affectional nature is more generally spoken of as the seat of the will, and the great impelling powers are really there ; and this higher nature can sometimes control the lower with a will of superior power. It could always, were our na- ture in its true order. But there is a will of intel- lect as well as of heart ; of reason and mathemat- ics, as of vice or virtue ; of poetry as well as feasting: and the intellectual faculties are so DESTINY AND TIIE HUMAN WILL. 191 strong and active that wo might imagine them to will themselves into action, without any moral or affectional nature attached to them, could they so exist: but the "will" — that little or big thing which metaphysicians and common people so fre- quently call the will, which is not any of these, but something that speaks to all these with the authority of a master, is nowhere to be found ! * Now, therefore, speaking of hereditary qualities only, how absurd it is to say that a man is not so much dependent, for his success, on these, as on the will he puts forth of himself, his industry, per- severance, &c. ! For the truth is, these are quali- ties as much from the hereditary as any talent he is gifted with. And the more talents he inherits — the greater mass of brain and spirit he is born with, the more will he has, for the will is made up of all this. True, he may not inherit so much of a particular part of the brain, or of the propelling and affectional nature, and so not be distinguished * Commonly speaking, I know that the human soul is made up of Will and Understanding ; that tbe whole of the understanding is a thing separate ■ from the whole of the will ; and that the intellect of man receives its fire and energy from the affections flowing into it: but that alters not the main position taken above, as the will, even in this sense, is made up of several different and specific sentiments and affections, and the above illustration remains substantially true. 192 DESTINY AND TUE HUMAN WILL. for much of what we generally call will. That would be his misfortune. But then he might be just as likely to inherit more of that particular nature. This would be his gain. The simple truth is, whatever is the character of his will, it is as much of a talent that he can be born with as any other gift of genius ; and hence the im- mense importance of our whole subject, even with reference to that which is so apt to be thought not to belong to it at all. It belongs to it pre- eminently ! and consecrates and gives activity to all the genius and talent we possess. XL PHILOSOPHY OF MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. LET us now turn again, for a few moments, to the subject of organization in the spirit and body of man. We said in the commencement of this treatise, that probably it was generally assented to now, by rational thinkers on this subject, that the spirit, being substantial, must have some form and organism. We shall proceed here upon this assumption. And now concerning that organism as it affects our moral and religious characters. Moral and spiritual influence is a matter which is on everbody's lips, but few are disposed to inquire into its psychological conditions. Let us look a little more closely to it. And let us speak in all simplicity, not as to metaphysicians, but to plain, common men and women. Is there an emotion, moral feeling, or impulse, stirred in the heart of man by any outward influence, say by reading or W 193 194 PHILOSOPHY OF by preaching, which does not take effect in the very substance of the soul? What is moral feeling? It is a felt motion or action, more or less correct and harmonious, as the fine particles of that sub- stance vibrate or "move thus in the soul. What is a thought ? It is the action of that substance as it is influenced either from within or without, by some exciting cause, and forms a picture or im- press of whatever the subject may be, in itself. I go not into particulars of mental philosophy, for it is not needed. I only avoid the nothingisms of the popular abstractionists by giving to every thing a sixbstance and a form. Now I say, when we speak- to each other, and excite each other's thoughts and feelings, that mental movement is wholly dependent on the substantial stuff that glows and trembles within. Clairvoyants will tell you that there is distinctly visible, when two per- sons are thus in contact, or when a whole assem- bly is addressed by one man, an absolute flux and reflux of living particles, as of electricity or magnetism. It cannot be all of the body. "It certainly is agreeable to reason," says Lord Bacon, "'that there are some light effluxions from spirit to spirit, when men are in presence one with another, MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 195 as well as from body to body." — "Sympathies and antipathies," says Swedenborg, "are nothing else than exhalations of affections from minds which affect one another, according to similitndes, and excite aversion according to dissimilitudes. These, although they are