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Book_ 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
A LITTLE LOWER THAN 
 
 THE ANGELS 
 
 BY 
 
 CLARENCE LATHBUBY. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "GOD WINNING US." 
 
 WITH A PREFATORY VERSE 
 BY 
 
 MARY A. LATHBURY. 
 
 " Buonarotti seems to have intended to prove by them [his human 
 forms] that the human body has a language inexhaustible in its 
 symbolism— every limb, every feature, and every attitude being a 
 word full of significance to those who comprehend, just as music is a 
 language whereof each note and chord and phrase has correspondence 
 with the spiritual world. To him a well-shaped hand or throat or 
 head, a neck superbly poised on an athletic chest, the sway of the 
 trunk above the hips, the starting of the muscles on the flank, the 
 tendons of the aukle, the outline of the shoulder when the arm is 
 raised, the backward bending of the loins, the curves of a woman's 
 breast, the contour of a body careless in repose or strained for action, 
 were all words pregnant with profoundest meaning, whereby fit 
 utterance might be given to the thoughts that raise men near to God. 
 Paint or carve the body of a man, and as you do it nobly, you will 
 give the measure of both highest thought and most impassioned 
 deed."— John Addington Symonds. 
 
 THE SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 
 
 GERMANTOWN", PA. 
 1901. 
 
 •>.*.:• 
 

 THE LIBRARY OF 
 CONGRESS, 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 MAY. 28 1901 
 
 Copyright entry 
 
 CLASSTa* XXc. N». 
 
 COPY 3. 
 
 Copyright 
 
 By THE SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 
 
 1901. 
 
 WM. F FELL & CO., 
 ELECTROTYPERS AND 
 PHILADELPHI 
 
THE HOLY HOUSE. 
 
 ' The measure of a man, that is, of the angel.' 
 Hast thou, taught to look within, 
 Seen the House of Life begin, 
 Molded from the mother-earth 
 In the miracle of birth, 
 Yet, like Israel's early shrine, 
 Inly bright with the divine ? 
 
 Hast thou seen the life aspire 
 Like a tree, a fane, a fire, 
 Lifting from the parent sod 
 Strength and beauty back to God ? 
 
 Hast thou marked the service done 
 Hour by hour from sun to sun 
 By the lowly Levite band, 
 Swift of foot and skilled of hand ? 
 
 Hast thou heard all voices come 
 To the niches 'neath the dome, 
 Human cry, or song, or call 
 Seeking a confessional ? 
 
 Hast thou seen the stars that rise 
 In the heaven of the eyes, 
 Or the glory of the dawn 
 When the starlight is withdrawn ? 
 
 Hast thou seen the temple veil 
 With the glory glow and pale, 
 Or beneath its seamless white. 
 Half concealed from human sight, 
 iii 
 
The Holy House. 
 
 Heard the rhythmic murmur low 
 Where the hidden rivers flow ? 
 
 Hast thou heard the harp that holds 
 In its soft and vibrant folds 
 All the songs of all the birds, 
 All the silver-sandaled words 
 That the players will who wait 
 Far within the temple gate ? 
 
 Dost thou know the two who sit 
 In the Holy Place of it, 
 Thought and Feeling, born above 
 Of immortal Truth and Love ? 
 
 Then thine eyes have seen indeed 
 Him who bears the golden reed, 
 Holds the height, the breadth, the plan 
 Of the Angel in the Man. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I.— A Man Within a Man, 1 
 
 Xfgbt powers 
 
 II.— A System of Light, 17 
 
 III.— Windows of the Soul, 32 
 
 IV. — The Auditory Lamp, 46 
 
 V. — The Tree of Knowledge, 62 
 
 VI. — The Seamless Dress, 76 
 
 Xife powers 
 
 VII.— The Life Within the Life, 91 
 
 VIII.— That Mystical Fluid, 105 
 
 mmtiee 
 
 IX.— The Gospel of the Face, 121 
 
 X.— The Laryngeal Harp, 136 
 
 XI.— The Life Line in the Palm, 151 
 
 XII.— Finis, 168 
 
 Bpilogfsm 
 
 XIII.— The Wondrous Interchange, 185 
 
-^^^^o-^ 
 
 A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE 
 
 ANGELS. 
 
 ->K< 
 
A LITTLE LOWER THAN 
 THE ANGELS. 
 
 i. 
 
 A MAN WITHIN A MAN. 
 
 I am the tadpole of an archangel. — Victor Hugo. 
 
 We come to deal with the most interesting 
 subject in existence — ourselves. We are a 
 wonderful being — the highest effort of the In- 
 finite One. What science and revelation have 
 to say about us must be of transcendent interest 
 to us. What we are, whence we came, whither 
 bound, sink out of sight all other questions. 
 The study of man, an item in the universe 
 second only to the Almighty, is the noblest 
 problem that can be conceived — the practical 
 bearings of which are beyond all others on 
 the roll of research. Here there has been 
 1 1 
 
2 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 much confusion of thought. The physiologist 
 has called the body of man, man ; the theoso- 
 phist has said that the soul of man is man ; the 
 intellectualist, that mind is man ; the utilitarian, 
 that action is man — the forthgoing of the united 
 powers that compose man is man. 
 
 But we are tripartite ; we are all these blended 
 into one. We are these inseparable and indis- 
 soluble. Like God, whose lesser duplicate we 
 are, we are a divine trinity. We are not a 
 body by itself; nor a mind by itself; nor a 
 soul by itself; nor a collection of acts — but a 
 man. Take either separately, — body, mind, 
 history, — and we contemplate but a fragment 
 of a man. As we gaze upon ourselves, and 
 into ourselves, we behold the direct handiwork 
 of Deity. We see the fingers of the Mighty 
 One touching a million faculties and organs. 
 " Put thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place 
 whereon thou standest is holy ground." 
 
 We are an epitome of the earth and heaven. 
 Not "dust thou art and to dust thou shalt 
 return" — but spirit robed in dust, dust in- 
 carnate with spirit, and spirit woven into its 
 very texture. Spirit sweeping out from God, 
 and by a series of discrete steps, by marvelous 
 
A Man Within a Man. 3 
 
 affinities, incorporating the whole round uni- 
 verse into its sphere, and returning whence it 
 came. The thrilling fact is this — we are the 
 builded aroma of the creation, the music of all 
 spheres. We are the planet sublimated and 
 transfigured. How few have any conception 
 of this. The introduction of many a man to 
 himself is like the introduction of a savage to 
 a palace. Getting a glimpse of himself, he is 
 tempted to adore. " Ye are the temple of the 
 Holy Spirit." When he looks down the cor- 
 ridors of his being and sees a million million 
 apartments in beautiful arrangement, room 
 added to room, organ to organ, faculty to fac- 
 ulty ; each lighted by truth, and warmed by 
 love ; through all of which God roams, where 
 His steps are continually heard, he is lifted up, 
 and, in his own estimation, he becomes another 
 being. 
 
 We are not the earth ; but the earth is in 
 us. To make the first cell possible, uncounted 
 ages of preparation must pass. Suns must be 
 broken up into planets, planets must cool, the 
 agents of geology must toil millennium after 
 millennium over the globe to fit it as a dwelling- 
 place for the coming man. Then the earth and 
 
4 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 sky was gathered up into a beautiful temple of 
 the soul. Not only the earth is in us — but 
 something above the earth. Spirit is in us. 
 The material of the body has been collected 
 from an unknown multitude of the lowlier 
 forms of life. But something has been super- 
 added and interfused. Spirit has been infilled 
 with matter. The bird eats the worm, and 
 the worm is transfigured into bird — into plum- 
 age, song, flight. The worm sings, the worm 
 soars. Man eats the turnip, the partridge, the 
 ox ; he drinks from the cooling spring ; he 
 breathes in the atmosphere (the planet in solu- 
 tion), and they become the brain of genius, 
 the heart of love. They write the twenty- 
 third psalm ; they build the dome of St. Peter's ; 
 they produce the " Creation " of Handel. The 
 human spirit bows itself, takes up a handful 
 of dust and glorifies it, as the sun kisses the 
 sod, and the sod blossoms with flowers. We 
 are not the soil, yet the soil is in us. The 
 spirit is talismanic in its transformations. In 
 the night and in the day it pursues that subtile 
 and exquisite mingling of soul and clay build- 
 ing the inexplicable creature we call ourselves. 
 Flesh is put on and off without an instant's 
 
A Man Within a Man. 5 
 
 pause from conception to dissolution. The 
 learned estimate is, that in seven years we have 
 donned an entirely new suit of mortal clothing. 
 And yet that which is put off has lost some- 
 thing. The spirit has extracted a nameless 
 something, a mystical limbus, from the soil 
 that passes into itself, and is carried to heaven. 
 It has taken something ; and yet left every- 
 thing. It has gotten not merely heat, light, 
 air, earth ; but love, intelligence, faith, patience 
 — in short, all divine qualities have become 
 constitutional in us, fixed in us, blended by a 
 chemistry that passes knowledge. These in- 
 dividualities, grouped, compose what we call 
 society — the Maximus Homo, man gathered up 
 from all ages and worlds into his greater 
 humanity — a heaven out of the human race. 
 
 So here we are — a complexity that holds in 
 its parenthesis everything that has been, is, or 
 shall be. The earth is in us — we are Geology, 
 Botany, Zoology ; and heaven is in us too. 
 The Lord is in us, and angels are in us. We 
 climb all the stairs that reach to God. We 
 are the precious link that joins the cosmos 
 with the supernal. We are a transcript of 
 both God, and the world. Yet there is an 
 
6 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 outer us that will be sloughed, as the chrysalis 
 discards its shell. Without argument we 
 recognize the man within the man : the man 
 within that shall go on — the man without that 
 shall be left behind as a contribution to the 
 soil. Having made good use of it, we leave it 
 as building material for coming spirits, who 
 must clothe and unclothe themselves with like 
 draperies. " We think of the soul as a com- 
 plete, and in nowise disembodied man, within 
 the known embodied man." We know we 
 are master of the body. We know the soul 
 resides in us as queen. The predominant per- 
 sonality within, that no one has ever seen or 
 handled, — that which even we ourselves see 
 not, even as through a glass darkly, invisible 
 as God, — is, we know, the man within the 
 man. Without this we are not man, but ani- 
 mal. Man in Sanskrit means " The Thinker." 
 When Eve exclaimed that she had " gotten a 
 man from the Lord," she knew her offspring 
 was radically different from the brutes about 
 her. 
 
 The instinctive and willing subjection of 
 everything material to the impalpable confirms 
 the truth of the man within the man. Almost 
 
A Man Within a Man. 7 
 
 spontaneously we speak of the outer as some- 
 thing distinct from us. We say " my body," 
 " my hand," " my foot," " my tooth." When 
 we lose a limb by amputation, we never think 
 of having lost a part of ourselves. But rather 
 what has a relation to the soul, like the tool to 
 the hand. The young man drives his body 
 with whip and spur. He commands — it obeys. 
 The old man speaks cheerfully of it as a dulled 
 instrument, or worn-out vehicle that will soon 
 be surrendered for a new one. He will enter 
 the sepulchre, leave it folded there, as Jesus 
 did the cloths that wrapped him, and come 
 forth clad anew. And the idea of having to 
 feed it, dress it, exercise it, humor it — has 
 fallen into familiar expressions, and often com- 
 plaints. The task of carrying it about with 
 us everywhere (as we do our wardrobe), of 
 keeping it cool or warm, of laying it away 
 every night in the dark to rest, of waiting 
 patiently for it to recuperate its powers when 
 indisposed, that we may use it again, — is more 
 tragic than amusing. 
 
 The soul being the architect and builder of 
 the body, the body naturally becomes the soul's 
 counterpart and expositor. What we see upon 
 
8 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 the surface — the gesticulations, expressions, 
 and emotions that sweep over the body like 
 clouds and sunshine — are but the revelation 
 and utterance of that within us we call alive. 
 If we could descend the stairs of our being, 
 and enter every department, we should find the 
 spirit of God (and man) breaking into cell, and 
 nerve, and organ, and tissue, multiplying and 
 molding the outer part of us — God in us to 
 will and to do. We should find everywhere 
 His angels busily at work sculpturing the dome 
 of the brain, rounding the columns of the 
 limbs, laying the nerves of intercommunica- 
 tion under abysses and over eminences, to the 
 utmost boundaries of ourselves. By a magic 
 that has never been fathomed we should behold 
 the invisible Potter shaping the visible clay. 
 We should meet angelic squadrons with love 
 in their faces, with ineffable skill acquired 
 in heavenly places, guarding the life, and pre- 
 siding everywhere. We are builded from 
 within, and not from without, and the struc- 
 ture is never completed, dedicated, and for- 
 saken by the mind that planned it ; but every 
 instant, at every minutest point, creation pro- 
 ceeds — and God is present. We are a temple 
 
A Man Within a Man. 9 
 
 continually crowded with angels — and every 
 act within it is an act of worship. 
 
 Therefore the body naturally expounds the 
 spirit. As the instrument expounds the player, 
 as the speech is the speaker made vocal, as the 
 song is the soul of the singer breathing over 
 the laryngeal harp, as the cathedral from porch 
 to altar, to facade and minaret, figures the 
 vision of the man within the man. The cathe- 
 dral must first be in the soul before it can be 
 on the earth. Its foundations must first be laid 
 in the human heart. Its grandeur is but a 
 dim and inadequate interpretation of the gran- 
 deur of the hidden architect. So the outer us 
 is an interpretation of the inner us. It can do 
 only what is given it to do. The body is the 
 commentary of the spirit. Every act, every 
 word, every light and shadow moving over the 
 face, every genuflection, is a biography of that 
 within. Just as nature tells us about God. 
 The material world has a million preachers. 
 We can not go out without seeing sermons, lis- 
 tening to sermons. Everything that creeps, 
 walks, or flies ; yes, everything that grows ; 
 more, even the rocks and hills we call mute, 
 are calling to us, and endeavoring to tell us 
 
10 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 about God. The world is a vast temple with 
 many altars, in which prayer and song never 
 die away. The universe is the forthgoing of 
 the Infinite One — this is why it is so grand 
 and sweet. This is why it is good. The face 
 is a map of the soul, and its variations inter- 
 pret the soul's moods and emotions. The hands 
 are but the soul's tools — they are the soul in 
 action. When they are clasped in prayer, when 
 they hold the pen of inspiration, when they 
 are lifted up in warning, when they grasp the 
 engines of warfare, when they are laid in gen- 
 tleness on the brow of the ill, when they sweep 
 the lyre, — they expound the man within the 
 man. The tongue is simply the soul articu- 
 late. When the lips whiten, we know the 
 soul is angry. When the body is shaken by 
 sensual passion, it is telling a tale which the 
 man within would fain conceal. The soul 
 runs out to the finger-tips. It is even mani- 
 fested in the hair in moments of extreme fear. 
 But when, at last, the soul leaves the body, the 
 body's work is done. It no longer reports its 
 master ; for its master has released it from 
 duty. 
 
 Our teachers are all about us. We awake 
 
A Man Within a Man. 11 
 
 in the school-room of the world, and, from the 
 first cry of infancy to the final breath of age, 
 we are under unceasing instruction. Instantly 
 our environment begins to mold and influence 
 us. Myriad forces, visible and unseen, play 
 about us. We are the inhabitant of two 
 worlds, compassed by a mighty cloud of poten- 
 cies, all interested in our welfare. Microscopic 
 personalities fill the air, and we tread them be- 
 neath our feet. Countless suns and earths, too 
 far away to be noticed, too numerous to be con- 
 ceived, still fling their spell over us. Embodied 
 angels bend over our cradles, and angels incor- 
 poreal encamp around us. Normal everyday 
 experiences sift us like wheat. Sorrows, joys, 
 hindrances, mysteries, sickness, death, the tragic 
 and the comic, the pathetic and the martial, 
 poverty and wealth, lay their shaping fingers 
 on the spirit. Everything the eyes behold, the 
 hands touch, the ears hear, the tongue tastes, 
 informs us. We may shun books, avoid col- 
 leges, refuse every opportunity for systematic 
 study, yet we can not play truant from the en- 
 forced school of God. 
 
 And while the world and society teach all — 
 it is the child who teaches us most. It is still 
 
12 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 
 
 true that "a little child shall lead them." 
 Evolutionists tell us that prolonged infancy 
 has been the greatest teacher in the highest 
 things. The mother, through long years of 
 care, as she rears one child after another, is 
 under the most beautiful cultivation. The 
 sweet, helpless, innocent things lying before 
 her, or playing around her, gently draw out 
 and perfect patience, pity, affection, sacrifice, 
 wisdom. Through the most continual exercise, 
 day and night, decade after decade, these 
 qualities become so habitual that they become 
 eternal. The mother passed them down the 
 stream of heredity — and as the river of divin- 
 ity rolled onward, it gathered force, until it 
 now carries the ages with it. The children of 
 the house irradiate the earth. " Their angels 
 do always behold the face of my Father which 
 is in heaven." Thus they bring heaven within 
 the radius of the family circle. They are the 
 point of contact of the race with that dear 
 place whence it came, and to which it will 
 return. 
 
 On earth there will never be a higher being 
 than man. In heaven there can be but one 
 higher being — God. " Thou hast made him a 
 
A Man Within a Man. 13 
 
 little lower than God [R. V.] and hast crowned 
 him with glory and honor." To be a man 
 and have no possible successor ; to be the 
 blossom and fruit of the long past eternities, 
 and the intimation of a rising glory that John's 
 apocalypse but dimly foretells, should fill us 
 with an inspiration that lightens care and ex- 
 tinguishes every base desire. 
 
 " Nor hath God deigned to show himself elsewhere 
 More clearly than in human forms sublime, 
 Which, since they image him, compel my love." 
 — Michaelangelo. 
 
>~»H«" 
 
 LIGHT POWERS. 
 
 ~»X«~ 
 
II. 
 
 A SYSTEM OF LIGHT. 
 
 The cerebrum desires to see. — John Worcester. 
 
 We are not only creatures of emotion, but 
 of light. Within ourselves no curtains are 
 drawn, no darkness abides. Without light 
 life would be impossible. We should be a 
 chaos, orderless and purposeless. "If the 
 Light that is within thee be darkness, how 
 great is that darkness ! " At evening when 
 we enter our homes the first thing is to light 
 them up — then we kindle the fires for warmth. 
 So light is first in time — though love is first 
 in place. Journeying through the night, light 
 must precede the footsteps to guide the way — 
 yet the vital thing is the movement of the 
 feet. Therefore the Light Powees precede 
 the Life Powers. We must first see, dis- 
 criminate, acquaint ourselves with, our inner 
 and outer worlds. The gateways of our being 
 2 17 
 
18 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 should be flung wide open, that God's light 
 may stream in — and that that light may stream 
 out again to illuminate our path. 
 
 First in time, then, is that wonderful system 
 of light strung within us called the brain. 
 Beautiful beyond description, an ineffable mys- 
 tery, with its myriad apartments one-ten- 
 thousandth of an inch in diameter, with transit 
 fibers of incredible fineness, with powers of 
 thought limitless, and of bewildering com- 
 plexity. What facile architect built the cupola 
 of the brain? That remarkable instrument 
 upon which the soul plays? That elevated 
 tableland of stratified nervous matter, furrowed 
 by deep and sinuous canons, traversed by a vast 
 network of highways, along which the messen- 
 gers of light pass to and fro ? That compara- 
 tively new thing in the world which antece- 
 dent rock, or tree, or star knew not? That 
 extra piece of machinery marking us as the 
 summit of creation? That largest mass of 
 nerve-matter in the organic universe? The 
 brute has a kind of shadow or adumbration of 
 the organ — but is minus the impalpable mind, 
 the player. The difference between the baby 
 monkey and the baby man is this extra piece 
 
A System of Light. 19 
 
 of machinery capable of endless cultivation, 
 the shrine of eternal possibility. Says the 
 great Swedish seer : " It is the brain and the 
 interiors thereof, by which descent from the 
 heavens into the world, and ascent from the 
 world into the heavens, is made." It is the 
 ladder of the Maximus Homo, traveled by 
 angels, stretching between the tangible and the 
 unseen. 
 
 The evolution of the signal system came 
 first. All things of the body " were made by 
 it and without it was not anything made that 
 was made." Body is the nervous radiation, 
 infilled with muscle, organ, and cell. This 
 system unifies and illuminates the entire physi- 
 cal structure. From sandal to crown it leaves 
 no apartment untouched. What is light? 
 The candle, the lamp, and the electric bulb are 
 but correspondences of light. Beautiful hints 
 of " the light that never was on sea or land." 
 Light is intelligence. " I see ! " we exclaim 
 when we comprehend. The vast light that 
 is breaking now on the darkened earth is 
 not sunlight. It is wisdom, discovery, com- 
 prehension of God and His works. " Dark 
 as Egypt " is proverbial ; yet Egypt is a 
 
20 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 country where the sunlight is rarely absent, 
 and where at night its rays, reflected from 
 planet and satellite, constitute a less bright 
 day. Light is knowledge. Books are instru- 
 ments of light. " Thy Word is light." The 
 mind is the light of the body, and the light 
 of men. It is a great lamp swung in the 
 forehead, — in the vestibule of being. The 
 telegraph and telephone lines that thread the 
 land are thoroughfares of light along which 
 the mind of the nation runs. They are at first 
 glance attributed to the genius of man. But 
 they are a second edition of that which is 
 within ourselves. One day a man gazed within 
 and beheld himself strung to light, and went 
 out and repeated what he saw in the land, and 
 got a patent on it. He wired the earth as God 
 had wired him, and claimed originating genius. 
 Study thyself, O man, and arrange the universe 
 after thee. Can we improve on God ? When 
 the cosmos is completed and has reached the 
 flower of its perfection, it can but have dimly 
 copied man. 
 