innumerable, and are not sensibly perceived by any sense of the body, are yet perceived by the sense of the soul as one." According to this very rational account, let it now be observed that every such excitement or mo- tion of the fine substance thus moved, directly alters, in some degree, the relative position of the particles. And this is moral influence 1 This is mental action in general. This is the effect of eloquence, preaching, or strong appeals of any kind, which move the heart and fire the brain, and produce conviction and conversion. I do not say that the substance which so acts is all in the indi- vidual soul or souls ; of course there is an influx from extraneous and divine sources ; but I say, un- less there is some such action in the soul, there is no way at all of accounting for mental movement and change. We cannot think a thought, or feel an emotion, ever so slight, without changing, in some imperceptible degree, the very particles 196 PHILOSOPHY OF which are submitted to this vibration. Take a familiar instance even from material instruments. Ole Bull once took great pains to procure some pieces of the wood of an old violin which had been long in use, with which to mend his own. He assigned as the reason, that the very vibrations of many years' playing had altered the character or susceptibility of the wood. It was better than any new, or any old which had not been submitted to this influence. It had probably acquired, in the internals of its fibrous structure, some musical or harmonious arrangement of its particles. Or at least, to come down to the crudest capacity, it was more like a violin than though it had been used for a meat-axe ; and the great musician had some correct instinct in so regarding it. It. is just so with the human brain, and of the more interior human brain, or spirit. Preaching, or talking, or giving good lessons, moves this fine substance which constitutes the spiritual organ of thought and feeling, by somewhat of influx from the person who addresses, and by other spiritual and material agencies connected with the parties ; and if continued, persevered in, in the right way, the effect must be lasting and beneficial. It is just MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 197 like bending an elastic rod : keep bending it, and it will stay bent. And so many people are re- formed by purely moral influence. And hence, by the way, it is oftentimes so hard to change a man's opinions, or produce any considerable effect upon him. His mind is formed. All its little vesicles are substantially fixed and set in a particular di- rection against you. It is like so many cups or receivers all turned the wrong way, and he can get nothing from you. Or, it is like buckets up- side-down when it rains ! Such a man is not open to influx, or influence as we call it, and in order to change him you have got to alter the forms of his mind. And this frequently is a long, hard work. Other men, more flexible, pliant, susceptible, may receive impressions more readily, and undergo changes more rapidly. " Clay in the hands of the potter," sure enough. Not only the more fixed substances of the mind, but the fine circulating spiritual fluids, we may conceive to have acquired a different motion from repeated application and addresses. This, I say, is moral influence. I do not overlook the Spirit of God. That operates in the same way. It is literally " poured out " — > not from the skies down through the natural air ; 17* 198 PHILOSOPHY OF but from the Divine Mind, in an interior way, to the souls of men — upon all who will receive it. And there are no influences so refined and unsub- stantial as to amount to the vacuum of popular theologv. Said Edward Everett, speaking of the alliance of the corporeal and spiritual principles' of man, — " I do not know whether the pure, ethereal essence itself (at least so far as we can comprehend it, which is but faintly) ought more to excite our ad- miration, than this most wondrous compound of spirit and matter." But what if it should turn out that this most wondrous compound of spirit and matter is but a complication — a union by de. gree, (degrees, however, far different from what we crudely consider them) of the two extremes of one only original substance ? Such a union could not exist unless there was a secret and powerful affinity in essence and in nature. But although thus united, they are still so different, in their acquirements and capabilities, that one can drop by death into the grave, and the other ascend to immortality.* * It seems necessary to say here, In reference to this much contemplates and unsettled subject, that, although as observed at t!:» commencement MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 199 From the whole, we may acquire some better idea of the supreme importance of good organic conditions in the soul and body. If the soul is an of this volume, matter is to be thought of as proceeding from God by "discrete" degrees, yet there cannot properly be said to be a toe when it did not exist. From all past eternity, to our most rational conception, the Deity is to be thought of as- having an external, material envelope, so to speak, though without any attempt on our part to define that substance, or to compare it with anything that we in our present state are familiar with, because we know that matter is capable of existing under many different conditions. But a certain material envelope, or external body, it seems there must have been, else we are reduced to the absurdity of sup- posing that, on a time, matter was produced as an outbirth from pure spirit, — which of course would leave the Deity so much less in quantity 1 The resort to infinity does not remedy the matter in the least ; it only be- clouds it. The idea of diminished quantity will enter into our concep- tions in just that proportion that we say matter, in time, was discreted from spirit. If we say that it was not discreted, but that Deity had power to originate it in some marvellous manner from his own spiritual sub- stance as a groundwork, without, however, subtracting any portion from Himself, then I say, in just the proportion that the marvel operated, or in j ust that extent in which a substance was produced which was more than existed before, though in ever so different form and quality, does this present the absurd idea that it was created from nothing. Now, the truer and more rational conception is, that there never was a time when matter did not exist in some condition, as the body of God, if you please, of which He is the soul. But still the substance is to be conceived of as existing from God, permeated by his, life and motion, eternally upheld and sustained by Him, so that the discreting process is not to be thought of as ever commenced in time, but as an order of existence from eternity. Then the creation of matter and of material objects will simply be a process of formation. And although spirit and matter are still so unlike, yet they may be thought of as one substance, in discrete separation, 200 PHILOSOPHY OF organic entity, we understand something of how good or bad qualities are transmissible, and may be inherited from parentage and ancestry. If it is not organic, although we may believe, we can understand nothing about it. "We may inherit a peculiar organism of soul as well as of body ; and we can see how the spiritual qualities can stick there: but how an unsubstantial, formless noth- ing, or next to nothing, can obtain any permanent foothold in a man's character, we cannot see with our most powerful glasses. It is altogether too much like the ghost in Hamlet, when he would strike at him — " He is here, he is here, he is gone " ! In this fine alchemy, too, between the soul and from eternity to eternity. Here we see the truth that there is in Dualism, and here we avoid the error also of those philosophers who so exaggerate that conception as to speak of a kingdom of life and a kingdom of death from all past eternity. It is all one, pervaded with life, as the soul and body of Divinity. And we mistake much if the origin of what we call evil may not be found in the simple re-action of one of these extreme sub- stances against the other, in the necessary divine efforts to refine, beautify, and amplify the creation. Of course, when this re-action comes to exist in man, it assumes a higher, more complex, and moral form, but it is capable of being systematized and harmonized. For a much fuller illustration of this subject, but with some imperfec- tions here corrected, see the author's work — '• God in his Providence," in the chapter entitled " The Connection of God with Nature." MOSAL AND SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE. 201 body, to improve the one is evidently to improve the other. A pure spirit purifies even the body, by dispersing many gross and offensive particles not in harmony with it ; and a pure and vigorous and healthy body certainly gives release and freedom to the spirit's energies, if it does not contribute to the purity of the soul, itself. But there is so- much depending upon the original germ, that all post-natal influences, whether moral or physical, are very much determined by it. Even the air, light, electricity, water, food, dress, exercise, act differently upon what is first made differently. You cannot magnetize an animal as you can a man — a gross subject as you can a fine one. Preaching and teaching do great good ; but all talk and reading only make their comparatively slight impressions upon an organism that has gone before it. Preaching itself is the expression of an organism. And it is high or low, truthful or false, successful or unsuccessful, according as the preacher has received his organic structure and quality from his parentage and ancestry. All spir- itual influences are limited and confined within this channel and its subsequent improvements. XII. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. FINALLY, what we want, in this age of the world, is a comprehensive combination of all truth, so far as it is known, for the elevation and salvation of man. "We must not look to the soul alone without the body, nor to the body alone without the soul. We must seek ends from begin- nings, and beginnings from ends. Science itself must become divine, and the long looked for union between theology and philosophy, faith and reason, be hastened by every effort of the friends of either towards the approaching nuptials of the royal pair. The magic circle of all art, science, knowledge, virtue, and holy mystery of religion, must be recognized as perfect, eternal, ever revolving, con- nected and connecting at all its points, and ex- panding unbroken forever. We must conceive clearly, speak plainly, and carry our efforts for human amelioration to the causes, essences, and first principles of things. And the most fruitful 202 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 203 of all fields of human improvement, if only some self-sacrificing disciples could be found more effect- ually to enter it, — the very Holy of holies, where God and Nature's high priest stands in his most sacred and effectual office, is Maeeiage. Here, around this holy altar, centre earth, time, eternity. There is nothing so radical, either in good or evil, as the deeds committed here, and no salvation after this, but which is limited and conditioned, some- times in, a most melancholy manner, by what is marred and lost at birth. But notice that all this is spoken comparatively. Education does wonders, especially if begun early with the infant. Kegeneration does more. Their combined influence may alter, in the most marked manner, the form and shape of the brain, improve the quality, and increase the volume of it. And of course the mind also that is within it. The whole soul may grow and improve by it. But this, I have said, may be done with the finest and best formations as well as the worst: and, all other circumstances being -equal, all advantages and op- portunities, it would invariably be found that those who received the best start at birth would con- tinue in advance : and we have reason to believe, 204 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. therefore, that in the spiritual spheres, where th& social and circumstantial inequalities incident to the present life exist no longer, the obscure gen- iuses and the best intrinsic specimens of human nature will break forth and shine by a necessity that is in them, — will outreach those who" have received but ordinar}' organizations, and who are dependent, for their superiority here, mainly on education and circumstances ; and it is, therefore, pre-eminently practical to observe and enforce these fundamental laws and principles of our whole being. Indeed, while we would not at all disparage the old distinction between "the children of nature and the children of grace," and while we are dis- posed to run a very orthodox line between the predominantly selfish on the one hand and the pre- dominantly unselfish on the other, and thus, among infinite grades and degrees of character which seem to allow of no such division — which seem to embrace all mankind in one promiscuous mass, still to recognize the scriptural division into two great classes — the sheep and the goats, the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad ; — while, I say, we see this in the predominating tendencies CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 205 of mankind, though all are in more or less mixed states so long as they live in this world; and while there may he at least a temporary completing and finishing of this characterization in the world to come ; yet at the same time, taking a surface view of humanity, what do we see ? We see, even allowing much partial work of regeneration, that the chief difference among the masses of men is not what education and regeneration have made, but what natural first birth has made, — qualified and modified, I allow, by what the Spirit has trans- mitted, through the ages, of the new and second birth into the first, so that both are in a measure identified as the same. The most cursory view of humanity ueed only to be taken to confirm this. If one man or woman is prominent for traits that arrest quick attention, and strike every beholder — if one, for instance, is pleasant and attractive in manners, of open, smiling countenance, and another is stern, cold, unsmiling and unsocial ; if one is irri- table, quick-tempered, fretful and passionate, and another quiet, smooth, and generally unruffled ; if one is sour and morose, and another sweet and amiable ; if one is a scold and another a peace- maker ; one sharp, and shy, and deceitful, and 18 206 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. another round, candid, and honest ; if one is a gen- tleman, and another a clown ; one good-natured and another ill-natured ; it is chiefly the difference of first birth. It is because they were born with these natural graces and virtues, or faults and vices. To be sure, the deeper and more vital