 The wires are the nerves — tiny white cords 
 along which messages fly from brain to body, 
 and back again from body to brain. They run 
 
A System of Light. 21 
 
 to every muscle, every bone, every organ — to 
 heart, and lung, and hand, and eye, and tongue, 
 and feet. Even the hair and finger-nails are 
 carefully wired. The whole body is laced with 
 avenues of light. We are interwoven within 
 and without — underneath and overhead as 
 Boston never dreamed. The spinal cord is a 
 fascicle of nervous threads that by and by will 
 ray out into a million diverse filaments. Paris 
 follows this method in gathering its wires into 
 safe masonic conduits which pass through the 
 heart of the city on their way out to the suburbs. 
 The head is the summit of the system, and is 
 named for wisdom and rule. We speak of the 
 head of a house, of a corporation, of a State. 
 There sits the mind, the invisible occupant, in 
 instant communication with the remotest dis- 
 tricts of being. If there is attrition at any 
 point, adjustment is made and the trouble set- 
 tled by the mind. The foot flashes up the 
 intelligence that a pebble is in the shoe ; orders 
 are returned to the hands to remove the shoe 
 and extract the pebble. " I am hungry," cries 
 the stomach, and the mind orders the feet to 
 carry the stomach to the pantry, and the hands 
 to supply its wants. "I am cold," says the 
 
22 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 body ; and the mind replies, " Go to the fire 
 and get warm." The patient mind keeps the 
 most careful watch over every precinct of its 
 little kingdom. It not only soars to the stars, 
 and over the planet, and wings its way to 
 heaven, but it is omnipresent in every cell of 
 its special domain. Telepathy, what is it ? Is 
 it not a counterpart of the silent and soft inter- 
 course of the mind with the body ? Has not 
 organ, cell, and blood-vessel, foot, hand, and 
 tongue, telepathic power ? What spirit is that 
 darting along the innumerable ways of the body 
 from the great nerve metropolis to its most 
 distant places ? Is it not the soul sending out 
 its heralds ? " The head is the continual govern- 
 ing power ; it corresponds to unity and draws 
 all things to itself." 
 
 Through the Lord and the human spirit, then, 
 the brain creates the body. It drew the first 
 plan and built the edifice to fit the plan. The 
 body is to the nerves what the woof is to the 
 warp. And the nerve-system is but the cover- 
 ing of the soul. The brain rays out like sun- 
 light to the very tips of the human figure. 
 And along its myriad ways hastes the soul. 
 Nerve is soul draped with almost impalpable 
 
A System of Light. 23 
 
 vesture, and fitting soul with artless perfection. 
 The soul presses itself into the nerves, as life 
 swells in the bud and causes it to defy gravita- 
 tion and stand erect. As agent and laborer, 
 the nervous system builds the body. A physi- 
 ological plate will cast light on the problem I 
 am illustrating. It will be seen that the nerve 
 radiation assumes perfectly the human form. 
 It penetrates to the skin and teeth and hair. 
 It is impossible to put down the point of a 
 cambric needle without touching it. It is a 
 diaphanous veil of the spirit. It is a trans- 
 parent curtain screening the holy of holies from 
 profane eyes. What, then, is the physical ? 
 It is spirit surcharged with matter, as the 
 primrose is life interwoven with the planet. 
 Death subtracts flesh, and leaves the spirit as to 
 form and identity unchanged, as to quality, 
 sublimated and beautified. Jesus was the same 
 dear companion after the incident of the tomb 
 — simply the grosser substances that legiti- 
 mately belong to earth had been deducted. 
 The tips of the nerves — that is, the tips of the 
 spirit — form the outline of ourselves. When 
 we gaze upon hands, feet, face, figure, we be- 
 hold spirit thinly clad. To be sure, we see 
 
24 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 but the almost crystalline partition walls ; yet 
 they conform perfectly to that within. The 
 brain, then, and its continuation, is but the 
 channel of the soul. And this is saying that 
 character resides in every part of us. The 
 flesh is actually an immortal formation. We 
 are physically such as we will be seen to be 
 when we die. Character is seen in the light of 
 the eye, in the curl of the lip, in the tones of 
 the voice, in the movements of the hands, in 
 the swing and poise of the frame. Death sim- 
 ply takes down the scaffolding and leaves the 
 ethereal structure intact. 
 
 The brain is not the mind, but the instrument 
 of the mind. The brain is the mind's mode 
 of action. Spirit plays on brain, and brain 
 plays on body. We sit in the cupola of being 
 (as the head of a railway system sits in the cen- 
 tral office) and govern ourselves. The director 
 is omnipresent in every part of it through 
 those interlacing wires. They are but an ex- 
 tension of himself. His orders flash every- 
 where — and those orders are his mind, are 
 himself. We are thus present in every part of 
 ourselves, like the rays of the sun that com- 
 municate with every blade of grass, every 
 
A System of Light. 25 
 
 humble weed. The mind is the sun of our 
 human system. The nerves are but lengthened 
 selves. In this sense we are not flesh — flesh is 
 a foreign substance, which will one day be 
 eliminated, just as the mineral in petrified 
 bodies does not legitimately belong to them. 
 Death is the withdrawal of the material from 
 the spiritual by a subtle chemistry known only 
 to God and His ministering angels. 
 
 The repeating stations or sub-offices of a tele- 
 graphic system have been supposed to be some- 
 thing new — an invention of this bright and 
 pushing era. Lesser centers are constituted 
 by the first center, like satellites of a sun, to 
 which are confided special duties. This re- 
 lieves the head-office of too much detail. They 
 are sub-centers, and under direct surveillance, 
 yet, after instructions, obtain a certain indepen- 
 dence. They do detailed things without troub- 
 ling the central. This supposed clever device 
 of the new age is as old as humanity. It has 
 been working within us for untold generations. 
 The brain is the central — yet it has repeating 
 stations in the cerebellum and in the spinal 
 cord. All involuntary movements are wrought 
 without the conscious effort of the mind. 
 
26 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 
 
 There are the angels of the heart that keep it 
 throbbing, the angels of the lungs that keep 
 them heaving, heavenly bands detailed by the 
 Lord to precious and peculiar labors. They 
 are given authority over vital functions upon 
 which the life is suspended by a thread, as we 
 appoint certain men of the nation to positions 
 of immense trust, where the existence of gov- 
 ernment is poised ; as the manager of a great 
 corporation sits at his desk undisturbed by 
 the thousand-and-one complications about him. 
 These are but a transcript of something the Lord 
 set to working within us at the dawn of the 
 race. We are told that heaven is in the form 
 of the brain (in the form of the nervous sys- 
 tem, in the form of man), with the Lord at the 
 head, about which myriad centers are grouped. 
 The brain represents heaven ; the nerves, rays 
 of influence and control. 
 
 Therefore the mind is the patient teacher 
 and preceptor of the body. It instructs cer- 
 tain departments to do its will until its will 
 becomes spontaneous and natural. It persists 
 in holding the body to good habits, until those 
 habits become instinctive. Through these 
 sub-agents the mind has constant oversight of 
 
A System of Light. 27 
 
 the minutest details. She presides like a god- 
 dess and loves likes a cherishing mother. The 
 operators in the repeating stations are loyal to 
 her as gravitation is loyal to the Almighty. 
 And they arrange themselves in the mind's 
 order with as much fidelity as the raindrops 
 take their respective places and hues in the 
 bow. We see the overwhelming importance, 
 then, of having the mind lighted up with the 
 lamps of God. Then that light will fling 
 itself out to the remotest corners of our lives, 
 shining in deeds and speech. "If the blind 
 lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch." 
 We should hang aloft in our foreheads the 
 "light that shineth unto the perfect day," 
 for " the brain, from which is the origin of 
 all things in man's life, is next under the fore- 
 head." As the mind is, the body will be in- 
 structed — and will become. By long-suffering 
 affection and most patient repetition each part 
 of us should be brought to act in unison with 
 the sanctified brain. We should cheer up 
 each fainting power, and inspire what has a 
 tendency to grovel. We are the instructors of 
 the fingers. We teach them to practice the 
 score until at last they are graduated, and need 
 
28 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 no further oversight. They do their work 
 gladly without referring to us. We teach 
 them not to be selfish or thieving by pressing 
 them into philanthropies and kindnesses until 
 they become voluntary angels of mercy. "We 
 teach the tongue to articulate clearly, to utter 
 sentiments of light and love, until it no longer 
 wishes to sting like an adder, or to pierce the 
 soul with many darts. We teach the feet to 
 walk in straight paths and to climb altitudes 
 of peace and purity until they no longer seek 
 the valleys of sensuality, or move along the 
 ways of death. This is what is meant by 
 habit — the power of habit. By constant self- 
 control we may stamp the new name not only 
 on our foreheads, but on every part of us. We 
 may thus shape the outward form, as Green- 
 ough did his marble. Our bodies are actually 
 the rough material given the soul to fashion as 
 it will. This is what is meant by character 
 being in the figure. The beauty of Buona- 
 rotti's spirit is embalmed in his human forms. 
 As he painted or carved the body he gave 
 measure to his own highest thought and most 
 impassioned deed. His creations were him- 
 self glorified. The power of good habit ! We 
 
A System of Light. 29 
 
 speak frequently of the power of base habit, 
 but the good is as strong as the bad, and 
 stronger ; the bad runs out in the " third and 
 fourth generations " ; the good continues unto 
 the "thousandth" — forever. Oh, the almost 
 infinite possibilities of mind over matter ! 
 John Worcester tells us that the cerebellum 
 (or little brain) is not a thinking or voluntary- 
 organ. It is but the faithful servant of the 
 cerebrum. It does "what is given it from 
 above." It listens to the voice out of its 
 overshadowing heaven, and from that "bright 
 cloud " descends into the valleys of its exis- 
 tence to gladly fulfil. The organ of nature, it 
 may be regenerated and made angelic by its 
 preceptor. It presides over the body while it 
 sleeps, and is the home of dreams. At night 
 when we lie down it may be instructed to 
 entertain beautiful thoughts, to transmit peace 
 and trust to the remotest parts. Sensual emo- 
 tions, carking cares, disturbing fancies, may be 
 bidden to depart. In other words, demons 
 may be shown the door, and angelic bands 
 may be permitted to fill it with the "peace 
 that passeth understanding." As the blood 
 from the heart is purified by the lungs, the 
 
30 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 cerebellum may be purified by the cerebrum. 
 And we all realize the regenerating power of 
 high thought. We know what an effect good 
 or evil news has upon us as it runs over the 
 wires or drops through the mails. Just this 
 power the mind has over the body. Cast away 
 physic and cling to hope. Chavannes has a 
 mural painting in the Boston Public Library 
 illustrating this point. Along telegraphic lines 
 pass two angels, one white and the other 
 somber, both touching the wires with harmoni- 
 ous fingers as they flash across the continent 
 with their tales of weal and woe. Some re- 
 mote cottage or mansion is to be exhilarated or 
 depressed. Says Robert Browning : < * Measure 
 your mind's height by the shade it casts." 
 
 We see, then, what quality of thinking will 
 do for the life. We may degrade the brain 
 and trail its bright garments in the dust. We 
 may debase it and make it the servant of a 
 wicked master, and through it the utilities 
 of being will take like shading. The devil 
 may be discovered in feature, motion, language, 
 glance. There are demons incarnate — demons 
 animating fleshly temples. We are told that 
 the very texture of the brain accommodates 
 
A System of Light 31 
 
 itself to the quality of our thinking. " The 
 mind secretes poison as the liver secretes bile." 
 The dull and sodden eye of the sensualist, the 
 paralyzed thought, the very collapse of the 
 figure God made in His own image, tells its 
 story. As the mind forms the body, the body 
 must be its faithful reporter. 
 
 " It is the mind that inaketh good or ill, 
 That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor." 
 — Spenser s "Faerie Queene." 
 
III. 
 
 WINDOWS OF THE SOUL. 
 
 " The light of the body ia the eye." 
 
 At first it is somewhat difficult to realize 
 that we live in a flesh house and gaze through 
 its bright windows on the world; that our 
 body is the house, we the occupant, and our 
 eyes the windows. But a little close thinking 
 will convince us of this and dissipate any 
 lingering doubts. Said Jesus : " The light 
 [window] of the body is the eye." Close for 
 an instant those beautiful fringed curtains and 
 you will realize this, for you will be shut in 
 midnight darkness so far as outer things are 
 concerned. Open them, and the landscape 
 spreads itself at your feet. It is the identical 
 experience of closing the shutters of a dwell- 
 ing and barring out the day. 
 
 The flesh eye (or outer eye) is not a real eye ; 
 it is but a lens through which the actual eye 
 32 
 
Windoivs of the Soul 33 
 
 gazes. We are spiritual beings wearing spec- 
 tacles manufactured of the finer substances of 
 the planet, through which we look on the trees, 
 the hills, and the loved forms of relatives and 
 friends. The soul sits inside and looks through 
 the lattice. From this safe inclosure it watches 
 the drama of nature and society. These cor- 
 poreal glasses are, as the great poet says, " The 
 eye and prospect of the soul." They are the 
 " mind's eye." A study of these windows fills 
 the reverent pupil with rapture, and lifts his 
 thought to the divine Artisan. They are a re- 
 markably constructed camera obscura, a dark- 
 ened chamber magnificently fitted up with re- 
 flectors and glasses for the purpose of painting 
 truthful representatives of the outward creation 
 on the sensitive plate of the brain. Descend 
 the successive steps of the evolution of this 
 organ and estimate the ages the eye has spent 
 in climbing to its superb perfection. Con- 
 sider the uncounted centuries employed in 
 polishing its lenses and adjusting the dia- 
 phragms and screws. Observe the self-acting 
 spring that makes the eyelids close when the 
 eye is threatened. Note the closely woven 
 nervous network from which the retina has its 
 3 
 
34 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 name, like an exquisitely organized velvet nap 
 standing up on the expanded tissue of the optic 
 nerve. Watch with what peculiar tenderness 
 the body guards and protects this precious pos- 
 session ; — the overhanging roof; the eaves- 
 troughs of the brows ; the upper and nether 
 elastic curtains that quickly close against dust, 
 wind, or any approaching enemy ; — those drap- 
 eries that lull the eyes to rest when weary, 
 that temper the too intense radiance, and bathe 
 and dry them at the fountain of tears. 
 
 Have you considered the numerous aids to 
 the eye of the soul ? There are eyes piled on 
 eyes in prodigal profusion. We see persons 
 occasionally wearing two or three pairs of 
 glasses — spectacles over spectacles. And as 
 if these were not enough for the eager vision, 
 we buy microscopes and telescopes. These are 
 all outer artificial eyes of the inner actual eye. 
 The soul looks, as it were, adown a vista of 
 them. Behind the multiplicity of crystalline 
 aids it stands and looks through. In our de- 
 vout endeavor to inspect the surrounding uni- 
 verse, what expedients we devise ! To adjust 
 the planet, the objects of the planet, and the 
 distant planets and suns to our sight, we seize 
 
Windows of the Soul. 35 
 
 every possible help. We grind glasses, we 
 turn them concave and convex, we magnify or 
 minify, we lengthen or shorten, — that the soul 
 may see, see, see. There are resting spectacles 
 for the overworked organ. There are the instru- 
 ments that unveil a world beneath the feet — 
 and a universe in the sky. Myriad creatures 
 creep, swim, and fly that we had never fancied 
 had an existence, and the interstellar spaces, 
 before a cerulean blank, are set with countless 
 lights. The very atmosphere is alive ; " thin 
 air " is seen to contain a population that forbids 
 mathematical numeration, and the atmosphere 
 is now known to be a lens of great depth and 
 beauty. We speak of it as clear or thick, and 
 its condition is to be considered with any out- 
 look over the land or into the sky. 
 
 What are all these but eyes of the soul's 
 eyes ? We have actually advanced God's 
 handiwork. " Greater things than these shall 
 ye do." The telescopic and microscopic eye is 
 a thousand times more clear and powerful. 
 We have taken great leaps in the evolution of 
 vision. We have done in a few years what it 
 would have taken millenniums to have reached 
 by the way of evolution. Yet our conceit is 
 
36 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 lowered when we reflect that these aids would 
 be worth so much old metal and glass without 
 the windows of the face. The blind man has 
 no use for our finest optical utensils. They 
 are so much lumber to him. 
 
 Then there is the photographic eye, that is 
 immensely superior to anything that has been 
 mentioned. It can see where the human eye, 
 through the telescope, beholds a blank. It 
 can gaze steadily for hours in one spot with- 
 out winking or wearying. It can record with 
 infinite and delicate accuracy what time can 
 not efface. Here is an eye independent of the 
 nervous eye — and so much better that astron- 
 omers resort to it in crucial cases, discarding 
 the instrument the Lord has made. 
 
 For the skeptical here is an unanswerable 
 proof of the reality of the soul. The outer 
 eyes prove the inner. As the blind man has 
 no use for spectacles, the flesh eye would be 
 superfluous if there were no spirit eye behind 
 it. Withdraw the spirit and see : the dead 
 man's eye becomes " a dead letter." The fact 
 that the Lord has made the eye destroys forever 
 any argument against the soul. It is an optic 
 of the mind. The material eye is the clothing 
 
Windows of the Soul. 37 
 
 of the inner eye — the inner eye fills every part 
 of it, gives it life, light, and therefore sight. 
 " If the light that is within thee be darkness, 
 how great is that darkness ! " As there is 
 perfect adjustment of the outer eye to the sun 
 and the atmosphere, there is perfect adjustment 
 of the spirit eye to the flesh eye. " The sight 
 of the body altogether corresponds to the 
 spirit." 
 
 What, then, is ordinary everyday seeing but 
 spiritual seeing ? What is it but the soul view- 
 ing the world ? What is the glance of a friend 
 but heart greeting heart ; — in the light of the 
 eye, soul saluting soul with an unseen em- 
 brace ? What do we see but " the rapt soul 
 sitting in thine eyes " ? Are we not a spiritual 
 humanity — a great congregation of immortals 
 wearing binoculars of flesh and blood ? Through 
 these human fan-lights, these " homes of silent 
 prayer," beholding one another? Love and 
 intelligence flashing through the almost trans- 
 parent medium, the limpid vestibule of being? 
 
 We have supposed the eyes to be organs of 
 pure light — instruments of unmixed revelation. 
 Yet there is an antipodal truth here — a divine 
 paradox. They are designed to hide as much 
 
38 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 as they reveal. They are a revelation and a 
 mystery. How easy it would have been for 
 the Lord to lengthen and intensify their pow- 
 ers ! How easy it would have been for him to 
 have made them telescopic or microscopic ! He 
 might have built them to look without fatigue 
 into infinite spaces, to pierce opaque substances, 
 and to detect hidden essences ; to go through 
 the pod and sheathing to the laws and princi- 
 ples that lie within. Had he done so, it is a 
 question whether we should have been wiser or 
 happier. Such a sweep of light might have been 
 too much for us and have brought only confusion 
 and pain. The matter of a few extra degrees 
 might have been light that dazzles and blinds. 
 He has rather given a tempered sight, sufficient 
 for present development, and has taught us how 
 to augment it by artificial aids. He gives 
 strength sufficient for the day. Forever and for- 
 ever he will set gates ajar as fast as we are able 
 to enter them. By and by he will transcend 
 all artifices, strip away all shades, that we may 
 " see eye to eye and know as we are known." 
 No longer through " a glass darkly ; but face 
 to face." 
 
 How the eye illuminates the body ! The 
 
Windows of the Soul. 39 
 
 light shining through irradiates the entire edi- 
 fice, guiding and cheering every hidden worker, 
 driving out every shadow. As the sun is the 
 " eye of the world," as Athens was " the eye 
 of Greece," the windows of the face are the 
 eyes of the body. They are — 
 
 11 the books, the arts, the academes, 
 That show, contain, and nourish all the world." 
 
 The eyes live all through the body ; they are 
 the visual of every organ, every activity. 
 There is not a cell, tissue, nerve, or member 
 but sees. " Else how could they work in that 
 underworld, in the deep mines of the flesh, 
 with no safety-lamps ? " " If thine eye be 
 single [clear, impartial, strong] thy whole, body 
 shall be full of light." The eyes are the sun 
 of the body. They are like the skylights in 
 Noah's ark ; like the pilot at the ship's helm 
 — the " eye of the vessel." The eye is omni- 
 present in the body as the sun is in the earth. 
 It is a camera that photographs the outer 
 world on the sensitive plate of the brain, and 
 the brain transmits it over the myriad lines of 
 the nervous system to the remotest provinces. 
 The body is therefore ocular — every inch and 
 
40 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 atom of it obtains the vision. From its 
 heaven above light flashes inward and down- 
 ward. 
 
 This explains how the very hands and feet 
 are luminous. How our feet fly along the 
 uneven and dangerous path, having eyes. 
 How they scale precipitous places and conduct 
 the body safely along slippery ways. Close 
 the eyes, and the feet are instantly in darkness, 
 and know not what to do. This explains how 
 the hands have such skill in operating on the 
 world. Every finger has an eye — the whole 
 hand is crowded with light. The effulgence 
 from those upper windows transfigures it. 
 " If thine eye be single thy whole body [hands, 
 feet] shall be full of light." The eyes irra- 
 diate the whole mansion of the soul, streaming 
 through every window. 
 
 How important it is, then, that we should 
 keep our windows clean ! Glass needs con- 
 stant brightening. We who wear spectacles 
 have learned well this lesson. How easily 
 they get soiled ! Old forsaken houses are 
 almost dark for the dust and cobwebs that 
 drape the windows. How the lenses of a 
 telescope are polished ! With what immense 
 
Windows of the Soul 41 
 
 care they are cast, to be free from wrinkle, 
 bubble, flaw ! A slight imperfection hides a 
 world. A blur spoils a sun. It is only the 
 clear (single) eye that is a perfect medium of 
 light — that tells us the truth about the things 
 we look at. We see double, see objects turbid 
 and smutty — when the eye is wrong. To 
 some the world and its inhabitants are strange, 
 lurid, shadowy ; like the blind man, half seeing, 
 they behold men as " trees walking." How a 
 simple thing like glass will mar a fine work of 
 art. It will take on muddy hues, its contour 
 will seem awry, and the touch of the artist will 
 be obscured. The optics of the soul are pecu- 
 liarly susceptible to flaw. The world of nature 
 and of men takes a million varied shades and 
 shapes according to the condition of the eye. 
 This explains the diversity of views that ob- 
 tain everywhere. Why some see a God of 
 love; others, an Almighty Tyrant. Why 
 some see a good and faithful world, and the 
 Lord walking in the midst ; others, a jumble 
 of forces and laws that work for pain, mystery, 
 and destruction. Why one is soothed by the 
 music of the spheres, and another is tortured 
 by its discords. Go into a forsaken and bat- 
 
42 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 haunted dwelling, and look through windows 
 hung with the webs of spiders, thick with 
 dust, and obscured by decay on the most 
 charming summer scene, and you will get my 
 idea. Or put on spectacles dimmed and im- 
 perfectly focused. 
 
 Much depends upon the condition of the 
 windows. If the thrifty housewife is so par- 
 ticular, how much more should we keep the 
 transparencies of the mind unsullied ! " The 
 soul determined and fitted to look abroad cleans 
 its windows/' Then floats in more and com- 
 pleter visions than come to ordinary eyes. How 
 do we do this? Keep the spirit pure, clear, 
 unbiased, — that God's light may find perfect 
 admittance ; that, in turn, the spirit may " see 
 the King in His beauty." Purity is the single 
 condition of sight. " The pure in heart shall 
 see God." Sin blurs the heart vision, spoils 
 the focus, and warps the whole being. It is 
 a proverb that the evil eye turns beauty and 
 health into a curse. " If [note the reservation] 
 thine eye be single [pure] thy whole body shall 
 be full of light." 
 
 Everything hinges on the soul behind the 
 eyes. Is this not equally true of glasses ? For 
 
Windows of the Soul. 43 
 
 they are only avenues of spiritual vision. They 
 are secondary aids — artificial helps to the hidden 
 spirit. The two interwork. There must be 
 perfect adjustment. Outer and inner must 
 harmonize. The eye sees according to the 
 temper of the mind. The eye becomes what 
 the soul is. The clear, calm, pure eye — does 
 it not mirror a pure heart ? And the heavy, 
 ungleaming, slatternly eye — does not that repre- 
 sent a soul too? These three things can be 
 asserted. The outer eye is the organ of mani- 
 fest truth. Truth in myriad and fascinating 
 forms lies before it, yet it may not see the truth. 
 What is the difficulty ? Sight is the discernment 
 of truth, and it lacks sight. We may look out 
 of our eyes and see nothing, or we may see an 
 exactly different picture from the one before us. 
 We must have Sight to see truly, even with 
 eyes. And there is another step still higher — 
 vision. Vision is the elevation of sight to a 
 point where we see God — God in everything. 
 What wide differences in men and women ! 
 Some have eyes, but no sight. A gloomy in- 
 habitant sits within. Some have sight, but no 
 vision. They live in the region of framework 
 and mathematics. They deal with patent, visi- 
 
44 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 ble, tangible facts, and they never pass out 
 of this narrow and circumscribed field. But 
 there is vision that is independent of any outer 
 aid. There is an inmost eye that penetrates 
 the deep places of nature, through all its cov- 
 ering, to the world of mystic forces. Close 
 the lids, and if you have this deeper sight, you 
 will discover something. After all has been 
 said, the casual eye but reveals the outer wrap- 
 pings — admits only to the vestibule of the 
 temple of truth. There is vision that beholds 
 the essences and principles. Jesus ranged over 
 the entire field — from center to rim. He saw 
 Peter's body and Peter's inmost life. " God 
 looketh upon the heart." It is possible to 
 look through the trappings of souls to the souls 
 themselves. Is there not an eye that sees 
 paper and print only? This is not sight 
 There is another eye that detects the thought 
 lying in the sentence — the fact it attempts 
 to crystallize. That is sight. But there is 
 another eye still, that detects a third sense — a 
 divine and rapt apocalypse lying at the very 
 heart of the volume. This is Vision. One 
 sees marble, curved, polished, figured, and of 
 perfect whiteness. The flesh eye only falls 
 
Windows of the Soul. 45 
 
 upon it. Another sees beauty, grace, sym- 
 metry — a duplicate of the "human form di- 
 vine." That is sight. Another sees God 
 imaged there ; he sees soul beneath the marble, 
 he catches the conception of the sculptor, he 
 sees a language there inexhaustible in its sym- 
 bolism, every limb, every feature, every atti- 
 tude, crowded with divine significance, each 
 detail having correspondence with the spiritual 
 world. This is vision. When we look at a 
 picture, a child, a flower, we may (or may not) 
 see through this triple medium. We may 
 be among those who "having eyes see not." 
 In the legend of Jubal we are told that " all 
 eyes can see when light flows out from God." 
 But it is not so. If the spirit is not pure, we 
 may stand in the third heaven and its very 
 light will be to us as Egyptian darkness. 
 " Blessed art thou Simon Barjona, for flesh and 
 blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my 
 Father which is in heaven." 
 
 Hamlet. My father ! Methinks I see my father ! 
 Horatio. Where, my lord ? 
 Hamlet. In my mind's eye, Horatio. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE AUDITORY LAMP. 
 
 Thy Word is a Lamp. — The Psalter. 
 Look with thine ears. — Shakespeare. 
 
 Light enters the soul through the ears as 
 well as the eyes. There is the unique auditory- 
 lamp that casts its soft radiance through every 
 part of the fleshly mansion. An auditory 
 lamp ! What is that ? It is the acoustic torch 
 that enlightens the soul. It is the Aladdin 
 lamp of life. It lights by sound rather than by 
 sight. It illuminates even the lowest depart- 
 ments of the body. How can resonance shine ? 
 how can words radiate ? If we think closely, 
 we will see that the results of sound and light 
 are identical. The method of delivery only 
 varies. Music tells us something ; so does the 
 landscape. We see birds, mountains, men and 
 women, rivers, and storms, and they say some- 
 thing to us. They talk to us and bring mes- 
 46 
 
The Auditory Lamp. 47 
 
 sages. We hear orators, melody, the scream 
 of the locomotive, the cry of the hawk, the 
 coo of the dove, the clangor of bells, the run- 
 ning brook, the breeze in the trees, the lapping 
 wavelets, the thunder of the sea on the beach 
 — and each sound tells its own story to the in- 
 structed spirit. Through the avenues of sound 
 or sight light comes. In its last analysis sound 
 is light ; it is a word to the soul, informing 
 and enchanting it. We deal now with light by 
 hearing. Old Isaac Walton found the lovely 
 cadences of earth a hint of heaven : 
 
 "The moving leaves, the water's gentle flow, 
 Delicious music hung on every bough. 
 If to weak, sinful man such sounds are given, 
 Oh ! what must be the melody of heaven ! ' ' 
 
 Therefore the Lord has expended as much skill 
 and patience in the building and perfection of 
 the ear as the eye. The eye deals with light 
 through vision ; the ear, with light through Jiear- 
 ing. The ear is a remarkable instrument that re- 
 ceives, collects, and interprets to the indwelling 
 spirit vibrations which we recognize as intona- 
 tion. It has a series of wonderful chambers 
 and corridors through which every form of 
 atmospheric tremulation passes to the spirit. 
 
48 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 We sit within, placing our souFs ear to this 
 fleshly organ, as the operator holds the tele- 
 phonic receiver while conversing with the dis- 
 tant speaker. Its order is threefold. There is 
 the concha, or shell, spread out to the air — 
 convex, built to catch noises as the fisher's net 
 is built to catch fish. There is the transmitting 
 chain of bones, the triple sounding-board that 
 throws the noises inward where the soul sits 
 listening. Lastly, the three spiral avenues or 
 snail-shell windings that reach the inner invis- 
 ible auditory. All these are vestibules or 
 guards protecting us from alien and incoherent 
 voices, which, if admitted, would only confuse 
 and annoy. 
 
 The relation between the ear and the eye is 
 significant. We know they both deal with 
 light. The ears see. The fishes of Mam- 
 moth Cave see with their ears. All the light 
 they get is through sound and touch. "Do 
 you see ? " we say, when we are trying to make 
 some matter plain. We mean, "Do you see 
 with your ears ? do you comprehend ? " Hear- 
 ing is light borne on wave-sounds ; seeing is 
 light borne on w&ve-sights. The eyes occasion- 
 ally listen ; the ears occasionally look. Both 
 
The Auditory Lamp. 49 
 
 are used interchangeably. The eyes listen to 
 the thought of a book, or the conversation of 
 gesture and facial expression ; the ears see a 
 truth when uttered, they see beauty in melody, 
 poetry, literary form. Each may act sepa- 
 rately, but both work together most intelli- 
 gently. Do we not hear better when we look 
 at the speaker? Shut your eyes when your 
 friend is talking and my point will be made. 
 
 Note the interesting parallels. The ear deals 
 with undulations of the air ; the eye, with un- 
 dulations of the ether. The ear receives a 
 million motley and confusing noises battling at 
 its door ; assorts and marshals them in orderly 
 series before introducing them to the mind. 
 The eye receives a like complexity of pictures 
 and goes through similar discriminating and 
 selecting processes before photographing them 
 on the brain for transmission to the soul. Sound 
 passes through a series of transforming cham- 
 bers and anterooms to the waiting spirit ; sight 
 traverses a parallel way through the vestibules 
 of the eye to the brain. Both are the soul's 
 reporters. They are its news-gatherers and 
 detectives, constantly searching the earth for 
 what may be interesting and instructive, and 
 4 
 
50 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 hastening home with their tales of wonder and 
 surprise. We read with our eyes ; read the 
 book, the landscape, the changing sky, the 
 moving throng, the individual and expressive 
 feature and gesture. We listen with our ears 
 as, borne on every atmospheric billow, words, 
 sentences, complex noises, break against the 
 body ; as the harmonies and discords of the 
 world come rolling in like a flood. These two 
 newsmongers are ever busy working at the 
 same time. We are frequently conscious of 
 the double report ; ears and eyes rushing up at 
 the same instant, insisting upon an audience. 
 And finally we become so adept at taking news 
 that we can receive both messages at the same 
 instant. Helen Kellar employs neither of these 
 eavesdroppers ; her implements of sight and 
 sound are both destroyed, or rather were never 
 developed. She gets light through the avenue 
 of touch mostly. With fingers, nostrils, tongue, 
 and skin she gathers what she can of the doings 
 of this great world. Every intonation tells us 
 something which we involuntarily build into a 
 sentence, and pass to the soul. Every sound 
 teaches a truth which is written upon the invisi- 
 ble parchment of the intellect in characters that 
 can never fade. 
 
The Auditory Lamp. 51 
 
 There is an ear within an ear. The ear 
 without is framed for transmitting the sounds 
 of the earth to the ear within. It has to do 
 exclusively with planetary matters. When the 
 body is dead, or the ear deaf, or the hearing 
 machine destroyed in some way, the soul can 
 not detect a single cosmic sound. The storm 
 of melody, the floods of Mendelssohn and 
 Wagner, are as though they were not. There 
 are intonations audible and inaudible. What 
 is audible the spirit can take only with the 
 acoustic instrument that links it to the world. 
 The natural ear reports the planet only ; and 
 when it is dead, the planet is dead. It is as 
 extinct as the landscape is to the sleepers in 
 the graves. Yet there is a spirit in these 
 world-noises which passes to the ear within. 
 It disrobes sound, as it were, of its outer cov- 
 ering. The chariot is dismissed at the inner 
 entrance hall and the invisible occupant be- 
 comes the property of the mind. There are 
 messages that are not permitted to enter the 
 deep sanctuary of being. There is hearing and 
 hearing. " He that hath an Ear let him hear 
 what the Spirit saith." Some have not devel- 
 oped this inner listening. " Having ears they 
 
52 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 hear not." They hear superficially. They hear 
 as the brute — they get the pod and shuck of 
 sound, and lose the rest. "The natural man 
 perceiveth not the things of the Spirit." 
 There are things spiritually discerned, and 
 things only naturally discerned. There are 
 things seen by the " mind's eye," seen by the 
 natural eye, seen microscopically and telescopi- 
 cally. 
 
 But the ear within really catches two classes 
 of sounds. It does not hear the outward sound 
 as the acoustic organ does, but it gets the har- 
 mony. The soul of a sound is congruous with 
 its body. One is a correspondence and config- 
 uration of the other. The spirit ear extracts 
 the kernel from a musical strain and allows 
 the mere noise to die away ; as we take the 
 meat from a nut and drop the shell. It takes 
 the message and dismisses the messenger. It 
 can hear minus the outward ear ; not sounds 
 of earth, but the voices of the spiritual uni- 
 verse. Did not the shepherds hear the angelic 
 choir chanting over the Judean hills ? There 
 is an instrument called the audiphone that 
 transmits conversation through the bones of 
 the mouth to the deeper chambers of the 
 
The Auditory Lamp. 53 
 
 fleshly ear. Sound climbs up some other way, 
 enters by a secret passage. And in some 
 incomprehensible manner the spirit hears inde- 
 pendently of the earthly organ. The soul is 
 somehow stripped of its outer covering and 
 lies naked to the world of spirit. At dying 
 beds an illustration is frequently furnished. 
 Both inner and outer organs of light are at 
 work at the same moment. Standing on the 
 borderland, the immortal curtain swinging be- 
 tween becomes gauzy, translucent, and two 
 companies, two landscapes, two worlds, are 
 apparent. Sometimes while a hymn is being 
 sung by mundane friends the dying will catch 
 up another hymn chanted by a choir invisible. 
 Earth flowing in through the expiring outward 
 ear ; heaven, by an invisible and subtile corridor. 
 And yet it requires the spiritual auditory to 
 hear anything at all — even of mundane sounds. 
 Examine the dead man's implement of hear- 
 ing, and you will find it as perfect as it was in 
 life. The machine is, so far as we can see, 
 unimpaired. Let the surgeon take his scalpel 
 and he will find just what he would in life. 
 The tool is intact. What is the difficulty ? The 
 listener has gone away. Examine the spyglass, 
 
54 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 the telescope, the binocular, and you may find 
 them in perfect condition ; yet they can not see 
 without the supplemental eye. Withdraw the 
 eye, and they are utterly worthless. What is 
 the difficulty? That which really sees has 
 gone ; the looker has departed. Examine the 
 telephone, and you may find the whole mechan- 
 ism in perfect order, adjusted finely for imme- 
 diate use ; but what is it worth without the ear ? 
 The inner ear is to the outer what the listener 
 is to the telephone. Music is spiritual melody ; 
 it is the language of heaven. When the out- 
 ward ear hears only, a conglomeration of noises 
 is the result. The power to hear music is a 
 spiritual power. This great faculty is a heavenly 
 faculty. The outward instrument is only some- 
 thing that enables us to catch these cosmic 
 noises, and with the inner we extract from 
 them the soul of music, which is borne to the 
 deep places of the heart. There is a man, a 
 woman, inside able to deal with both orders of 
 sounds and build the blessed results into char- 
 acter. The ear is the auditorium where the 
 soul sits to listen. We are the auditor ; and 
 the Lord, man, nature, the speakers. It is 
 needless to argue this matter ; we feel it. We 
 
The Auditory Lamp. 55 
 
 perceive it by intuition. It is not a thing of 
 logic ; it is self-demonstrative. We are a liv- 
 ing, acting illustration. Before one who requires 
 demonstration we stand as helpless as though 
 he demanded evidence of his existence. The 
 evidence is himself; that he exists replies irre- 
 futably. If he can not perceive it, if it is not 
 a fact so clear that he can not question, argu- 
 ment is unavailing. 
 
 There is a shade of likeness between the 
 ear and the eye that has not been hinted at. 
 The ear stands for obedience, as well as intelli- 
 gence. The optic nerves run to the cerebrum 
 only ; the auditory nerves to both cerebrum 
 and cerebellum. The eyes are ministers to 
 intelligence primarily ; the ears to obedience 
 through intelligence. Sounds are moving in 
 their nature ; they are stored with impulse. 
 The oration, the alarm bell, the trumpet of 
 war, the scream of the locomotive, the pathos 
 and stimulant of melody, the cry of pain, and 
 the shout of triumph, — stir to action. Here 
 is light that makes for performance. Deed 
 and knowledge accompany one another. " By 
 hearing is signified perception and obedience. " 
 In the greater man the angels of the auditory 
 
56 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 are distinctly compliant. They love to do. 
 Every idea carries with it the feeling that it 
 must be completed by action. Sound trav- 
 erses quickly the domain of mind and enters 
 the open gates of the will. The object and 
 aim of learning is action. One is unintelli- 
 gible without the other. In the Word hear- 
 ing and doing are usually in couplets. " What 
 God hath joined together let no man put 
 asunder." 
 
 The ear has remarkable powers of discrimi- 
 nation and selection. Great masses of sound 
 come rolling up to it in conglomerate and 
 seemingly hopeless confusion. A wilderness 
 of noises as to form, pitch, and quality battle 
 at the doors of the little auditorium. They all 
 want to enter at the same instant. Promenad- 
 ing the streets of the populous and busy city, 
 talking with a friend on the deeper things of 
 life ; or sitting in the railway-car as it rushes 
 madly along accompanied with a thousand 
 commingled dins and bangs, this fact comes to 
 mind. The chatter of voices, the clatter of 
 steel on steel, the clangor of bells, the slamming 
 of doors, the shout of information, the shrill 
 cry of the newsboy, a hundred intonations 
 
The Auditory Lamp. 57 
 
 commingled and blended and blurred, each 
 have their story to tell. The power to choose 
 what to hear, to which to give audience, to 
 close against what is alien to the moment, to 
 concentrate on a single sound or series of 
 sounds, is not tabulated among the miraculous 
 because the process is so ordinary. No de- 
 scription can realize the grandeur and unut- 
 terable play on the outer and inner world of 
 this acoustic organ. No humanly constructed 
 instrument of sound can bear any comparison 
 with it. Each minute or loud intonation must 
 run the gauntlet in its attempt to reach the soul. 
 There is a succession of windows at which 
 sounds tap for admittance, yet few of them 
 succeed in entering. There are numerous 
 doors, at each of which the magic password 
 must be whispered. Every corridor is senti- 
 neled with faithful guards. As the pulsations 
 advance successively toward the interior cham- 
 bers, each is challenged, and the elect only are 
 permitted to go in. The vast, pressing con- 
 gregation of applicants is examined and dis- 
 posed. The soul receives its preferred sub- 
 jects like a queen. At each vestibule great 
 numbers are turned away. Like the Holy 
 
58 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 House at Jerusalem, the ear has its inadmissi- 
 ble courts. The temple was composed of 
 porticos, cloisters, and enclosures running in- 
 ward to the most Holy Place, before each of 
 which stood discretionary guards. There was 
 the great court of the Gentiles, open to all. 
 The next court excluded the Gentiles ; the 
 next, the women ; the next admitted only male 
 Hebrews ; the next, only priests. There was 
 the Holy Place, into which the chosen offici- 
 ating priest might go alone ; and then the 
 Holy of Holies, sacred to the feet of the soli- 
 tary High Priest. In like manner the voices 
 of the world find their way to the inner sanc- 
 tuary, where the spirit sits waiting to receive 
 its guests. Only the few choice pulsations 
 applicable to the instant are permitted to enter. 
 Jesus had in mind this power of option 
 when he said, "Take heed what ye hear." 
 He put man on his guard, and made him a 
 responsible agent. We are to be careful what 
 we admit to our hearts and minds. Only 
 elect and noble thoughts should be introduced 
 to the deep within. By an act of the will we 
 may determine what we will hear. Profanity, 
 obscenity, irrelevancy, the babel of superficial 
 
The Auditory Lamp. 59 
 
 intonations, may assail us and press into the 
 outer chamber of the auditory ; but just there 
 the discriminating process ought to begin. 
 That it is possible is proved every day by 
 positive acts. We are constantly " taking 
 heed what we hear." In the drawing-room 
 we may concentrate on the group of con- 
 versationalists to which we belong. In the 
 place of business or toil we may shut out 
 every base insinuation or allurement. We 
 may sift or strain out all but the angelic. We 
 may permit only pure sounds to enter our 
 deeper self, the withdrawn sacred inclosures of 
 the heart. " My sheep know my voice." If 
 we are the Lord's, every voice that reaches 
 the soul will be divine. "He that hath an 
 ear let him hear what the Spieit saith." Let 
 him not hear what is not of the Spirit. The 
 Lord has shut us within the holy place of 
 ourselves and guarded us from profane things 
 by a series of winnowing vestibules, that we 
 may hear only what is good. Like Bunyan's 
 Pilgrim, with our fingers in our ears to shut 
 out anything discordant or irrelevant, we should 
 run toward the holy city, crying, " Life, life, 
 eternal life." 
 