dis- tinctions of character, such as run into the very life of man, and present us with those specimens of unselfishness and philanthropy which are the praise and glory of the world, are generally con- fined to Christian people. (Speaking now within the limits of Christendom.) And they may be said to be, in a vast, preponderating measure, ac- companied and stimulated by the influences of Christianity. But still the truth applies, that Christianity seeks out its nobler stock on which to graft these excellences. They do not come so to the lowest and vilest of humanity. Allowing for this distinction, and the truth is conspicuous that goodness as well as intelligence favors the noblest born. There are born philanthropists as well as born poets and mathematicians. There is native moral genius as well as intellectual. But in this use of the term native, I include, as I have said, all that good which has been transmitted from CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 207 a more or less regenerate parentage. And speak- ing generally, in this sense, the virtue of the world, in any one generation, is as little depen- dent, it seems, upon education, or any extraneous spiritual influences, as its intelligence : and both are quite as much indebted to native qualities which have stimulated and secured them. In fact, if we see them running so much into each other, that is, the native and the acquired, as, in a long view, to quite confound frequently all analyzation of comparative forces, this abates not from the conspicuity of our main subject, but establishes the vital and everlasting importance of character secured in the native organism, by a sound, healthy, and original manhood. After all that has been said, no one will certainly accuse me of disparaging education at all ; and I am free to acknowledge what triumphs of Chris- tianity — what conquests of God's grace there are, over many an inveterate sinner, and many a de- praved and vicious habit. Let no one think that I am seeking any new importance for our old and fallen nature. It is no part of my theology at all. And if I overstate in some particulars, it is inad- vertently, while I am only aiming at important 208 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. truth in general, and in the particulars that have been so sadly and sinfully overlooked. I see, too, how feeble all this merely natural vir- tue may be, till it is adopted by the spirit, and carried into life and practice from a religious prin- ciple. I see that these good and evil qualities are neither virtues nor vices, properly speaking, till acted out at an age of accountability. They are mere germs of character hid in the organism. It was not, with the evil, original sin, but it was original organism — tendency, which broke out into sin. And with the good, though it was noth- ing but natural good, which may not abide the spiritual life — may not be chosen and adopted by the interior man, and hence may not abide in eter- nity, yet it is very prominent and active, very characteristic and amiable, and very desirable as stock in trade to begin with, for it is the very ground of the Spirit's operation. And thus, I say, in this surface humanity — which, after all, is a very desirable and admirable surface, and much deeper than we may at first imagine, the chief difference among men seems to be, at least in any one or two generations, not what education and regeneration have in this time made, but what has CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 209 proceeded in natural course by the impetus of character given at birth. This, of course, as mod- ified by spiritual influences in very early infancy " and childhood, as before stated. And when we see how this inheritance is the ground and founda- tion of all that comes after — the attracting point for all the glories and graces of the heavens, around which the angels gather in their co-oper- ating efforts for our salvation, we may perhaps learn to prize it with a new and deeper interest, and pray God to sanctify our children even from the first act of our most fearful, yet most highly privileged, procreative agency. And so we come round again to our grand con- clusion, forced upon us by every consideration of human improvement, by every fact in nature, by every Christian experience, by all history, and borne down upon us by all the weight and author- ity of the mighty laws of hereditary descent, that our whole life, being, and welfare, in time and eter- nity, is bound up in this wondrous connection of the first and second births ; — that the regenera- tion of the soul of the Christian is invested with its mightiest and most stupendous influence, as it bears upon his immediate offspring and upon un- 18* 210 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. told generations ; — and that there can be no true reform, and nothing thoroughly attempted, till at- tention is directed here, at the sources of. power, and till Christ walks the earth again in little chil- dren, born of regenerate parents, not of lust but of love, and by special consecration for that holy work in the homes of a heavenly Marriage. A LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY ■wilijIaim: -v. spencer, 134 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON. BELIGIOUS DUTY. By Frances Power Cobbe, author of " In- tuitive Morals," &c. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 326. Price $1.75. DISSEETATIONS AKB DISCUSSIONS. By John Stuart Mill. 3vo1b. 12mo. Cloth", per vol., $2.25. Half-calf or Turkey, $1.00. THE BLADE AND THE EAR; Thoughts for a Young Man. By Bev. A. B. Muzzet. 16mo. Cloth, red edges, bevelled sides, $1.50. Plain, $1.25. HOME LIFE ; "What it Is, and What it Needs. By Kev. J. F. W. Ware. 16mo. Cloth, red edges, bevelled sides, $1.25. WAUWOOD ; A Novel. By the Author of " Easy Nat," &e. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. HONOR ; or, The Slave-dealer's Daughter. By Bev. S. G. Bul- finch. lOmo. Cloth, $1.25. CHEISTUS VICTOE ; A Poem. Square 16mo. Cloth, flexible, 50 cents. THE NEUTEAL EELATIONS OF ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES. By Hon. Charles G. Loring. Pamphlet 50 cents. ENGLAND'S LIABILITY FOE INDEMNITY. By Hon. Charles G. Lobing. Pamphlet, 50 cents. THE MASSACHUSETTS MILITIA LAW OP 1864. Pam- phlet, 30 cents. J8®- Copies of the above sent by Mail, free of postage, on receipt of the retail price. GOD IN HIS PEOVIDENCE : A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES AND PAR- TICULARS OF AN ACTIVE DIVINE PROVIDENCE OVER MAN, — HIS FORTUNES, CHANGES, TRIALS, ENTIRE DISCIPLINE AS A SPIRITUAL BEING, FROM BIRTH TO ETERNITY. BY WOODBURY M. FERNALD. From the " Christian Examiner." — "The chief chapters of this book are compact with thought, crammed with it, one might say; but it is thought threaded minutely with the tenderest nerves. It is perfectly evi- dent that these chapters are given to us out of an experience vital and profound, with sensibilities -that thrill through it, and sometimes bleed through it, too painfully. For this reason,, they will speak with special power and encouragement to a great many souls that nave been tossed upon the billows. Hardly any thing in the raDge of human experience is left out. The Divine Providence in its adaptations to little children, to regeneration, to affliction and sorrow, to earthly riches, to chance and ac- cidents, to the permission of evils, to fluctuations of state and the ' wind- ing way,' to marriage, to the answer to prayer, to temptation, to the time of one's death, is described with philosophical discrimination and an unc- tion that always soothes, und inspires confidence and hope. " The spirit of the book seems to us throughout to be eminently Chris- tian. It is humble, tender, childlike, humane. Though the reader feels with almost every pnge, that a living, personal experience Is here made bare, there is not the least appearance of egotism, but rather of a heart loyal to great truths, and filled with a desire to impart them for the good of others." From the "Boston Traveller." — "It is truly a remarkable book. The object itself is of the most profound and interesting nature, and it is treated with a wonderful grasp of thought and clearness of illustration. Some of the chapters in it are truly startling; — those for instance on Marriage, Guardian Angels, and the Eternal Memory of the Soul. It ib also illustrated by many remarkable facts and personal histories of actual occurrence. There is manifestly no treatise of the kind extant, so full and illustrative, or which brings home the great theme of the Divine Provi- dence with a more convincing power to the mind." From the "Spiritual Telegraph." — "This book is whining golden opin- ions from the press, and we are not disappointed in our high anticipations of its merits, based upon our knowledge of the capabilities of the author, and the extensive reading and meditation by which we knew he had spe- cially qualified himself for the performance of this particular task. The subject of Divine Providence, its lawsuits various manifestations in the forms of obvious interpositions for the'guidance, protection, and welfare of man, etc, are set forth in a lucid, forcible, and convincing manner, and in a genial and popular style. Though Mr. Fernald is an admirer of the writings of Emanuel Sweaenborg, he is not given to the dry abstractions and technicalities of many of the disciples ofthat Seer." FOR SALE BY WE V. SPENCER, 134 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON. RELIGIOUS DUTY. BY PRANCES POWER COBBE, Author of "Intuitive Morals," etc. This Essay on Religious Duty was originally destined to form portion of a treatise which should have included both the Theory of Morals and also three books of Practical Morals, Re- ligious, Personal, and Social. The volume on the Theory of Intuitive Morals has been published both in England and America ; but the books on Personal and Social Duty will probably never see the light. 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