60 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 The ears, as well as the eyes, are in every 
 part of the body. EzekiePs living creature 
 was not only equipped with wings and feet, it 
 was " full of eyes." The man the Lord has 
 created in his image is full of ears. The 
 entire body is auricular. Every organ, every 
 limb, every atom, hears. Sound flashes its 
 light to every corner of the carnal mansion. 
 The auditory lamp beams through every win- 
 dow. It even reaches the feet : " Thy word 
 is a lamp unto my feet." My hands and feet 
 listen — hear, and every sound arouses them 
 to some duty. Every sentence is a call. The 
 feet know when the bell rings. The hands 
 answer sentences of gratulation with a warm 
 pressure. The lips become articulate when 
 high and stirring words are uttered. The 
 whole body springs up at the call of danger. 
 Every nerve and muscle seems to catch the 
 word. The eye flashes a response. In fright 
 the very hairs of the head arise and listen. 
 The body is but a greater acoustic organ spread 
 out to the universe in the attitude of hearing. 
 And this means that it should become an organ 
 of obedience. The Word of the Lord should 
 be set within us a " burning and shining light," 
 
The Auditory Lamp. 61 
 
 a fire that never dies away on the altar of 
 being, — "a lamp unto our feet, and a light 
 unto our path." 
 
V. 
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 There is a spirit [breath] in man and the inspiration of the 
 Almighty giveth them understanding. — Job. 
 
 The spirit [breath] of man is the candle [light] of the Lord. 
 — Solomon. 
 
 There is a beautiful and sympathetic rela- 
 tionship between the inbreathing organs of 
 man and the verdure. We are a little world 
 — a gathering-up of the things of the world 
 within the parenthesis of our bodies. If we 
 search earnestly through its avenues and 
 thickets, we shall find spheres, expanses, fly- 
 ing clouds, fixed rocks, loose soil, verdure, 
 light, darkness, and air. When we study the 
 world, we study ourselves ; and when we study 
 ourselves, we study the world. 
 
 The organs of inspiration, named the lungs, 
 
 are like a tree springing up within. Through 
 
 them the aerial food is communicated to the 
 
 body. They imbibe the sweet and tonic influ- 
 
 62 
 
The Tree of Knowledge. 63 
 
 ence of the atmospheres and send it by the 
 tiny blood-messengers throughout the carnal 
 domain. The crimson and white corpuscles 
 are minute rafts of light and air, drawn from 
 the upper and outer spaces, floated upon the 
 bosom of the mystic river to the remotest 
 districts of the fleshly land. 
 
 What are the trees ? They are the lungs of 
 the world. They tower up like giant inbreath- 
 ing instruments feeling for the riches of the 
 sky. The parks of London are called the 
 " lungs of London." They are that through 
 which the city breathes — that through which 
 it draws its therapeutics. Taking London as 
 a greater man, the parks are his very breath. 
 Trees strike their roots deep into the soil that 
 they may stand and lift themselves as high and 
 broad as possible into the heavens. They en- 
 deavor to expose as much breathing surface to 
 the air as will be consistent with stability. 
 They run up and out almost infinitely. Why ? 
 For no other purpose than to catch the breezes. 
 The tree is designed by unseen fingers to float 
 as many banners as possible. It begins with 
 a single, unshakable trunk, divides into main 
 branches, into particular ones, into numerous 
 
64 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 dilating twigs, at last covering itself with a 
 garment woven of uncounted emerald films 
 called leaves or foliage. This is the tree's 
 method of courting the air, of creating a vast 
 absorbing surface. For these beautifully con- 
 structed streamers have both an under and an 
 upper inhaling surface. The surface foliage 
 should be doubled after measurement. They 
 are air-takers. Their sole business is to draw 
 on the reservoirs of life that hover above 
 them. They feed on liquid planet, for the 
 air is but the planet in solution. They woo 
 and court the volatile sea in which they float 
 and sway like seaweeds in the ocean. They 
 are, in short, light-gatherers. The sap, or 
 blood of the tree, is thrown through the capil- 
 laries of the leaves in a fine spray ; and at the 
 instant when it is mist, it gathers its quota of 
 living breath. As it passes through the leaf it 
 is elaborated, and descends for the sustenance 
 of the tree. Here is a giant lung, a mighty 
 instrument of inspiration. The foliage of the 
 oak is frequently called " the lungs of the 
 oak." 
 
 The tree of the body is a duplicate of the 
 tree of the earth. There is the " root of the 
 
The Tree of Knowledge. 65 
 
 lungs/' the trunk out of which spring the 
 branches and twigs of the bronchia, completing 
 themselves in the six hundred million air-cells 
 of the living foliage. This tree erects itself 
 into the air and is continually bathed in it. 
 Billows of it, at every inbreath, surge about 
 these wonderful feelers. The sap (blood) of 
 the body is thrown through them in the finest 
 spray by the force-pump of the heart. Through 
 the network of veins that thread each pink 
 film that mystic fluid the Word of God calls 
 the life gets aeration. They feel after light 
 as the fish seeks water. Instead of rearing 
 themselves outside of the body, as the tree 
 roots itself on the surface of the earth, they 
 stand in a great inner depository of light. 
 
 Therefore the lungs are an organ of light. 
 Is not this assertion a little strained? Can it 
 stand the test of thorough scientific investiga- 
 tion ? Undoubtedly the breathing organs must 
 be catalogued among the light powers of the 
 body. We have spoken of other methods by 
 which we get light. Light by transmission 
 (nervous system) ; light by vision (eyes) ; light 
 by sound (hearing) ; — and now light by inspira- 
 tion (breathing). 
 5 
 
6Q A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 Patiently trace the evolution of the word 
 lung from its long descent through the wind- 
 ing, changing avenues of speech, and you will 
 at last find its root, buried in the Sanskrit, 
 meaning light. Lungs, levity, light, are all 
 from the same radical source. The Word of 
 God never speaks of the lungs by that name — 
 but always as spirit or breath. We are told 
 that the " spirit [lungs] of man is the Candle 
 [light] of the Lord." The lungs are fre- 
 quently called the " lights." They lift them- 
 selves into the light, and their business is to 
 collect light. They open to the light the entire 
 body, there being no corner or apartment of 
 the fleshly mansion to which pulmonic respira- 
 tion does not penetrate. They are the moun- 
 tains of light reared within us. " Clouds of 
 winged blood, momentaneous crimson flocks 
 and flights, rest on their airy summits." With 
 every inspiration the precious fluid is raised 
 (within us) into the atmosphere and suspended 
 for an instant to receive its baptism of glory. 
 The blue and turbid current is transfigured into 
 arterial crimson, returning to the heart lighter 
 — minus its weight of poison. With every in- 
 breath the lungs raise the body in all dimen- 
 
The Tree of Knowledge. 67 
 
 sions ; and were it not for the attraction of the 
 earth, and the pressure of the atmospheres, 
 they would lift it into their own buoyant ele- 
 ment — the air. They weigh the body con- 
 tinually in their balances — every organ, every 
 atom, every tissue. 
 
 Light is now collected by a new and un men- 
 tioned method. Not by wire, nor sight, nor 
 sound, but by influence, inspiration, inbreath- 
 ing, perception, intuition. By this method the 
 whole botanical universe lives. And as we are 
 botanical, as well as geological, and animal, we 
 have this intuitive absorbent faculty. We get 
 light by inhalation. Inspiration is builded of 
 two Latin words, in and spirit — in-spirit ; that 
 is, to take in the spirit. Pnewma, the Greek 
 word for wind or air, is also the word for 
 spirit. By inbreathing we inhale the spirit of 
 God (truth, light). " God is light." " I am 
 the truth." " Suddenly there came a sound 
 from heaven like a rushing mighty wind and 
 filled the whole house where they were sit- 
 ting." " And they were all filled with the Holy 
 Spirit" (pieuma, "air"). Inspiration is an 
 extreme elevation of the mind — a perception or 
 absorption of the spirit of God. " All scrip- 
 
68 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 ture is given by inspiration." The rapt proph- 
 ets of old were inspired — that is, they in- 
 breathed the spirit (air) of God, and outbreathed 
 it in holy writings. Inspiration appeals to the 
 mind: "The brain and the lungs conspire 
 together in every state of thinking." " The in- 
 spiration of the Almighty giveth them Under- 
 standing." When the lungs cease to heave, 
 the brain lies comatose. In suffocation and 
 swoons the heart acts tacitly, respiration is 
 abolished for the time. "Every state of 
 thinking produces a distinct and concordant 
 state of breathing." 
 
 The breathing organs are the ventilating 
 and house-cleaning department of the human 
 establishment. They remove the dust and 
 accumulated rubbish caused by the attrition of 
 living. The human machinery wears slightly, 
 and the gum and grime need to be cleansed 
 away. The grind of muscle on muscle leaves 
 a sediment. The mill of being makes some 
 litter. The lungs are windows through which 
 the fresh air blows, sweetening and purifying 
 the whole body. The inhalation of truth, the 
 taking of the breath of heaven, ventilates the 
 mind. It is the lavatory where thinking takes 
 
The Tree of Knoivledge. 69 
 
 its ablutions. Through these wide-flung shutters 
 the breath of the Most High conies upon us like 
 the rushing winds of Pentecost. " He breathed 
 on them and saith unto them Receive ye the 
 Holy Spirit [breath] ." How the mere open- 
 ing of a window will lift a cloud from the 
 brain ! How a little breeze of truth will clear 
 our ideas ! 
 
 This aerial food is the most vital thing of 
 life. Infinitely more so than the grosser foods. 
 We may live days without the one, but breath- 
 ing must occur as regularly as the pulses. This 
 invisible, intangible pabulum that enspheres us, 
 this mystic element we can not grasp, this " thin 
 air," this something undefinable, inexplicable, 
 in which everything is bathed, is the most par- 
 amount of material substances. Why ? Because 
 it has a soul — an air within an air ; it is impreg- 
 nated with the ethers of the spiritual world. 
 Without it the verdure withers, life ceases, 
 man becomes extinct. 
 
 The body is aflame and requires oxygen to 
 fan its fires. At Niagara Falls, where they 
 are making great quantities of electricity, the 
 manager was asked, " What is electricity ? " 
 The reply was : " We are making it, and sell- 
 
70 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 ing it as an article of commerce ; but we have 
 never seen it, nor do we know what it is." 
 " We know its results are power, heat, and 
 light." "We know its ways, its manifesta- 
 tions — but not itself." Air is as undecipherable 
 as electricity. It is the most abundant, com- 
 monest article of living ; it touches us, with its 
 tonic fingers, without and within ; it is the 
 general bath, the food and drink, the native ele- 
 ment of the pauper and the prince, the serpent 
 and the eagle — yet it is occult and beyond our 
 depth. We know its ways — we know flame 
 burns in it, blood requires it, the creation 
 craves it, as the thirsty desert traveler craves 
 the cooling spring. We know that everything 
 that has life expires without it ; that it recruits 
 the blood and raises it to arterial splendor and 
 richness ; that it is the vehicle and menstruum 
 of physical being. 
 
 The breathing organs are the gymnasia of 
 the body. As the wind exercises the trees, the 
 lungs are swayed by this insweeping air, exer- 
 cising the whole body. Trees die in a still, 
 stagnant medium. When the currents of the 
 liquid sea in which we dwell are sluggish, 
 our houses are stuffy, we feel like fishes in a 
 
The Tree of Knowledge. 71 
 
 too quiescent pond. Movement is a necessity 
 of health. The higher and finer things be- 
 come, the more mobile they become. Exercise 
 quickens the heart-beat, sets the lungs to heav- 
 ing faster, hurls greater quantities of blood 
 through the air-films, carrying ozone to the 
 tips of the body, with a result at once tonic 
 and life-giving. The more exercise, the more 
 light. The better we live, the more abundant 
 inflow of truth, the stancher and stronger the 
 entire moral system. Action is clarifying, 
 energizing. The soul is regaled when the 
 winds of truth blow through all its recesses, 
 — blowing out the false, blowing in the true. 
 "All religion relates to life, and the life of 
 religion is to do good." " Light is sown for the 
 righteous," — those who ultimate their lives in 
 right deeds. 
 
 Inspiration is for respiration. The end and 
 aim of inbreathing is outbreathing. Outbreak- 
 ing (expiration) is the fruit and use of inspira- 
 tion. We die that we may live. Great breathers 
 are great workers. The bellows that blow the 
 harp of life must be capacious if that harp is 
 to make grand melody. The lungs not only 
 supply a due quantity of air to the interior 
 
72 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 parts of the body, but swell and sweeten every 
 tissue, even to the feet. They are the bellows 
 and keys of the human harp, of which the will 
 is the executing fingers. The inbreath returns 
 on its bosom song and speech. The tongue 
 is a fabric of the atmosphere ; the outward 
 temple of wisdom is built of this volatile yet 
 essential substance. The lungs breathe over 
 the larynx, the tongue, the palate, the teeth, 
 and the lips. They awaken the wind and 
 stringed instruments of the fleshly orchestra, 
 — the laryngeal harp, the tracheal pipes and 
 strings, the soundboard of the cranium, the 
 articulating hammer of the tongue, the fine 
 play of the mouth and the lips. Air is trans- 
 posed into articulate sound ; it becomes the 
 chariot and vehicle of thought. This is why 
 God has given us breath. A man whose ex- 
 piration is empty, blown into vacant space, is 
 not in the divine image. " Cease ye from 
 man whose breath is in his nostrils." Said 
 Jesus, " I am the Light of the World." Ye are 
 the light of the world. We are to shine on 
 men as He did, in our ratio. We are to breathe 
 on men as He did, in our ratio, saying, " Re- 
 ceive ye the Holy Spirit." 
 
The Tree of Knowledge. 73 
 
 The act of inspiration is a beautiful and 
 significant exchange. We breathe in life, 
 breathe out death. It is living and dying at 
 every respiration. It is regeneration by inha- 
 lation. At each heaving of the bellows the 
 blood is invited to give up its impure gases, 
 which are passed outward to the air. As it 
 mounts to the summits of the lungs it looks 
 up, to enable it to yield the baser things of its 
 nature. It flows in laden with death — flows 
 back refined and clarified. It is a beautiful 
 symbol of the lower loves of the will cleansed by 
 the inbreathed truth. The blood-river of the 
 entire man is poured through the filtering pul- 
 monary vessels. When these tiny, branching 
 pipes reach the films of the lungs, they greet 
 each other with this ineffable interchange. The 
 blood gives up its bad and takes the good ; the 
 air yields its precious substance and carries the 
 refuse of the blood into the open — something as 
 we carry our torn and filthy bills to the treasury, 
 and receive new ones in their place. How the 
 enriched fluid dances and glows with its new- 
 found joy ! How it hastens over the body, 
 pressing, tapping at every door of every organ 
 and gland, asking for an opportunity to do 
 
74 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 good ! So it is when the mind is inspired by 
 truth. We desire nothing so much as to bless 
 others. " In thy presence is fullness of joy ; 
 at thy right hand are pleasures forevermore." 
 We are given "beauty for ashes, the oil of 
 joy for mourning, the garment of praise for 
 the spirit of heaviness." 
 
 There is a right and a wrong breathing. 
 There is always an opposite. Every pole has 
 its antipodes. Every east has a west ; every 
 south a north ; every mountain has its vale ; 
 every plateau its everglade. There are poi- 
 sonous airs, death-dealing atmospheres. There 
 is a breathing which carries impurities over the 
 system. There is a breathing that depletes the 
 blood and impoverishes it. There are some 
 who court the false, as the leaves seek the light. 
 They " love darkness rather than light." They 
 delight in mischief, absorb scandal, and are at 
 home in the lurid airs of lust. " What a 
 man's mind loves his blood craves," because 
 the outward is but a configuration of the in- 
 ward; because the inward crystallizes and 
 builds the outward, and is the soul and impulse 
 of every atom of it. The body, clothing, 
 surroundings, speech, and gesture can be but a 
 
The Tree of Knowledge. 75 
 
 radiation of the individual indwelling spirit. 
 So much depends, then, upon a pure inspira- 
 tion. What the breath is, the man is. 
 
 There is a twofold breath — one of the spirit, 
 another of the body. Yet they are really 
 one j for the body is but the fabric of the 
 spirit. It is dual also in its quality ; yet one 
 must accord with the other. Both are either 
 good or vicious. We can not have a pure 
 inner breath and an impure outer breath. 
 Sweet waters can not spring from a bitter foun- 
 tain. Paul journeyed to Damascus " breathing 
 out threatening and slaughter against the dis- 
 ciples of the Lord Jesus " ; he breathed out 
 what was in him. But when he had inspired 
 the noontide splendor of God, and heard the 
 voice of the Lord breathing out of the glory, 
 he got a new inspiration. Henceforth he 
 breathed out light and love. Much depends 
 upon how, and what, we breathe. Physiolo- 
 gists are waking up to this pregnant idea. Deep 
 breathing, pure breathing, ventilation, life in 
 the open air, are the pressing, timely, sanitary 
 topics. And if this is true of the body, what 
 of the soul ? what of the breath of the spirit ? 
 
 "Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from 
 hell?" 
 
VI. 
 
 THE SEAMLESS DRESS. 
 
 Thou coverest thyself with light as with a garment. — Psalter. 
 
 Man, an epitome of the universe, holding 
 within the parenthesis of his body heaven, the 
 world, and all that is earthly, is beautifully 
 sealed and stamped with the signature of the 
 Almighty. He lies within a transparent envel- 
 ope, open to the influences of the without. 
 Through its viewless alleys his spirit shines, as 
 the clothing of Jesus was lighted on the moun- 
 tain, as the skin of Moses' face became trans- 
 lucent after his interview with God on Sinai. 
 This ineffable tunic, woven by the Lord's own 
 hand, is presented to every one of us. To pic- 
 ture its marvelous structure, its delicate color- 
 ing, its perfect adaptation to the inequalities of 
 the body, its immense diversity of composition, 
 the living fabric, the garment that feels and 
 knows, — would call for the pen of an angel. 
 76 
 
The Seamless Dress. 77 
 
 It is strong, elastic, soft, dewy, dazzling as the 
 finest silk, fair as the garment of the flowers. 
 " If God so clothe the lilies, how much more 
 shall he clothe you ? " This priceless vesture 
 is woven double, within and without. Without, 
 an armor of light, constructed of millions of 
 overlapping filaments. These we shed as the 
 trees drop their leaves in autumn, as the 
 flowers drop their lobes ; and, like these, are 
 continually renewed. Within, the web is of 
 finer texture, and through it flows, in countless 
 streams, the scarlet life. Under the micro- 
 scope it becomes infinitely more varied and 
 fascinating. It is threaded with minute fur- 
 rows, ridges, channels ; dotted with spirals, pro- 
 montories, innumerable active craters, spread- 
 ing lakes, and running brooks. It is adorned 
 here and there by a remarkable extension of 
 the armor, called hair. This is only elongated 
 leaves, more highly colored. It flows from the 
 head and face like threads of silk ; it fringes 
 the eyes, overhangs the brows. 
 
 What are the uses of this living drapery ? 
 It makes the body beautiful. No creation of 
 ancient or modern looms is so delicate, so 
 enchanting, so graceful, and of such perfect 
 
78 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 proportion. It serves as an armor to protect 
 the underlying nerves, blood-vessels, and minute 
 organs. It is the anatomical parenthesis of the 
 soul. It is an immense breathing and nutri- 
 tive organ. It is the most direct avenue to the 
 blood river. Yet its highest function is its 
 sense of touch. It is a tunic of light — the 
 great "general sense" through which we ac- 
 quaint ourselves with the ensphering universe. 
 It is a sealed envelope, shutting us entirely 
 from the without ; and whatever we know of 
 the external passes through it as beams of light 
 pass through glass. It is the arch of communi- 
 cation between the air, the sky, and the world 
 in general ; between the circumambient crea- 
 tion and the corporeal world which it bounds. 
 It is a myriad-avenued mantle, through which 
 the ethers pass as a new element, traversing 
 the ways that find the blood and nerves. 
 
 Let us consider it as a habiliment of light. 
 Here it becomes wonderfully interesting. It 
 is an all-encompassing organ of inquiry, busy 
 continually collecting news of every conceiv- 
 able variety. It touches the outside world as 
 the brook touches the bed over which it flows. 
 It is most perfectly adapted to its environment. 
 
The Seamless Dress. 79 
 
 Through it light passes both ways — from the 
 spirit within, outward ; from the world with- 
 out, inward. It is dotted with hills of light, 
 called papillae. They are called "tactile" 
 papillae — that is, papillae of touch. These are 
 the fingers of the flesh. They are microscopic 
 hands stretched out to feel the world, and tell 
 the soul within. They cover the body with 
 light as with a garment. These papillae are 
 finer than needle-points ; and, what is more 
 remarkable, each of them is a bundle of still 
 finer papillae. Some of them are looped at the 
 ends, like silk caught up ; others are as though 
 the ends had been cut, leaving them like minute 
 velvet brushes. They are exquisitely keen 
 and sensitive — all alert for information ; their 
 occupation is to feel for facts and report to the 
 cerebrum. Thus the entire body is turned out- 
 ward to the world to receive impressions. 
 These little fingers of light determine as to 
 size, form, number, configuration, weight, tem- 
 perature, hardness, softness, etc. Little could 
 be known if the nerves were dead. If the 
 robe of sense were absent, there could be no 
 such thing as touch — and we should be shut 
 up to the special senses. 
 
80 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 The fleshly apparel is truly named the " gen- 
 eral sense." The other senses are properly 
 called " special." The faculty of touch covers 
 and embraces every other faculty. It is actually 
 the human form sentient. It does everything 
 but what is especially delegated to the olfac- 
 tory, the visual, the auditory, the gustatory, 
 and the respiratory powers. And it is, to 
 some extent, a co-worker with these — for the 
 skin incloses every organ of the body. It is 
 the instrument of feeling, and in that sense is 
 related to the heart. We speak of the heart as 
 that within us which feels, melts, moves, loves. 
 So this general sense is a kind of outside heart. 
 There is the warm contact of hand with hand, 
 of lips with lips, of body with body. " Our 
 spirits rushed together at the touching of the 
 lips." We touch, and are touched, according to 
 the relation of heart to heart. 
 
 There are spots where the garment is thinner, 
 where the light shines through brightest. There 
 are oriels and embrasures where the glory 
 is more apparent. In cathedral windows 
 there are places where the beauty is more crys- 
 talline. The thickness of the skin varies from 
 an eighth of a line to a line and a half. In 
 
The Seamless Dress. 81 
 
 some localities the papillae are more elevated 
 and numerous. This is especially true at the 
 tips of the fingers and at the tip of the tongue. 
 An illustration may be had by shutting the 
 eyes and pressing some object to the back. It 
 would be almost impossible to detect its nature. 
 Now, keeping the eyes closed, handle with the 
 fingers, and light will suddenly break on it. 
 
 Let us consider more definitely how this 
 living vestment accommodates itself to the 
 world ; how these myriad tiny nerve-hills be- 
 come our instructors. Miss Helen Kellar, the 
 remarkable sightless and soundless girl, is a 
 vivid example, for she obtains her intelligence 
 of the world entirely through the skin. She 
 sees nothing, hears nothing, but is exquisitely 
 attuned to the outward in her potency of 
 touch. She listens through the ends of her 
 fingers. She reads by running them over 
 raised type, talks through them by playing 
 upon her typewriter. She places her hands 
 upon your lips and throat while you speak, and 
 thus hears you. They are her decalogue of ears. 
 She hears through the palm of her hand while 
 her teacher writes the finger-alphabet there. 
 In a recent communication she says, " I felt 
 
82 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 something fall heavily," instead, as we would 
 say, " I heard something fall heavily." She 
 felt the roar of Niagara by placing her hands 
 on soft pillows. She says, " I felt a strange, 
 awful sound, like heavy iron being thrown 
 down." Where we say hear y she says felt 
 She hears through the medium of physical 
 contact. She sees by the same general sense. 
 She says, " I felt the bright sunshine of our 
 beautiful world." Doubtless something as a 
 plant feels it. She " felt intense light quiver- 
 ing about her." She felt even the " light of 
 the stars." She says, " I felt a sound of light, 
 swift footsteps about my bed." Ears and eyes 
 are as oblivion, yet she hears and sees through 
 the palm, the finger-tips, the lips, the feet, — 
 the meeting of her body with the universe. 
 That animated dress of hers, quivering with 
 life, so keenly alert that a zephyr can not 
 approach it without betraying its advent, — is 
 her sole avenue of intelligence. Without it, 
 the sunshine, the air, the trees and flowers, the 
 animals, the solid ground, the clasp of friend- 
 ship, the messages of books and papers, — would 
 be to her an unknown thing. 
 
 Touch is more than hearing, more than see- 
 
The Seamless Dress. 83 
 
 ing, more than the intensest thought and fancy. 
 It is these ultimated ; it means intimacy and 
 power. Both are understood by the grip of the 
 hands. It means love, and the communication 
 of love. The warmer and firmer the grasp, 
 the deeper the emotion that lies within. How 
 the face lights as the pressure is returned, in- 
 timating that the hands of the heart, too, have 
 met ! To touch is to feel ; and all feeling, 
 from the innermost place to the ends of the 
 fingers, is expressed by it. Touch, in the 
 language of the spirit, means to be moved to 
 love and action. We are "touched to tears" ; 
 "touched" when the heart is reached, and the 
 real man or woman awakened. Nothing merely 
 mental will do this, nothing coldly perfect 
 and beautiful, nothing simply philosophical or 
 logical, nothing only grand or immovable. 
 They stir admiration, wonder, — but never love. 
 Touch is that powerful and mystic sense that 
 finds the heart and core of being. 
 
 Therefore its immense importance ! The 
 cuticle is the beginning of man, as the leaves 
 are the beginning of the tree. From the Lord, 
 through ultimates, to things interior, and higher. 
 The sap of the tree ascends (through the pith 
 
84 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 and bark) to the leaves, bathes itself in the 
 light of God, gets its quota from celestial spaces, 
 and descends to weave the woody fiber of the 
 bole. It is the contact of the tree with the out- 
 ward and upward universe that lends it sub- 
 stance and power. It is this that makes the Leb- 
 anon cedar unshakable as the rock. A similar 
 process goes on within us. The bodily cover- 
 ing is the beginning of the arterial system. 
 The sap of the body (the blood) ascends to the 
 leaves of the lungs and the skin, returning, 
 with a higher power, to build the human habi- 
 tation ; as Solomon got his stones and cedars in 
 the mountains of the Holy Land to rear the Holy 
 House. Power to build bone, and muscle, and 
 sinew, and brain, and heart is from the high 
 places. In this manner the earth, the Word, 
 and the heaven of angels became a reality. 
 From the Lord outward into the suns and 
 planets; through evolution, from the grass to 
 the forests ; from the univalve to man ; — 
 through man, heaven. From the Lord into 
 the literal Word ; then within the sentences, 
 as jewels in a case, the fathomless arcana that 
 instruct angels. From the Lord, through the 
 brain, to the seamless dress of the soul — then 
 
The Seamless Dress. 85 
 
 the whole inward man. Without this, whence 
 every interior faculty ? Try to think ! With- 
 out it, what would sight, hearing, and smell- 
 ing be? If we could not touch, everything 
 that lies within the radius of sight or hearing 
 only would take on the far-away and the mys- 
 tical. It would seem the " baseless fabric of 
 a dream." It would be unreal, unsubstantial, 
 if intangible ; evanescent and shadowy as our 
 Lord before His disciples handled Him ; as 
 our departed ones, whom we feel only with the 
 soul. "Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand !" 
 This is why a certain unreality will surround 
 them until by and by we place our hands in 
 theirs, and impress the old kiss on their faces. 
 The cuticle has some importance as a respira- 
 tory and nutritive organ. It exhales waste ; 
 shows to the doors of being impure and no 
 longer useful substances ; inspires pure ethers, 
 heavenly medicants. It is a kind of outer 
 lung and stomach. If it were hermetically 
 sealed, the victim would expire almost as 
 quickly as if asphyxiated. The nutritive 
 properties of the air pass through the skin by 
 a cross-cut to the blood. In cases where the 
 stomach refuses to act, the body is bathed in 
 
86 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 liquid food, that the hungry and crying blood 
 may feed. In times of awful thirst at sea, 
 where fresh water is absent, the body has been 
 immersed in salt water, and the skin, acting as 
 a filter and sweetener, has conducted the needed 
 drink to the system. 
 
 Above the organ of touch lies the mystery 
 of spheres. Spheres surround the flesh like a 
 halo — as the earth is wrapped in a drapery of 
 invisible atmospheres. We feel this aureole ; 
 but see it not. We feel the air ; yet it is in- 
 corporeal. There is what we call personality. 
 Some have the sphere of a block of ice; 
 others, of an irradiating and warming sun. 
 The sphere is the most subtile influence that 
 reaches us by any threaded way. A beautiful 
 border of light lies above the cuticle as the 
 sunshine hovers over the soil. It is a still 
 finer hand outstretched to the world, an ear 
 more sensitively strung to mundane realities. 
 It is the impalpable sentinel that guards all the 
 entrances of life. At its call the armor of 
 light opens or closes. How some presences 
 cause us to recoil, to become rigid, inhospitable, 
 — to swing in the gates of being and push the 
 bolt ! And we do not know why. Frequently 
 
The Seamless Dress. 87 
 
 nothing has been said, we have not been 
 touched. At other times how we spread wide 
 every avenue of welcome ! How we extend 
 the soul's hands and say, " Come ! " Instantly 
 this decision is made from a favorable or an 
 unpropitious report of this aureole of being. 
 
 No part of us is so capable of cultivation as 
 the " general sense." Sightless and deaf- 
 mutes frequently get more out of the world 
 than others with every faculty normal. They 
 get more through their skin than others do 
 through all-seeing eyes and all-hearing ears. 
 There are instances of the blind being able to 
 detect even color by the touch. They fre- 
 quently know the denomination of bank-bills. 
 Bank-tellers handle money so much, and ac- 
 quire such keen contact, that when a counterfeit 
 passes through their fingers, they throw it out 
 with unerring judgment. 
 
 There is a spiritual cuticle. It is the limbics 
 of the spiritual humanity. It is the " tactile " 
 organ of the intangible within. It is the with- 
 in of the fleshly — the without of the immaterial. 
 In heaven it will rim us round like a corona. 
 We know persons who have what we call 
 " tact " or touch. How delicately impressive 
 
88 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 they are. They read our feelings as angels 
 read immortal chirography. They know the 
 lights and shadows of the face, and can inter- 
 pret them. They know how the soul shades 
 through the body. The vesture of light which 
 adorns them hangs in graceful folds from their 
 very shoulders. It is so diaphanous the entire 
 figure is one beam of glory. It is a perfect and 
 beautiful medium of communication between 
 them and the whole universe of men. 
 
 And we should not forget the dominance of 
 the will over this great outer organ. What it 
 is to be lies largely with us. It is the impas- 
 sive instrument of the will. It goes where we 
 go, touches what we bid it, acts in harmony 
 with our desires. The power of touch can be 
 cultivated almost ad infinitum. There is no 
 line of demarcation. The intense and fine dis- 
 criminations of the blind and deaf illustrate 
 this. What the tactile instrument is, will be, 
 inner or outer, lies with us. 
 
>~»x«~ 
 
 LIFE POWERS. 
 
 ~a&4e~ 
 
VII. 
 
 THE LIFE WITHIN THE LIFE. 
 
 I am the bread of life. — Jesus. 
 
 So graze as you find pasture. — Shakespeare. 
 
 These two things there are in God and man 
 — light and life. They are also in every 
 created thing in the universe. From the cen- 
 ter to the rim of all that is, we find these re- 
 flections of the Deity. While light is first in 
 place, life is first in importance ; for the light 
 is from the life. Though the sunbeams stream 
 out and fill boundless spaces, the deep within 
 is heat. So the within of the Lord is life, 
 while the without is light. His garments 
 shine with the radiance of His love. " In 
 Him was life, and the life was the light of 
 men." Love is at the heart of God, for " God 
 is love " — while He is the light because He is 
 love. 
 
 91 
 
92 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 We touch now the center of light — the 
 within of ourselves. That of which our light 
 is but the configuration or forthgoing. Hith- 
 erto we have considered intelligence; now, 
 warmth. We deal now with determination 
 rather than discrimination ; heart rather than 
 the mind ; motion rather than radiance. While 
 the light of the electric car irradiates the inte- 
 rior, the power within is moving it. The 
 power is first in importance. Without it, 
 there could be neither light nor progress. If 
 there is to be light, the tides of life must be 
 poured through it. First God ; then " God 
 said let there be light and there was light. " 
 We consider now the central, volitional prop- 
 erties of ourselves. 
 
 Whence comes life ? Hunt and search as we 
 will, we finally reach God. As the explorer of 
 a river ascends to the mountain springs, the 
 seeker for the beginnings of life finds God. 
 We say we get heat from coal. Do we? 
 Behind coal is wood ; behind wood, sun ; be- 
 hind sun, the spiritual sun ; behind that, what ? 
 — God ! The sun built the earth, built the 
 verdure ; by its influence drew up trees and 
 plants from the soil. And what is coal but 
 
The Life Within the Life. 93 
 
 buried, petrified verdure? We have stepped 
 backward until we have reached the sun. Who 
 made that ? The reply is that it was created 
 from the spiritual sun, the great central lumi- 
 nary of luminaries. But how about the spir- 
 itual sun ? Why, it must have come from God. 
 Therefore it is God who kindles the fire on our 
 hearth, the glow on our table. Wood, verdure, 
 coal, oil, sun — are but varied combinations of 
 the life and light of God. He has wrapped 
 them within these coverings as a convenient 
 gift to men. The love of God is at the center 
 of what illuminates and warms our dwellings. 
 We say we "get life and strength from 
 vegetables and meat." " Bread is the staff of 
 life." But the ox feeds on vegetation, vegeta- 
 tion on the earth, the earth on the sun, the 
 sun on God. By a beautiful indirection the 
 Lord is manufacturing the myriad eatables 
 as truly as the housewife spreads the table 
 for the waiting family. Yes, more truly, for 
 she but mixes, modifies, seasons, and cooks 
 what He has created. The vegetable is simply 
 soil, sun, and air commingled and made palata- 
 ble. Enter the great laboratory or kitchen of 
 nature, and you will find the Lord busily at work. 
 
94 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 As in the ancient days every road led to Rome, 
 every avenue of research leads to the throne 
 of a special Providence. All food, all love 
 and life, is fundamentally from the Lord 
 though it traverse paths of indirection. If we 
 get a cablegram from Hongkong via Madras, 
 Paris, London, and New York, we do not say 
 the cablegram came from London, but from 
 Hongkong. If we get a letter from a far 
 country bearing postmarks of the various parts 
 of the world over which it has traveled, we do 
 not say it came from any one of these inter- 
 mediate places, but from the point where it 
 started. So when the Lord gives us life via 
 food, earth, sun, — having numerous stamps 
 and waymarks upon it, — we should not credit 
 the gift to any of these intermediary sources ; 
 we should not say " it comes from coal, vege- 
 tables, meat, wool, medicines, the' balms of 
 distant lands," but from the Lord. The earth 
 is a mighty storehouse of food suspended in 
 space by the good -will of the All-loving and 
 the All-providing. Food, clothing, shelter, 
 warmth, comfort, are the planet served up, 
 modified, refined, and woven by the hand of an 
 invisible Lover. Every existing thing feeds 
 
The Life Within the Life. 95 
 
 on the earth in some of its myriad concoctions, 
 while the earth feeds on the sun, and the sun 
 on God. The rocks, mountains, and plains 
 are threshed to powder in His giant mill and 
 turned into that which shelters, nourishes, in- 
 structs. We banquet on distilled and sub- 
 limated planet. We eat the hills, and drink 
 the seas, and breathe the airs of the great 
 round world. Water is merely liquid planet ; 
 air, but a more subtile form of planet. All 
 outward comforts and uses are but the earth 
 recombined, whipped, triturated, transmuted 
 into manifold expressions of Divine Love. 
 
 Food means force. It is the dynamic power 
 within the power. The food of the engine is 
 coal ; and until it gets that, it stands lifeless 
 and dark upon the track. Feeding is the com- 
 munication of the life of God to the finite life ; 
 as the coaling of the engine is the communica- 
 tion of motion to the engine. The end of 
 feeding is transition, force, use. Physical 
 power and utility are the result of the commu- 
 nication of the life of the Lord to our life. 
 Within the food is not only fleshly power, but 
 mental and spiritual power. We glean from it 
 these two discrete properties of force. One is 
 
96 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 the superstructure of the other. Food lies at 
 the basis of every utility, from the miner in 
 the abysses of the earth, to the angel who flies 
 through the circles of the celestial heaven. 
 Homer speaks of the ancient warrior equipped 
 for battle : " His shield well lined, his horses 
 meated well." Jesus said to His disciples, " I 
 have meat to eat that ye know not of." Food 
 is the force of every cell of the body, the basis 
 of every thought of the mind, the wings of 
 every devout utterance of the heart. The 
 very end of feeding is use ; without use, the act 
 is meaningless. The remark of Paul has eter- 
 nal verity : " If any would not work neither 
 should he eat." 
 
 This is what is meant by the life within the 
 life — the life of God within the life of man 
 communicating his life to ours. We are cre- 
 ated to exist and serve by this universal con- 
 fession of dependence. We do not root our- 
 selves in the soil, and live, as the plants do, by 
 suction ; but we take the life within our life 
 by a slight indirection. We take the jellied 
 and canned refinements of the planet — the 
 delicately preserved life of the globe — and 
 give it to our organs and cells. Few pause to 
 
The Life Within the Life. 97 
 
 reflect that we could not continue an instant 
 without this incessant gift of Himself. Food, 
 — solid, aerial, embalmed, crystallized, — in a 
 million hues, shapes, odors, flavors, — is our 
 instantaneous necessity. If it should cease, 
 there would be a blank, an inky darkness ; as 
 when the electric current is withheld. Food 
 and hunger are both from the Lord ; one is the 
 concomitant of the other ; one a call to the 
 exercise of the other. Without this perpetual 
 commissariat of the whole creation of men and 
 angels, all but the Omnipotent Himself would 
 be a negation. The Lord is here feeding us, 
 as He fed Elijah by the brook, as He fed the 
 grouped fifties on the grassy slopes of Galilee. 
 The final elaboration of this " bread of God n 
 is within the body. It is passed through the 
 lips to what may properly be named the 
 kitchen of the body. Here it is prepared and 
 dispensed to the hungry and waiting organs. 
 Here it is made ready for transfusion into 
 bone, muscle, brain, nerve, tissue, cell, and by 
 a miraculous act becomes the highest work of 
 the creation — man in the image of God. And 
 when man has become an angel of heaven, and 
 has returned to God, the mystic cycle is com- 
 
98 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 pleted. This general kitchen is fabricated of 
 innumerable little kitchens. As a desk has 
 many small inclosures called pigeonholes, the 
 stomach is a congregation of minor stomachs 
 under a supervising head. Each by special 
 dispensation is busy mixing, triturating, macer- 
 ating, seething, extracting — like a corps of 
 cooks in a great establishment under a gov- 
 erning chef. Here is the chemical laboratory 
 where the elixir of life is compounded. Here 
 the material of every sort which enters the 
 gateway of the lips is scrutinized, dissected, 
 sorted, recombined, with the special need in 
 mind of every minutest organ, cell, or tissue. 
 A million million guests are waiting for the 
 feast to be spread. There are no fine processes 
 of the purveyor that do not go on here far 
 more cleverly. The velocity and accuracy of 
 its motion is amazing. And indeed it may 
 well be, for the whole being depends upon its 
 fidelity, quickness, and skill. Its discrimina- 
 tion is almost omniscient. It knows where to 
 dispatch this and that by speedy and reliable 
 messengers. Meals are sent now up, now 
 dowm, now across — by the directest ways. 
 The purest and finest product is sent first to 
 
The Life Within the Life. 99 
 
 the brain — to the lofty royal chamber where the 
 lord of life resides. The next purest things 
 are transmitted in graduated order to this and 
 that worker until each has its needful and 
 appropriate nourishment. There is the wis- 
 dom and adaptation of the presiding mother 
 of the home, who sees that the babe gets milk 
 and the man meat. There is a great retinue 
 of servants within us, traveling the threaded 
 roads of our being from foot to crown. There 
 is a vast and complex life within our life. 
 Some of the finer extracts, essences, and 
 spirits pass directly to the blood from the 
 mouth; but, in general parlance, the stomach 
 is the place of preparation and distribution. 
 There are countless little mouths and tongues, 
 within the major mouth and tongue, that drink 
 in through microscopic apertures the first fruits. 
 They are the "king's taster," who decides 
 what is best to go to the royal table. Old 
 John Gower states the case thus quaintly : 
 
 "The stoniak coke is for the hall, and boileth mete for 
 hem all 
 To make hem mighty for to serve the herte that he 
 shall not sterve." 
 
 Everything pivots on the importation into 
 :LcfC, 
 
100 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 the system of this outside vitality. It is thus 
 every department of the metropolis of life gets 
 its quota and builds its native tissue. The 
 study of nutrition, digestion, assimilation, with 
 its superb results throughout the material and 
 spiritual universe, is intensely stimulating and 
 interesting. Not only development is made 
 possible, but matured and arrested growth is 
 kept intact by this all-embracing metamorpho- 
 sis. It is the foundation and rafters of the 
 infinite creation. 
 
 The building of man out of food is some- 
 thing more than physical, as man is something 
 more than flesh and blood. The grosser parts 
 serve as a pabulum for bone and muscle — 
 weave the framework, siding, and roofing of 
 the soul's dwelling. As these visible and mate- 
 rial products are floated on the mystic stream 
 of the blood everywhere throughout the carnal 
 domain, each cell reaches out its tiny hand and 
 takes what it needs to rear its unique fabric, 
 something as cities are builded and provinces 
 populated and civilized by vessels of commerce. 
 But there is an invisible, mental man upon the 
 flesh man. We make our way to God, heaven, 
 through nature. And this unseen us is the real 
 
The Life Within the Life. 101 
 
 us — as the superstructure of the temple is the 
 real temple. There is also a viewless human- 
 ity, a race triumphant, the flower and fruit of 
 the militant humanity. The invisible passes 
 through nature, gathering as it goes certain 
 sublimated properties of nature, carrying them 
 into the sky, as the invisible fragrance of the 
 violet is resurrected and glorified. The uirper- 
 ceived, ethereal breath of the Lord breaks 
 through and impregnates our mundane atmos- 
 pheres, feeding the spirit, and returning again 
 to the God from whom it started. Character, 
 manhood, womanhood, divine sw r eetness, purity 
 and innocence, affection, wisdom, steadfastness, 
 have filtered through the rocks, the verdure, 
 the flesh, and blossomed into soul. "From 
 the Lord, through ultimates, back to the Lord." 
 There is the greater heavenly man. The 
 race is in the form of a divine personality. 
 Souls are the food of eternity. Good souls are 
 assimilated into the structure of this Greater 
 Man. We die out of the deadness of the body 
 into the livingness of the spirit, as the kernel 
 of corn dies out of its deadness into w r aving 
 fields and bursting granaries. The digestion 
 of death uplifts and transmutes what it touches. 
 
102 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 It is the magic alchemy that delivers from the 
 body of corruption and decay. It is not dis- 
 solution, but continuance and elaboration. It 
 is a vast and lovely refinement, a gathering-up 
 of the enduring things of the world, the heart 
 and soul of material objects, into man the 
 image of God — and thus carrying them into 
 heaven. 
 
 Eating is therefore a sacrament, and is iden- 
 tified with the holiest exercises of humanity. 
 It is a prayer, a hymn of gratitude, and a con- 
 fession of dependence. It is taking the life of 
 the Lord into our life. Every meal is a Lord's 
 Supper. It is the communication of the Divine 
 Life and Love to the finite life. It is the Life 
 within the life. This is the significance of 
 the Holy Communion. The bread contributes 
 something to the sustenance of the flesh, but 
 within the bread is the bread of God that 
 supports the heart. And, as the soul has the 
 ascendency over the body, the bread within the 
 bread is the supreme thing of the feast. In 
 the outward act of supping with Him, His life 
 and love is liberated from its grosser covering, 
 and is absorbed by the spirit. There is the 
 love within the love — the outer love going to 
 
The Life Within the Life. 103 
 
 the flesh, the inner to the spirit. " I am the 
 bread of life." He is the bread within the 
 bread. He is the love within the love ; the 
 Life within the life. Love and life are inter- 
 changeable terms. 
 
 " Nutriment is greatest when food is eaten with 
 joy." Here lies the secret power of life's great 
 banquet. We appropriate what we are inter- 
 ested in. "Love is life" — and we may study 
 ponderous volumes, read until we are dazed, 
 weary, and confused, and get little into the 
 mental constitution, if we do it as a task. 
 What is not done with interest is largely lost. 
 Read again the page that you traveled over 
 yesterday with weariness, and if you have not 
 marked the place, you can not tell that you 
 ever saw it. Duty is better than idleness — 
 but a very poor thing. It leads through bitter, 
 bewildering ways and yields little profit. But 
 love transfigures duty, extracts its mechanical 
 drudgery, and lends it wings. Listening, study- 
 ing, reading from duty are as profitless as eating 
 from a sense of duty. There is something in it, 
 but very little. It is the eager, spontaneous 
 quest of truth that makes the man of truth. 
 It is the joy of love that incarnates love. In 
 
104 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 any trade, calling, or profession love gives it 
 force and power. For love is life, and with- 
 out love all is dead and inane. It is feeding 
 on the Lord with gladness that makes the life 
 glad with a divine gladness. " The joy of the 
 Lord is your strength." " Blessed are they that 
 do hunger and thirst after righteousness ; for 
 they shall be filled." It is the joy of reception 
 that makes life's services at once easy and 
 advantageous. 
 
 "Children of yesterday, heirs of to-morrow, 
 Lighten the labor and sweeten the sorrow. 
 
 Now, while the shuttles fly faster and faster, 
 Up, and be at it, at work with the Master, 
 
 He stands at your loom ; room for Him — room ! " 
 
VIII. 
 
 THAT MYSTICAL FLUID. 
 
 That mystical fluid the Word of God calls the life.— J". M. 
 Buckly. 
 
 Celestial rosy red — love's proper hue. — Milton. 
 
 The occult current, the ineffable red river 
 that irrigates the human form, carries on its 
 bosom, and within its bosom, fathomless arcana. 
 It may be connected with the physical entirely, 
 and considered only in its fleshly bearings. Or 
 it may be connected with the intellectual ; we 
 may go somewhat beneath its surface. Or it 
 may be known to some to contain abysmal 
 places of truth and love. When we have fol- 
 lowed its windings through three provinces, we 
 are on the road to a comprehensive understand- 
 ing of it. Yet the way is even then an in- 
 finite way. Its trinity of hues — red, white, 
 and blue — beautifully heralds its inclusive- 
 ness. It is the banner and standard of life, 
 and of the everlasting life. 
 105 
 
106 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 This ever-moving liquid is thrown through 
 the body, completing its circuit by the aid of a 
 great cluster of muscles called the heart. The 
 heart is a kind of steam-engine, or water- 
 works, constructed to supply the fleshly city 
 with its necessary drink and ablution. The 
 arteries and veins are conduits buried beneath 
 the surface, a part of the hydraulic apparatus 
 for accomplishing the grand circulation. Its 
 machinery flies incessantly day and night, 
 through every season, for upward of fourscore 
 years ; its only holidays and rests, between the 
 beats, when it relaxes for an instant. Listen 
 at the breast, and you will hear its rhythmic, 
 soft revolution — lug-ta, lug-ta, lug-ta. Put 
 your fingers in the proper locality, and you will 
 feel the whirl of its wheels. It usually makes 
 seventy-two rotations a minute in the adult, 
 one hundred and twenty in the babe. The 
 liquid rushes along the main channels at the 
 speed of ten feet a second ; but in the gossa- 
 mer filaments, away out in the suburbs, slows 
 to one inch in thirty seconds in order to give 
 the thirsty organs an opportunity to drink 
 before the stream flows by. Why is the circu- 
 lation so constant, — insistent ? Because every 
 
That Mystical Fluid. 107 
 
 tissue and cell in the human domain is calling 
 loudly for what it has to offer. If we prick 
 our finger with a needle, and make a rent in 
 one of these pipes, the pipe leaks in a way 
 similar to the bursting of some part of the 
 plumbing in our dwellings. 
 
 The heart comprises the central forcing 
 apparatus and its forthgoings. It is, there- 
 fore, really in the ivhole body ; for we can not 
 put down the finest point anywhere without 
 piercing a capillary. Like the nerves, the 
 heart rays out in microscopic fibrils to every 
 minutest cell. It is fourfold — the power-sta- 
 tion, the arteries, the veins, and the capillaries. 
 It is a fairy-like river flowing through a won- 
 derful country. One of the most remarkable 
 features of this river is that its source is at its 
 mouth. Another remarkable thing about it is 
 that it flows two ways. Gravitation does not 
 hinder it ; it runs up mountains and pays little 
 attention to natural depressions. It surges 
 out of the main channel, bounding over hills 
 and through dales, pushing its way into in- 
 numerable tributaries, until it reaches the bor- 
 ders of the land ; then turns, and now, like an 
 ordinary stream flowing from tributaries to 
 
108 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 main current, makes its way back, by another 
 route to the place from whence it started. This 
 wonderful ellipsoid is but a continued, elabo- 
 rated heart; the heart enclasping the whole 
 body in a loving, life-giving caress. 
 
 The central has four chambers — the upper 
 pair being antechambers, where the patient 
 fluid waits to be admitted to the place it seeks. 
 The eager current presses ever toward this in- 
 most recess, this holy of holies, for its baptism 
 of truth and power. The thick muscular walls 
 of the central are divided into two halves, two 
 hearts in one, each working together with the 
 most exquisite adaptation. There is the pul- 
 monary heart and the arterial heart. There is 
 the red side and the blue side, the love side and 
 the truth side, both united to do an illumina- 
 ting, sacrificial work. The right main-chamber 
 hurls the fluid through the lungs for purifica- 
 tion and nourishment. The left sends it careen- 
 ing out to the tips of being with its precious 
 gift. After its immolation, having spent its 
 rich energies, it returns weary, in a quiet, 
 steady tide ; but when rejuvenated in the lungs, 
 when it has " bathed its weary soul in seas of 
 heavenly rest," it hastens out again in mighty, 
 
That Mystical Fluid. 109 
 
 eager pulses. Lest the veins should burst by 
 the closing of the heart's doors during its con- 
 traction, these anterooms are provided where 
 the home-coming and depleted liquid can con- 
 gregate and wait, ready to fill the main pulmo- 
 nary chamber instantly when at last the door 
 is thrown open in cordial welcome. It is some- 
 thing like waiting at the oculist's for our turn 
 and going forth with sight renewed. 
 
 The blood is the life — is therefore the body. 
 (" The life, which is the blood." Gen. ix, 4.) 
 " It is the body in the sense of being organic 
 by priority to the body, though not without the 
 body." It is the body in the sense that it rays 
 out into every microscopic part, and builds the 
 body from itself. A plate of the vascular sys- 
 tem is a vivid illustration. It is the nutritive 
 fluid of the tissue. It is the body in the sense 
 of being the spiritual and ponderable essence of 
 the races. " Blood is thicker than water." 
 " Blood will tell." It runs in subtile, indefina- 
 ble effluence through the Teuton, the Slav, the 
 Mongolian, and the Semite. By a veiled co- 
 partnership with the soul it constructs the fabric 
 of heredity. 
 
 This wonderful stream feeds, waters, and 
 
110 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 cleanses ; as the tributaries of our land float in 
 nutritive freight, fill the reservoirs and pipes of 
 our cities, and bear away on the same bosoms, 
 to the great purifying sea, the garbage and 
 waste. So this confluence of life nourishes, 
 irrigates, and performs the ablutions of the in- 
 ward man. Shakespeare asks, " Why does my 
 blood thus muster to my heart ? " The answer 
 is, to give it the cleansing and power that will 
 enable it to do its assigned uses. As it is 
 thrown through the pneumatic organs in a 
 delicate azure spray, as it mounts to the high 
 places of God, it gladly yields up its waste, re- 
 ceiving in exchange life and light. At this 
 point occurs the inscrutable transformation of 
 the blue to the carnation. Truth and love meet 
 in those exalted abodes, and, uniting hands, go 
 forth elastic, joyous, swift to do. " Mercy and 
 truth are met together — righteousness and peace 
 have kissed each other." They mingle, the 
 blue being overcome by the red, and hasten 
 forward with a single hue and impulse. They 
 conspire to do a common work of self-abnega- 
 tion and benefaction. 
 
 In itself the vital stream is colorless — it is 
 red because of the freight which it bears. It 
 
That Mystical Fluid. Ill 
 
 is red as the sea is green, and the sky blue ; not 
 actually, but by appearances. The body can 
 not exist upon water alone ; it must have bread. 
 Therefore the blood is more than fluid. It 
 carries on its surface, and underneath its sur- 
 face, countless drifting bodies, tiny rafts loaded 
 with life. These are oxygen and iron carriers. 
 There are microscopic billions of them. They 
 are of two colors — red and white, the white 
 being much less numerous than the red. The 
 blood is red not in the sense that it has no 
 white, but by the predominance of the red. 
 Prick your finger and a scarlet drop will start. 
 Place that drop on a slide, under a powerful 
 glass, and you will see dozens of minute yellow- 
 ish bodies, which are these same red rafts. 
 They are yellow by transmitted light. They 
 are Lilliputian floating discs, their edges thicker 
 than their centers, having a great tendency to 
 turn on their sides and run into rouleaux like 
 piles of coins. They continually thirst for 
 oxygen, and have wonderful powers of absorb- 
 ing it. They have tiny arms that at once 
 begin to feel around the riches of the air and 
 carry away as much as possible. They rush out 
 and give to the crying tissue, returning imme- 
 
112 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 diately for more. They hunt for oxygen as men 
 hunt for money. They are not satisfied unless 
 they are getting and giving. What a beautiful 
 example of service ! So the soul should seek 
 for the beautiful and the true, that it may bear 
 it to others. Their entire career is one of im- 
 petuous, absorbing use ; a looking to God, and 
 a yielding what He gives that they may have 
 more to give. Without them the body could 
 not exist an hour. 
 
 The rendezvous of the blood is the vital part 
 of us. From that critical within flows forth 
 affection in healing, invigorating streams. 
 Along its myriad ways hastens the soul. The 
 blood and the emotions cooperate with the finest 
 harmony. Swedenborg says that in "every 
 animal the nature of the soul determines the 
 nature of the blood." And " the nature of the 
 food and blood together produce a correspond- 
 ing form and structure." Bees fed peculiarly 
 will be transformed into queens. The people 
 of the Golden Age, mild, sagacious, pure, guile- 
 less, were nourished and built on grains and 
 fruits. As the orb of day creates a congenial 
 environment, the heart of man, by an intrinsic 
 configuration, does the same for itself. u Out 
 
That Mystical Fluid. 113 
 
 of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
 speaketh." " The soul is form and doth the 
 body make." The heart and the man are 
 identical in fundamentals, different only in 
 structure. Therefore the heart is the paramount 
 vital part of us. There could be nothing with- 
 out it. The breaking of the heart, the corrupt- 
 ing of the heart, the renewing of the heart, are 
 conclusive and sweeping. 
 
 This is why it stands for the embodiment of 
 love. " Love is life," and it is the rendezvous 
 of life. The life of God is love. And as God 
 is at the heart of the universe, love and life are 
 at its heart. " The blood is red by virtue of 
 correspondence of the heart and the blood with 
 love." " Because of correspondence of love 
 with the heart the blood can not but redden and 
 point to its origin." Milton speaks of it as 
 " Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue." The 
 heart must be the seat of love, for the Lord 
 has commanded that we love " Him with all 
 our heart." And we can love only with the 
 organ of love, as we can perceive only with the 
 organ of truth. The heart is love in its mo- 
 tion, as it continually pours forth its life in a 
 sacrificial tide, It lives to die ; its every action 
 8 
 
114 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 is otherward. It has in all ages, and by all 
 peoples, been accounted the home of the affec- 
 tions. It has been considered the lovelier, the 
 better part of us. The fountain of all good in- 
 centives and doings, the place of joy, courage, 
 patience, sympathy, constancy. In the Word 
 it is the domain of the moral life and the seat 
 of character. The bosom is the place of love 
 and rest. John, the "beloved disciple," pil- 
 lowed his head upon the breast of Infinite 
 Love. Lazarus was carried by angels to the 
 bosom of Abraham. Blood is the universal 
 symbol of kinship, nearness, likeness. Those 
 with whom love prevails are least alterable by 
 outward considerations. Yet there is a reversed 
 heart ; love has its antipodes. The Lord 
 built the heart as the mansion of goodness ; it 
 is dedicated to worship, to sweetness, to rever- 
 ence, to holiness. And he still appeals to it for 
 what it should be. He knows we are essen- 
 tially what we may be. But the pendulum of 
 love swinging to its extreme opposite passes 
 into the region of hate. There is the flush of 
 shame as well as affection. There is the crim- 
 son of bitter rage. And there is that sweet 
 illuminating tint that tells us the soul is bathed 
 
That Mystical Fluid. 115 
 
 in the very purest fervor. Diseases of the 
 heart, physical or spiritual, are most fatal, most 
 subversive, of the integrity of the whole man, 
 and when the heart stoops, it stoops lowest ; as 
 a woman, when degraded, outmans man. " The 
 heart is deceitful above all things and desper- 
 ately wicked." 
 
 The soul masters the blood, and uses it as a 
 willing instrument. We can " summon up the 
 blood, disguise fair nature with ill-favored 
 rage," and " imitate the action of the tiger." 
 We can, by force of character and will, inocu- 
 late it with tenderness or cruelty. In anger it 
 suddenly becomes infused with a nameless 
 something that makes it acrid, sour, and rough. 
 In envy it attracts particles which give it a 
 livid hue. In grief it becomes sluggish, viscid, 
 glutinous, producing heaviness and torpor. In 
 mania it secretes a poisonous spume that makes 
 the very saliva venom. The emotions control 
 the blood as the driver handles his steeds. It 
 is sent rushing from its central reservoir with 
 great impetuosity, or slows to a serene and 
 cooling current, as the spiritual momentum in- 
 dicates. The blood and the emotions are cor- 
 respondent. In fact, emotion is the blood of 
 
116 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 the spirit, — the blood within the blood, — and 
 therefore one answers the other instantane- 
 ously. Thus the blood — and so the whole body 
 — is under the immediate dictation of the spirit. 
 We determine of what essence and quality this 
 occult elixir shall be. 
 
 Therefore by indirection it becomes the par- 
 ent of great or vicious moments and intuitions. 
 It is, in all probability, the unknown spring of 
 the best genius, the well-head of every great 
 Muse. In Goethe, in Byron, in Poe, in the 
 coldly classic writers of antiquity, there is 
 something lacking. In the Hebrew prophets, 
 in the writers of the universal hymns called 
 the Psalms of David, in Shakespeare, and 
 Wordsworth, and Tennyson, we feel the warm, 
 pulsing undertow of great hearts. It is the 
 heart — the blood physical and spiritual, for the 
 two can not be separated without destroying 
 the quality of each — that feeds the Pierian 
 spring. There can be no proper greatness 
 without the proper blood. What drops below 
 this may be beautiful, may be chaste, may be 
 mathematically true, but it will lack the human 
 quality that links it to God. The blood of the 
 Father, the Love Supreme, can alone give 
 sanity and fervor. 
 
That Mystical Fluid. 117 
 
 So there are men of the heart and men of the 
 head. Men immaculate as the snow — cold, 
 white, faultless, barren. Beautiful as the crea- 
 tions of Phidias, — correct, with curves and 
 ovals in due proportion to the whole figure, — 
 but dead as the stone out of which they are cut ; 
 sublime as the far-oif hills robed in blue 
 atmosphere and as intangible and unresponsive. 
 But the immaculate, the correct, the beautiful, 
 the proportionate, the sublime, lacking one thing, 
 lacks all. As the dead man without the car- 
 mine fluid that animates him is not a man, but 
 a corpse. When the motionless, cold figure 
 glows with the sweet and thrilling human, then 
 God's purposes seem accomplished. Without 
 this, man is a dark, airless, verdureless satel- 
 lite dropping through chill spaces. Without 
 the emerald, what is earth ? Without life, what 
 is man ? Without love, what is soul — what is 
 God? 
 
 ' ' Mightier far 
 Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway 
 Of magic potent over sun and star, 
 Is love. ' ' — Wordsworth. 
 
— -v-v^f^ 
 
 UTILITIES. 
 
 ~»K«~ 
 
IX. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE FACE. 
 
 Your face, my Thane, is a book, where men 
 May read strange matters. — Macbeth. 
 
 The light upon her face 
 Shines from the windows of another world. — Longfellow. 
 
 The face was designed to be as flawless crys- 
 tal. The word is from the Sanskrit root — to 
 shine. It is normally a transparency through 
 which the spirit sees, and is seen. Facets, as 
 of diamonds, are " little faces " through which 
 the heart of the precious jewel flashes and 
 gleams. The facade of a building is the build- 
 ing's front explaining the character of its in- 
 terior. The expressive countenance indicates 
 how life is received, how entertained, how re- 
 flected and terminated. 
 
 "Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face, 
 And find delight writ there with beauty's pen ; 
 Examine every several lineament ; 
 And what obscure in the fair volume lies 
 Find written in the margin of his eyes. ' ' 
 121 
 
122 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 The face unrepressed by guile, unpetrified by 
 heredity or hypocrisy, is a versatile symbol of 
 the personality behind it — its perfect reporter. 
 In the divine man or woman the angel of the 
 head gazes through the gauzy, diaphanous cur- 
 tain that drops between. One is the letter, the 
 other the delivery. One is the cabalistic, in- 
 audible click of the mind, the other the de- 
 spatch. In the face sits the spirit invested with 
 a garment of light. 
 
 A most fascinating topic is the gesture lan- 
 guage of the face. It was the primeval ver- 
 nacular, the mobile, lovely medium of speech 
 long before articulate words were known. At 
 the dawn of man, as will be again at man's 
 finished creation and crowning, the soul uttered 
 itself by infinite lights and shadows chasing 
 each other over the visage, by the muscular 
 variations of the mind's foreground. Before 
 men could use their arms and bodies as a means 
 of interpreting thought, their glances spoke. 
 We may watch to-day this identical evolution 
 working itself out on the plane of infancy. The 
 babe opens communication with the world 
 about it in this same elder vocabulary. The 
 dialect of the cradle is the far-back medium of 
 
The Gospel of the Face. 123 
 
 human conversation. It begins to utter itself 
 in pure pantomime. Its initial sounds, too, 
 are the inarticulate cry of the animal, the ex- 
 pressive grunt and intonation of the savage. 
 Its pathetic pleadings for help, its protestations 
 of neglect, its intimations of pain or restless- 
 ness, its assent to pleasurable conditions, its 
 ecstacies and satisfactions, are each inscribed 
 upon the tablet of its face. We adapt our- 
 selves to its state and attempt to reply in 
 cognate speech. We smile, we modulate the 
 features, we nod, and purse the lips, and 
 change the eyes, so that it almost invariably 
 understands us. We are compelled to employ 
 the unique chirography of the babe. Words 
 and sentences are the second stage of language ; 
 the first is gesture, primarily facial gesture. 
 The oratory that charms, the volumes that in- 
 struct, were rocked in this antique cradle of 
 nomenclature. How very much may be done, 
 even now, in the realm of gesture may be noted 
 in the adaptations of the not-speaking man — 
 the deaf-mute. As to expression, he is reduced 
 to the first ages of the world. Hoav very little 
 articulate language has to do with real conversa- 
 tion is here realized. The deaf-mute converses 
 
124 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 almost as freely as those who speak. The atti- 
 tudes, the genuflections, the play of emotions, 
 the swing of arms and poise of body, the work- 
 ings of the lips and eyes, are kaleidoscopic. It 
 is intensely interesting to watch a deaf-mute 
 relate a story. His sentences are dramatic. 
 As men learn to use more perfectly the articu- 
 late speech much of the graceful and charm- 
 ing accompaniment of motion ceases. An im- 
 passive method comes into play that is perhaps 
 more finished, yet less attractive. I once 
 watched a stammerer, in a waiting station, relate 
 to a crowd gathered about him the exciting in- 
 cidents of a recent ball game. Hindered by 
 his impediment from getting along at the rate 
 of his thought, he supplemented his words with 
 intense and quaint motions that brought into 
 requisition his entire body from face to feet. 
 His impromptu audience stood transfixed with 
 pleasure over his endeavor to get his ideas 
 ultimated. 
 
 Therefore in the normal man, the man as 
 God made him, we " find the mind's construc- 
 tion in the face." It is the map of the soul, 
 the dial that marks the time within, the mobile 
 image of the changeful spirit. Faces are the 
 
The Gospel of the Face. 125 
 
 natural exponents of mind and heart. They 
 are windows in bodies through which the world 
 looks on spirit. Unless there is simulation, 
 or unless heredity has made the features rigid, 
 and hindered their natural play, every face so 
 accurately defines its owner that when we get 
 thoroughly acquainted with him we can not 
 imagine that he could have a different one. 
 The inner shaping influence sets its mark there ; 
 it reveals the type of man it shields. We say 
 of a newly arrived Hibernian, " the map of 
 Ireland is in his face." We mean his very 
 blood is figured in his features, and proclaims 
 his origin. This is true of nearly all races and 
 nations. The hidden life, flowing out to the 
 ends of being, has written its autobiography 
 there. " The mind and brain are preeminently 
 alive, and the face is prepared by creation to be 
 the recipient and mirror of their manifold 
 states." It lives only by communication with 
 these — as the sunbeam lives only by connection 
 with its parent orb. Cut the ray of light, and 
 its play on wall or floor ceases instantly. Faces 
 exist only as reporters of what lives behind 
 them. They are automatic, instrumental ; 
 manipulated and commanded by their owners. 
 
126 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 Lacking the within, the face would be as dead 
 and expressionless as the clod. u They in the 
 other life who have nothing of the rational (no 
 wisdom or affection) appear without faces." 
 Therefore the face is not a mirror ; it is a trans- 
 parency. It does not reflect the figure of him 
 who stands before it, but rather shows the on- 
 looker the deep-lying personality of the other. 
 Through it soul is seen, as the diver sees the 
 pearl beneath the limpid waters. It is such a 
 glass as we use for windows, and not what we 
 use for mirrors. The open face is most win- 
 ning. We are drawn to it, won by it. " Lake 
 Leman woos me with its crystal face." As- 
 surance is doubly sure when through the lucid 
 covering a heart unfettered, unabashed, un- 
 reserved, looks forth. In the Word the face 
 stands for the character, the nature. " Seeking 
 the Lord's face " is seeking to know Him as He 
 is. When we " see no longer as in a glass 
 darkly, but face to face," we shall "know as 
 we are known." The little children " whose 
 angels do always behold the face of the Father" 
 get the purest glimpses of Divine Love. When 
 we shall see His face, and have His name writ- 
 
The Gospel of the Face. 127 
 
 ten upon our foreheads, we shall have become 
 so like Him that we shall understand Him. 
 
 The language of the face is not by analogy, 
 but by correspondence. Radiance of face and 
 heart are very different in expression, yet they 
 perfectly harmonize. Inward joy makes a 
 certain picture, produces a certain light, a par- 
 ticular combination which really has no like- 
 ness to that within, yet has correspondence. 
 How totally unlike are an emotion of grief and 
 a tear, yet there is perfect harmony. There is 
 not resemblance, not analogy, but perfect cor- 
 respondence. Instantly we know that one 
 belongs to the other. Music in the soul, and 
 the sounds of the violin or organ have corre- 
 spondence, have harmony, yet not likeness. 
 The camera produces a copy of the thing that 
 lies before it ; correspondence, something very 
 far from a copy, yet if possible more distinctly 
 a part of the original. Even the infant detects 
 immediately the feeling of the mother by her 
 look and voice. Joy or pain, ecstacy or fright, 
 it will read as we read a book. When the 
 heart is surcharged with love, when consuming 
 passion burns, when some new interest arrives, 
 the features instantly tell the story. How the 
 
128 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 orator watches for the responses to his thought 
 in the upturned sea of faces that floats and rip- 
 ples and gleams in the pews below. He is 
 turning the human kaleidoscope round and 
 round and watching its ineffable transforma- 
 tions. This is his highest joy, his great inspira- 
 tion — to see his thought shine back to him as 
 the sunlit waters answer the parent orb, as the 
 rainbow and the painted east smile and blush 
 at the "bridal of the earth and sky." The 
 one means the other — yet how different in 
 their ways of showing it ! We sometimes 
 tell what a soul is by the eyes. There is 
 a true, calm, deep something there, inscrutable, 
 yet at once awakening trust. As difficult of 
 analysis as love, but as simple and sweet. 
 " God is love " ; we know that, we rest in it, 
 but all the saints fail to tell us what love is. 
 This correspondence is always perfect where 
 repression or simulation does not interfere. 
 Little children are usually plastic under the 
 molding fingers of their emotions. The inner 
 continually plays before us on the mutable 
 tablet of the flesh. Their unconventional, art- 
 less ways, their inability to pose, their as yet 
 untrained will, allow a correspondence as pure 
 
The Gospel of the Face. 129 
 
 as what we find in the verdure or the sky. 
 The heart is, as we say, " pinned to the sleeve." 
 The common sense of mankind agrees at once 
 that this transaction is a case of correspondence. 
 There is a brightness or sadness that is incom- 
 prehensible on mere mechanical grounds. We 
 know it is the direct and vivid effect of inter- 
 nals working upon externals, that the face is 
 the mouthpiece and masterpiece of a correspon- 
 dence omnipresent in the body. 
 
 Some call the spirit the unsubstantial, the 
 impalpable, and the shadowy. But it is so 
 much more substantial than flesh that it is 
 the flesh's creator and master. It is the un- 
 seen workman shaping the clay in our very 
 presence and sight. Watch the potter with the 
 lump of earth whirling on the wheel, the inani- 
 mate, shapeless thing growing into a beauty of 
 form that will make it immortal. The flesh is 
 fluid in the hands of the soul. We know men 
 only by the answering body. Every muscle, 
 every nerve, every intonation, every attitude, is 
 the man within the man uttering himself to the 
 world. Without this interpretation, we should 
 be as ignorant of those about us as if they 
 were not. The flesh is as fluid to the spirit as 
 9 
 
130 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 the rippling waters are to the winds. Facile, a 
 derivative of the word face — meaning yielding, 
 ductile, pliant, flexible. Facility is a slightly 
 changed form of the same word, meaning readi- 
 ness, mobility, plasticity. The spirit is actually 
 doing for the face what the sculptor does for 
 his image — he writes his ideal there, he im- 
 presses himself ; only where the sculptor makes 
 a single impression and leaves it, the soul 
 makes many. All life is a repetition of the 
 soul in the face ; it is man's spirit attempting 
 to write his character in sculpture, in painting, 
 in architecture, in books, in the fabric of the 
 whirling loom, in myriad industries and sci- 
 ences, — on the very earth. The world as it 
 stands in civilization is an illuminated parch- 
 ment of the greater human soul. 
 
 " The grand law of Christian power goes 
 with faces." In its mystic abysses are gospels 
 and judgments. Is there anything so terrible as 
 a rebuking face ? Is there anything so inviting 
 as one lit with love ? Every child recoils from 
 a tender, grieved expression in its mother's 
 look. It is worse than daggers or rods. It 
 knows, too, when that heaven bends over it 
 with approval. The face of Jesus of Naza- 
 
The Gospel of the Face. 131 
 
 reth ! Shining on Hermon, wrestling in the 
 wilderness, weeping over Jerusalem, gazing 
 into the grave of Lazarus, pleading in Geth- 
 scmane, looking from the cross, lit with resur- 
 rection glory, gleaming out of the golden can- 
 dlesticks ! As Peter saw it when he warmed 
 himself in Caiphas' court ! As Judas saw it 
 when he took the sop ! As John saw it from 
 Calvary ! As Paul saw it on the Damascus 
 highway ! " The light of the knowledge of 
 the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ ! " 
 " And His face was as it were the sun shining 
 in his strength." Hell was never so deep, jus- 
 tice never so dreadful, or so close at hand, as 
 when it lowered in the Divine face. Heaven 
 was never so near, love never so unutterable 
 and masterful, as when it found its correspond- 
 ence there. 
 
 The gait, bearing, and postures of the body 
 have ever been used interchangeably for spirit- 
 ual states. Holding up the face, the human 
 attribute, is the claim of innocence. " Grecian 
 philology baptized man, Anthropos — the being 
 with the upturned [heavenly] face." Through- 
 out the Word physical uprightness is significative 
 and comprehensive of moral uprightness. The 
 
132 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 gift of physical perpendicularity is reserved for 
 man alone. It is the insignia of the Great 
 King stamped upon his front, proclaiming him 
 heir to immortality. Every living thing below 
 man keeps its eyes on the earth. It never 
 looks at the stars. Even the eagle watches the 
 abysses below for its prey. It is the universal 
 feeling that the vertical posture, the open, lifted 
 countenance, belong to mental and moral integ- 
 rity. The criminal drops his eyes, looks at the 
 floor ; innocence gazes with clear unwavering 
 vision into the face of God and man. The 
 unsteady, evasive, downcast look brings in- 
 stantly a sense of misgiving. To be sure, there 
 are exceptions, as in times of devotion. In 
 worship the head is dropped as a mark of rev- 
 erence. The four and twenty elders in the 
 high place of the universe, robed in white and 
 crowned with gold, fall upon their faces before 
 the throne. 
 
 To-day the gospel should get proclamation in 
 human faces. It should incarnate itself in this 
 potential manner. The faces of angels are in- 
 effably expressive. There are vast oceans of 
 love, wisdom, and tenderness in them. They 
 speak a various language. They light, guide, 
 
The Gospel of the Face. 133 
 
 instruct, comfort, through these wonderful 
 ways. The look of an angel has volumes in it. 
 It is so impressive that it sinks into the deepest 
 places of the heart. In George Macdonald's 
 " Lilith " the Mother of Sorrows unmasks her 
 face, and the wily, wayward Lilith finds herself 
 melted into penitence by the shining of an af- 
 fection and sweetness transcending description. 
 If Christians are to do their best work, the 
 gospel should beam from their faces. The 
 gospel is nothing now, any more than it was at 
 the first, unless reincarnated, and kept incar- 
 nate. It must get expression ; not through 
 tongues alone, not through catechisms and 
 propositional wisdom, not through the din and 
 clatter of argument, — but by immortal affection 
 and purity recognized in human faces. As 
 George Eliot has said : " There is a power in 
 the direct glance of a sincere loving soul, 
 which will do more to dissipate prejudice and 
 kindle charity than the most elaborate argu- 
 ments." The real sermons are in great, pure 
 feelings, generosities of holy sacrifice, divine 
 patience as rayed through the face of God in 
 the imaged face of man. I shall never forget 
 one great day in my life when Phillips Brooks 
 
134 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 
 
 hovered over me like a heaven. I shall never 
 attempt to describe it, for it is indescribable. 
 Its gospel shadows me to-day as the bright 
 cloud shadowed the favored three on Hermon. 
 Even though the features be careworn, battered, 
 scarred with trial, furrowed with tragic experi- 
 ences in the domains of faith and life — a certain 
 celestial contour, an unfathomable illumination, 
 a something there beyond reckoning, betrays 
 the high state of the soul within. " Though 
 thy tackle's torn thou showest a noble vessel." 
 The face can only truly live by this perpetual 
 reincarnation. The soul can only tell its story 
 thus, for without the face it can not find ade- 
 quate delivery. 
 
 Yet, after all has been said, no face can per- 
 fectly represent its soul ; no more than God can 
 perfectly represent Himself on the field of na- 
 ture ; no more than man, in his arts and indus- 
 tries, can explicitly display his genius, unveil 
 all the greatness of his being. Something must 
 always be lost when a superior plane is drama- 
 tized on an inferior one. Could the face of the 
 Saviour fully indicate Omnipotence? Could 
 that countenance as of lightning, as it were the 
 sun shining in its strength, mapped with inde- 
 
The Gospel of the Face. 135 
 
 scribable beauty, more than hint at that within ? 
 The soul is always greater than any exposition 
 it can make. God is always greater than any 
 revelation of Himself. 
 
X. 
 
 THE LARYNGEAL HARP. 
 
 Speech is but broken light upon the depth 
 Of the unspoken ; even your loved words 
 Float in the larger meaning of your voice 
 As something dimmer. — George Eliot. 
 
 Fit language there is none 
 
 For the heart's deepest things. — Loioell. 
 
 Man is made to sing. He has caught up 
 immortal measures and translated them to 
 earth. Within his body is the harp of harps. 
 It is the first musical instrument, all others 
 being adaptations of this ancient model. The 
 multiplicity of inventions in wood and metal 
 are all variations of the harp. Either the 
 chords are breathed upon, like the larynx, the 
 organ reeds, the seolian lyre, or they are struck, 
 like the piano, or thrummed, like the harp. 
 The world-euphonies that fairly vie with angels 
 have been evolved from the human throat as a 
 suggestion and prototype. 
 
 The lungs, with their channels of varied 
 136 
 
The Laryngeal Harp. 137 
 
 utterance, compose this fleshly orchestra. The 
 larynx lies just behind and below the promi- 
 nence in the throat called the "Adam's apple/' 
 It is a cartilaginous frame, strung with two 
 chords, called the vocal chords. Its possibilities 
 are so wonderful that it might be named "a 
 harp of a thousand strings" instead of two. 
 These chords are breathed over, as in the wind 
 harp. There are tiny muscles that act as exe- 
 cuting fingers — that tighten or relax the strings 
 like the violinist's hand. It is a pneumatic 
 instrument pure and simple. The lungs as 
 bellows force the air through the trachea and 
 larynx, producing sound ; and sound, reaching 
 the tongue, teeth, and lips, is chiseled into 
 words and sentences. Thus it comes to the 
 ears of men in song or speech. The chest is 
 like the body of the violin, the pipe of the 
 organ, or the frame of the lyre. The forehead 
 and entire skull contribute to the richness of 
 tone. Some parts of the instrument cater to 
 tone ; others, to expression. The most beauti- 
 ful chorals may be produced with no articulate 
 thought. Or they may be given a body, an 
 outward form and symmetry, by the shaping 
 organs of speech. When the throat is culti- 
 
138 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 vated to its loftiest reaches, there is nothing 
 else on earth so sweet, majestic, and inspiring. 
 What is speech ? It is primarily gesture ; 
 especially facial gesture. Finally it assumed 
 the form of uttered words. Noav, these words 
 are written, carved, printed, and reproduced 
 until they drop on the world like the leaves of 
 autumn. In brief, every work of man is man's 
 thought taking tangible and visible outlines. 
 Speech proper is the cutting of the tones of the 
 voice into articulate words. The teeth, tongue, 
 and lips, under the guidance of the brain, 
 catch the sound-waves as they pass to the outer 
 air, that instant shaping them into logic, poetry, 
 philosophy, and song. Just here the heart and 
 mind meet, and, uniting, create speech ; as the 
 sunlight and heat, joining hands, fashion the 
 rocks — the globe of the earth. It is really 
 man's invisible self standing off where he can 
 behold it — where he can read it, as it assumes 
 varied and multiplied melodies. Speech is not 
 exactly making noises, or molding those noises 
 into words — for a parrot can do that, an auto- 
 maton can do that ; it is giving thought appro- 
 priate clothing. Thought and its vesture must 
 both emanate from the same individuality. 
 
The Laryngeal Harp. 139 
 
 Speech is twofold ; it is inner and outer, it 
 has a soul and a body. It is also twofold in 
 its duplicity ; it is a pair within a pair. Affec- 
 tion and truth are the two halves of the inner ; 
 sound and articulation the two halves of the 
 outer. The inner is feeling and thought ; the 
 outer, tone and expression. The vowels are 
 the diapason of feeling ; the deeper, fuller, 
 richer voices welling up from spiritual abysses. 
 The consonants are the vesture of these voices, 
 intelligence robing them in presentable and in- 
 terpretative garments. One is the reporter of 
 the heart ; the other, of the brain. One is the 
 impulse ; the other, the guide. 
 
 Speech is crystallized thought — therefore 
 crystallized life. It is spirit surviving in 
 books, inscriptions, and architectural creations 
 after it has ceased to be incarnate. To-day we 
 behold Plato and Moses ; for we behold their 
 thought. The thought of master-minds is those 
 minds set in durable, eternal substances. Job, 
 Homer, Socrates, John, are preserved in ever- 
 lasting parchments, and we take their sen- 
 tences, tear them open as we do a letter from a 
 friend, and read their souls. The never-les- 
 sening wine and bread is spread for succeeding 
 
140 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 generations, perennial as the widow's cruse of 
 oil, and the bread of Jesus broken on the slopes 
 of Gallilee. 
 
 How did speech reach its present flowering ? 
 We know that a single law brings everything 
 up, from a daisy to a universe ; a single master- 
 principle, crystallized in a single master-word 
 — evolution. Speech, like everything else, 
 grew up. Philology is one of the most en- 
 trancing of the sciences. It leads us back 
 to the dawn of utterance. It carries us into 
 dim, prehistoric epochs, down where the roots 
 of human rhetoric lie buried. Of course, there 
 was a time when men did not speak with 
 the mouth. The infant lives over again the 
 experiences of the race. When it makes faces, 
 casts out its arms, laughs and cries, it shows us 
 the ancient stamp on the coin of phonetics. 
 It tells us how men and women in the long-ago 
 sought to deliver themselves. " Before Homo 
 sapiens was evolved he must have been necessa- 
 rily preceded by Homo alalus — the not-speak- 
 ing man." If evolution is the method of 
 creation, the faculty of talking could have been 
 no sudden gift. That men spoke immediately 
 has the same relation to exact science as that 
 
The Laryngeal Harp. 141 
 
 the world was created in six days of twenty- 
 four hours each. Vast epochs are gathered up 
 in poetical and allegorical transcriptions. There 
 was a time when men " lisped in numbers." 
 There was a far day when they spoke in sylla- 
 bles, hesitatingly, as the child spells out its 
 simple sentences at the teacher's knee. No 
 full-grown words entered then into the fabric 
 of speech. There were brief monosyllabic 
 utterances, each relating to some activity. 
 Vowel sounds were universal. This is why 
 speech, in its ultimates, is in its greatest power 
 — it lies couched in the deepest places of the 
 life. The primitive language is the radical 
 language — the roots of the mighty tree that has 
 cast its branches over the whole earth. Sen- 
 tences as yet were not ; each sound was a sen- 
 tence. It is true of humanity that " When I 
 was a child I spake as a child." From inar- 
 ticulate cries man has built up a vernacular 
 word by word, as the body was built up cell by 
 cell. And it is with language-making as with 
 world-making — the process is yet going on. 
 Daily we are coining words, adding to their 
 volume of tone as well as their architecture. 
 Both the world and its utterances have arisen 
 
142 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 like a tree, expanding daily into beauty and 
 fruitfulness ; and neither has yet reached matu- 
 rity. The well-known fact that the born deaf 
 man is at the same time a dumb man is almost 
 a final reply to the affirmation that the powers 
 of expression are an original and intuitive 
 faculty with man. If man could manufacture 
 words, and collect them into comprehensive 
 philosophies, to any extent he chose, there was 
 little reason why he should be presented with 
 them ready-made. And it is an eternal law 
 that what man can do, God does not for him. 
 
 Human speech is the speech of the animal 
 infinitely augumented and modulated. Here 
 is a significant discovery of etymology. Skeat 
 says that the very word " speech " lost an " r " 
 along about the eleventh century. It is from 
 the Teutonic base sprak, of which the original 
 sense was merely to make a noise — to cry out. 
 This hints at a distant day when language was 
 composed of sounds merely — of significant 
 intonations. The howl of the dog, the neigh 
 of the horse, the bleat of the lamb, are linguis- 
 tic protoplasm and show us how men once 
 conversed. Darwin has detected four or five 
 modulations in the bark of a dog. This is the 
 
The Laryngeal Harp. 143 
 
 dog's vocabulary. Each bark means something. 
 When the deer suspects anything wrong, it 
 utters a low note, at which the entire herd lift 
 their heads — this means caution. If it proves 
 a real danger, the leader utters a sharp, loud 
 cry that means " Run for your life," — and the 
 whole herd take to their heels. The infant 
 begins with significant sounds. When it says 
 "moo" for cow, and "bow-wow" for dog, 
 and "mew" for cat, and "toot-toot" for 
 engine, and " tick-tick " for watch, it is telling 
 us how the race began to speak. It is conduct- 
 ing us back through the ever-narrowing ways 
 of philology to its source. It is true here 
 that " a little child shall lead them." We are 
 beginning to study the child more and more, 
 and are finding out it can teach us very much 
 more than we can teach it. And so from this 
 simple beginning language has reached the hill- 
 tops of the present. It stands like the Pillars 
 of Hercules, to show us how far we have come ; 
 yet, not like those pillars, fixed and immovable, 
 it ever advances. As we have traveled on, 
 spirits that have looked deeper into the heart 
 of things have gathered up what they have 
 seen into literature, have coined new terms of 
 
144 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 expression, carried the standard yet a little 
 further, and left the durable results to those 
 who should follow. 
 
 Here, then, lies the secret of the rise of 
 intellect ; also the secret of the rise of civiliza- 
 tion. Speech, with its treasures of thought 
 and discovery, has made it possible for man 
 to stand, as it were, on the shoulders of those 
 before him. Evolution up to the time of the 
 invention of language had but one method of 
 banking its accounts — heredity. And heredity 
 is mortally slow. Heredity is something left 
 in the system, in the form of latent instincts 
 and inclinations, for each generation to somehow 
 discover and strengthen. Heredity is some- 
 thing dim, intangible, and intellectually un- 
 known to those without sciences and philoso- 
 phies. When speech arrived, instead of sowing 
 his gains on the winds of heredity, man pinned 
 them to winged words, transmitting them to 
 posterity. Then posterity was able to treasure 
 the thought and discovery contained in them, 
 and start from that point of vantage. The 
 race then began to rapidly run up a fortune in 
 brain-matter. One generation could bank all its 
 gains and will them to the next ; and so the 
 
The Laryngeal Harp. 145 
 
 ball of progress got swiftness and power by its 
 own momentum. When a man did anything, 
 or saw anything, he could say it to others, and 
 others could say it to their children. And, 
 eventually, he could cut it in stone, write it on 
 parchment, print it on paper. When he became 
 wise, wisdom did not die with him, but he 
 embalmed it, and left it to the world. We are 
 the happy tenants of past attainments, and, 
 instead of beginning in the deep, deep valley, we 
 start from the foothill of our own generation. It 
 seems clear that if man had not learned to talk, 
 he could never have passed very far beyond 
 the childhood of the world. After all has been 
 said, the greatness of the human mind is due 
 to the tongue — the predecessor of parchments 
 and libraries, the instrument of reason ; and to 
 language — the outward expression of the inward 
 life. 
 
 Words are at once the most familiar and 
 mysterious things in the world. A word is a 
 counter of the brain — the impalpable taking 
 durable and palpable conditions. What a 
 unique relation there is between a thought and 
 a sentence. Without the sentence the thought 
 must lie hidden to all but the thinker. A word 
 
 10 
 
146 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 is a blending of the brain, heart, mouth, and 
 atmosphere in some mystical manner that ut- 
 terly defies explanation. The air is a part of 
 its clothing ; it rides on aerial tremulations ; 
 sound is connected with it, so is enunciation — 
 in fact, the whole man, body and spirit, lives 
 in his words, if they are truly his. A word is 
 a fragment of a soul. What we call the 
 " solid shot " of the orator hurled into the com- 
 prehension of his hearers, until they recoil and 
 capitulate, is as viewless as spirit and as substan- 
 tial as marble. In a single word there is occa- 
 sionally stored the volition of millenniums of 
 progress. Words are the heirlooms of the cul- 
 ture and experiences of the races. Old words, 
 like old coins, speak of a former currency of 
 thought, and by their image and superscription 
 lay bare the mental life and progress of those 
 who long ago minted them. We take those old 
 coins and recast them into new forms, always 
 preserving in our etymologies their original 
 stamps. So we have the old within the lap of 
 the new. Trench beautifully says, " Language 
 is the amber in which a thousand precious and 
 subtle thoughts have been safely embalmed and 
 preserved," Words are breath made vocal — 
 
The Laryngeal Harp. 147 
 
 unseen and intangible as ether, yet more last- 
 ing than the hills. Words are the utterance 
 of the whole body ; the organ of speech is used 
 by every square inch of the physical man. It 
 is the telephone system set up for the use of 
 every organ and cell in the human domain. 
 Through it the stomach calls for food, the lungs 
 for air, the eyes for books, the tongue for water, 
 the feet for rest, the hands for the many things 
 they crave. As a single man is frequently the 
 mouthpiece of a congregation, a state, or a na- 
 tion, the larynx is the medium of utterance for 
 the entire body. 
 
 The mouth is dedicated to the expression of 
 the beautiful and the true. This no one will 
 dispute who at the same time owns that the 
 Lord made it. God is love and truth, and man 
 is normally a minor expression of God. Speech 
 stands eternally for love invested with integ- 
 rity. Therefore its organs should be noble 
 subjects of the heart and brain. He who speaks 
 otherwise prostitutes his being. 
 
 In oratory enunciation predominates ; in 
 music, tone. Tone is the soul of it — the love of it. 
 There is power in tone — the charm of rhythm. 
 Tone is ultimated feeling. We detect in the 
 
148 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 mere cadences of the voice, in its mere modula- 
 tions, the presence of anger, sarcasm, tenderness, 
 affection, humor, gentleness, pride, logic, an- 
 guish. There are the scolding, soothing, cheer- 
 ing tones, known independently of words. 
 Children and animals tell more by the tone 
 than anything else, because they are forms of 
 affection and impulse. In thrilling emotions, 
 in great suffering or joy, we can not stop for 
 words, but deliver ourselves in groans or in 
 cries of delight. What a round of experiences 
 lie buried in mere sounds ! Each cadence 
 contains enough to fill a volume. 
 
 Music is the highest and noblest form of 
 phonics. In the perfected life every utterance 
 rises into melody. Communication there flows 
 out in song. Each group of angels is a choir. 
 As life ascends it grows more tuneful. The 
 angels sang to the shepherds the annunciation 
 of peace to earth. Mary sang in her beatific 
 vision — Elizabeth sang. Revelation naturally 
 falls into rhapsody. The noblest of the prophe- 
 cies are chants. John in his apocalypse heard 
 the " voices of harpers harping with their 
 harps." Love and wisdom never fall into the 
 analytical. All visions point to a day when the 
 
The Laryngeal Harp. 149 
 
 ascended humanity will speak one language, 
 and that pure harmony. When all are high 
 enough, all will come into this vocal unity. 
 We get a hint of it here. Watch a thousand 
 people listening to a succession of sounds at a 
 high-class concert. There is the silence of 
 love, every nature is open down to the bottom 
 of the soul, each receives in the ratio of his 
 capacity, each is hearing some fascinating tale ; 
 yet from beginning to ending there has not been 
 one word uttered. It is pathetic, wonderful, 
 what men will do with wood and metal in the 
 earnest struggle to materialize their dreams of 
 harmony. The harp, the piano, the violoncello, 
 the flute, and a hundred other instruments, are 
 the planet dug up and set to music, the forests 
 hewed into lyrics, the ligaments of animals 
 strung to rhythm. " What a piece of work is 
 man " to bring out of these dull clods the cap- 
 tivating, celestial influences of the Boston Sym- 
 phony Concert ! And yet there is thought in 
 it. At Alexander's feast Timotheus sits on 
 high amid the tuneful choir and sways the 
 spirit of the monarch at his will. He carries 
 him from the frenzies of the fight to the soft 
 breathings of love, from memory to mem- 
 
150 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 ory, until the king wins his battles o'er again 
 and " twice he slays the slain." Each trans- 
 formation of the player bears the king on its 
 billows from transport to transport. 
 
 We speak of the old masters as thoughtful. 
 Some music is light, airy, graceful ; some is 
 shallow and empty ; some sets the soul to rock- 
 ing on its own infinite abysses. A single 
 strain has sometimes buried in it the thought of 
 God. Orchestras and choirs are only develop- 
 ments of the larynx — the endeavor to breathe 
 the concordant spirit in richer, vaster volume 
 and complexity. 
 
 4 ' Love took up the harp of Life and smote on all the 
 chords with might ; 
 Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in 
 music out of sight." 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 THE LIFE-LINE IN THE PALM. 
 
 The human race would never have become human if it had not 
 been for the hand. — Anaxagoras. 
 
 The hands complete the uses of the arms. 
 The arms are for the hands. The hands are 
 the fruition of the arms. The arms are, in 
 their turn, the forthgoing of the soul. There- 
 fore the hands are the fruition of the soul. 
 They are the soul's tools. They are the soul 
 reaching out, fashioning and appropriating the 
 planet. The soul moves the nerves, the nerves 
 the muscles, the muscles the bones — and the 
 framework of the body comes to action. 
 Every motion is the result of this remarkable 
 indirection. When we see a body in action, 
 we know a soul is in action. The feet carry 
 the body along — the hands do its bidding. 
 The first are the ways of life ; the other, the 
 doings by the way. The first are the supports 
 of the body ; the other its levers. 
 151 
 
152 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 There is the upper arm — one long bone 
 called the humerus. There is the lower arm — 
 two small bones called the radius and ulna. 
 There is the wrist, with eight tiny bones whose 
 sides fit into and play harmoniously against one 
 another. The wrist, though broken up into 
 several pieces for the purposes of flexibility, is 
 bound together so firmly by ligament and mus- 
 cles that it is even stronger than if it were 
 one solid bone. These congregated, dove-tailed 
 creations enable us to give the twists and twirls 
 that are of almost momentary occurrence. The 
 skilful pitcher of the ball, the swinger of In- 
 dian clubs, the deft artificer, bring them con- 
 tinually into play. 
 
 The hand has nineteen bones — five in the 
 hand proper, three in each finger, two in each 
 thumb. On the fingers are hair-like forma- 
 tions called nails, placed there for protection 
 and stiffening. All these bones are beautifully 
 hinged together — certain of them arranged 
 like the ball and socket to confer power's of 
 perfect adaptation. All are equipped with their 
 special dynamic muscles that give them the 
 ability to move. These muscles play on the arm 
 and hand like the electric motor on the wheels 
 
The Life-line in the Palm. 153 
 
 of the car — like the steam on the myriad fingers 
 of the loom. They make the hand a quick, 
 graceful, skilful machine, ever at our bidding, 
 and as the muscles are the servants of the soul, 
 the soul can teach them to do the finest and 
 strongest work, to ply the needle, swing the 
 sledge, catch the ball, run the scales, and thrum 
 the harp. The fingers do most of the quick, 
 light movements, the thumb assisting in hold- 
 ing things firmly. This wonderful combination 
 of bones, nerves, and flesh is utterly helpless 
 without the impelling muscles. Each muscle 
 is detailed to an unique use. Every act has its 
 individual motor. Some lift the fingers, others 
 depress them, others guide them over the keys, 
 others answer the trained eyes of the surgeon, 
 others poise the chisel, move the brush, and 
 push along the pen of genius. 
 
 The similarity of the arm and leg, the hand 
 and foot, is striking and instructive. The arm 
 is an adapted leg, the hand an adapted foot. 
 The arm and hand is a leg and foot turned to 
 loftier and more versatile services. The femur 
 becomes a humerus, the knee an elbow ; the two 
 bones of the leg are carried into a like position 
 in the arm ; the ankle becomes a wrist, adding 
 
154 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 one more bone to its repertory ; the foot a 
 hand, taking the same arrangement ; the toes 
 more pliable and adaptable fingers. Under 
 the development of the mind of man the fore- 
 legs of the animal lifted themselves from the 
 earth and became new creatures. As man 
 raised his soul to God his hands caught the in- 
 spiration and ceased to grovel. They clasped 
 themselves in adoration, they assumed gentle 
 and divine ways, they uttered infinite things 
 with the pen, the brush, and the chisel. They 
 build ed civilizations — they grasped the hands 
 of their fellows with angelic fraternity. 
 
 God's long method of making the hand lends 
 that facile instrument triple interest. It sets 
 it on a basis that will stand forever. It is the 
 patient labor of aeons, of millenniums unre- 
 corded. The evolutionist gazes down the cor- 
 ridors of time and finds in the dawn of a past 
 inconceivable this human utensil slowly taking 
 form. Buried in the glebe of a distance that 
 antedates man himself he beholds this predes- 
 tined power rising into empire. At the bottom 
 of the scale is the amoeba, a tiny fragment of 
 shapeless jelly — headless, footless, armless. 
 When it wishes to seize its food, its body 
 
The Life-line in the Palm. 155 
 
 lengthens out, moves toward it, flows over it, 
 engulfs it, absorbs it. Its whole body is a 
 hand. It creates a hand whenever it needs 
 one. A hand is extemporized when a hand is 
 needed : when not needed, it is not. From this 
 starting-point, through periods of time that can 
 not be measured by years, but must comprise 
 vast ages, or cycles, the hand arose. Its per- 
 sistent uses developed and perfected it. It 
 passed up into the two-fingered bivalve. Then 
 on to the tentacles of the sea anemone, the star- 
 fish, and the octopus. Then came the hand of 
 the African monkey — almost human. Finally, 
 the creation of the human mind — man in God's 
 image and likeness. The hand answered to 
 the rising intellect and kept pace with its illus- 
 trious compeer. God gave man this body — 
 this long labor of ages, this concrete result of 
 animal ascendency. He set him on the upland 
 of that present, gave him this paramount ad- 
 vantage, expecting him to augment and im- 
 prove the gift ; to take the rude body of the 
 beast and hew it into the form of a god ; to 
 refine it and train it into the beauty which it 
 now has. 
 
 In the courses of this development a day 
 
156 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 
 
 arrived that was crucial. A point was reached 
 where the one road branched into two. And 
 the animal had to decide which to take. Here 
 there was a parting and a division. Man and 
 bird were once apparently a unit. Now, the 
 bird took to the air, the man kept to the soil. 
 Go back far enough, and everything that is, 
 even under the most powerful glass, presents 
 the same appearance. Development decides 
 the way each will take. They are not alike, 
 though they look alike. Man and bird were 
 once wrapped in a similar covering. A day came 
 when they took different directions ; a choice 
 crucial in its bearings, infinite in its unfoldings, 
 upon which were suspended the flowering of 
 earth and heaven, of a race of divine men, a 
 heaven of angels. The bird took wings — the 
 man hands. This choice was fatal to the birds, 
 for they forfeited the possibility of ever becom- 
 ing human. Try to reckon the cost to the bird 
 of the choice of the aerial life — this life we 
 deem so free and inspiring ! Try to add up 
 the immense expense of choosing a wing rather 
 than a hand ! The bird's wing has the bones 
 of a hand ; it could have had a hand, but it 
 waived the right. With that consummate im- 
 
The Life-line in the Palm. 157 
 
 plement buried in feathers, the use man and 
 the higher vertebrates made of it was denied 
 the bird forever. When we realize what has 
 been won by the growth and versatility of the 
 hand, how the very humanities pivot on it, we 
 realize what the bird has lost. We cry : " Oh? 
 that I had wings like a dove — then would I 
 fly away ! " We enviously watch the bird as 
 it cuts a free and untraveled way through the 
 air, with a song in its heart, and another on the 
 breeze ; but we forget that we have a hand — 
 an instrument so transcendently nobler and 
 more efficient than the bird's wing that any 
 comparison fails. 
 
 Consider the significance and epoch-making 
 nature of the thumb ! We usually think of 
 it as the clumsiest of the fingers. We do not 
 apprehend its far-reaching powers of permu- 
 tation and accomplishment. The thumb is 
 the final, perfecting touch of the hand. It 
 takes the relation to the hand that man does to 
 the universe — it is the crown and glory of the 
 hand. When the thumb was added, divinity 
 was added. Cuvier says : " What constitutes 
 the hand is the facility of opposing the thumb 
 to the fingers so as to seize minute objects — a 
 
158 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 facility carried to the highest degree of perfec- 
 tion in man. The peculiar prehensile power in 
 the human hand is chiefly due to the length, 
 power, and mobility of the thumb, which can 
 be brought into exact opposition to the fin- 
 gers, whether separately or grouped together." 
 Henry Drummond says "the hand of an Afri- 
 can monkey has no thumb." The thumb is 
 peculiarly human. Try to do without it and 
 see how helpless you will become. Try to 
 catch the ball, button the shoe, hold the book, 
 write the letter, do any form of manual service, 
 and you will suddenly discover the immense 
 importance of this seemingly insignificant 
 member. The thumb is not simply an addi- 
 tional finger, but a finger so disposed as to an- 
 tagonize all the other fingers. Therefore its 
 efficacy is greater than all the other fingers 
 put together. The thumb makes the hand 
 truly human. 
 
 The genus Homo takes rank in the classifica- 
 tion of mammals as a distinct order, JBimana, in 
 consequence of man being the only animal pos- 
 sessing two hands. At first we might think 
 four hands better, like the monkeys and apes. 
 Or many hands better, like the star-fish and the 
 
The Life-line in the Palm. 159 
 
 octopus. But this is very far from the case. 
 It is not the number of implements that makes 
 for efficacy, but their quality. None of these 
 hands, whether four or many, are adapted to 
 the variety and intelligent work that man's 
 two hands are. Anaxagoras has wisely re- 
 marked that " the race could never have become 
 human had it not been for the hand." 
 
 Through the long cycles in which the hand 
 grew to finish and potency where has it ar- 
 rived ? Has it reached completion ? The an- 
 swer might well be in the affirmative. It is 
 altogether probable that there will never be a 
 more perfect hand than the one we now possess. 
 It is likely that the ultimate hand has appeared. 
 Why? Has God reached the end of his re- 
 sources? Has He done all he can, and rested 
 from His labors ? No, not this ; but a leap has 
 been taken to another field of progress. The 
 work has been passed to us ; we manufacture 
 hands better than our own. Evolution has 
 leaped from flesh to steel. The hand is a tool 
 of the soul — now we have tools of the hand. 
 It is a tool within a tool. The flesh went on de- 
 veloping until man learned to make better ones 
 of iron. Then evolution paused and transferred 
 
160 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 its labors to this new field. The fatal day for 
 the hand came in the discovery of tools and 
 machinery. " It was a remarkable era in the 
 history of creation when man learned to take 
 a club and use it for a hammer, or could pry up 
 a stone with a stake — thus adding one more 
 lever to the levers of the arm." Now it is no 
 longer better flesh, but better steel — a better 
 tool. 
 
 Tools are arms multiplied, energized. They 
 are extensions of the arms. Hammers are cal- 
 lous substitutes for the fist. Knives do the 
 work once assigned to the nails. Watch the 
 animals, and you will see how easily they wield 
 these lancets. The vise and pincers replace 
 the fingers and thumb ; they are immensely 
 stronger, and never weary of their unrelaxing 
 grip. 
 
 Will not the making of tools develop the 
 hands still further? No, for tools are no 
 longer made with the hands ; they are made 
 with the brains. First we make tools ; then 
 tools to make tools. Almost everything now is 
 made with hands — but with artificial hands. 
 The very tools themselves are made with other 
 tools. We are making hands infinitely more 
 
The Life-line in the Palm. 161 
 
 facile than those God has made. " Greater 
 things than these shall ye do." We are sup- 
 plying the workshops of the earth with million- 
 fingered machines, more intricate, enduring, 
 and strong than evolution could produce in 
 millenniums. Watch the lightning looms of 
 our great mills as they weave the fabric. The 
 arrest of the hand is not the cessation of evo- 
 lution. It is its immense acceleration. 
 
 The hand becomes also a substitute for the 
 tongue. We talk with our hands. The ver- 
 nacular of the hand is getting more and more 
 universal. The mutations and combinations 
 that can be made by ten pliable fingers under 
 the tuition of the brain are endless. The hand 
 speaks with the pen. Language is expressed 
 more perfectly and enduringly by the hand than 
 by the tongue. Art, painting, and sculpture, 
 impossible without the hand, are speech stored 
 in the archives of time. We have living among 
 us to-day, conversing with us, the rare spirits 
 of gone ages. Egypt and Assyria, Greece and 
 Rome, the twenty Christian centuries, are here 
 because of this power of the hand to utter the 
 thought of the mind. The mental effusions of 
 great men, from Anaxagoras to Emerson, 
 11 
 
162 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 would lie buried in the ethers which received 
 them if the hand had not become a tongue. 
 
 Yet all that has been said is necessarily 
 superficial. We now look deeper — to the spirit 
 that lies mirrored in the hands. There are 
 hands within the hands. There is spirit in 
 them — character in them. There is some- 
 thing that prompts them to work ; prompts 
 them to pray ; something that suggests frater- 
 nity and helpfulness. These exquisite furnish- 
 ings are as veritable tools of the soul as ham- 
 mers and knives. They are as material — as 
 actually a part of the soil. They illustrate the 
 saying that "Interiors put themselves forth 
 through exteriors." The spheres of life find 
 special power in the hands, because the hands 
 represent the life. The soul concentrates its 
 active powers in them. 
 
 The hands have ever been considered the 
 powers of the soul. They have ever been 
 " the ends of interior correspondence." They 
 are outward intimations of inward potentiali- 
 ties. Cut off the hands, and, however well the 
 inner organs may do their duty, we are physi- 
 cally impotent. Let them get motion, and 
 everything within us begins at once to find 
 
The Life-line in the Palm. 163 
 
 expression. Feet and hands carry into effect 
 what all the rest hope and live for. In the 
 Word all faculties and gifts are expounded by 
 the hands. The man is in his hands, and he 
 is judged by what they do. They are alive, 
 and are brought into motion by their relegated 
 offices, their services to the soul. This is why 
 the remark has become so common that "A 
 man is known by the work of his hands." 
 We see him in them because they dramatize his 
 character. They take his thought and throw 
 it up in genuflections — set it in beautiful im- 
 pregnable creations. The constellation of di- 
 vine arts is the soul drawn on the field of the 
 material — made visible, given color, contour, 
 and solidity. It is by the brain and hand that 
 man stands preeminently distinguished, for in 
 both we see a display of his reason. The 
 hands are the brains — for the brains are in 
 them. 
 
 Let us be more concrete and definite : the 
 hands are the deeds. This fact is continually 
 recognized in scriptures and in society. The 
 feet are the ivays of life — the hands the doings 
 by the way. Lady Macbeth walks the palace 
 halls wringing her hands and crying that she 
 
164 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 can not wash the blood-stains from them. The 
 stains are on her life — but her life is in her 
 hands. Hamlet says to his guilty mother : 
 
 ' ' Leave wringing of your hands : Peace : sit you down 
 And let me wring your soul. ' ' 
 
 " Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, 
 or who shall stand in His holy place ? He 
 that hath clean hands, and a pure heart." The 
 clean hands are clean because of the clean 
 heart. We are continually commanded to wash 
 our hands — that is, to wash our lives. We 
 are told to bind the law upon our hands — to 
 keep them true. Cutting off the hands is 
 symbolic of cutting off the deeds. The man 
 with the withered right arm is the man with 
 the withered power to do. How the very 
 character lies mapped in the hands ! We are 
 told that an angel can read from the hand 
 the entire life of man ; that the whole record 
 is legibly written there ; that what he has 
 thought and done from first to last has crys- 
 tallized into this divine palmistry. Character 
 in the hands ! Character carving them, shap- 
 ing them ; drawing significant, informing lines ; 
 adding touches indescribable ! The hands of 
 
The Life-line in the Palm. 165 
 
 age ! the scarred and battered hands of toil ! 
 hands that have borne the heat and burden of 
 a long and tragic pilgrimage ! withered, faith- 
 ful hands seamed with sacrificial services ! 
 "beautiful, beautiful hands, they're neither 
 white nor small ! " 
 
 "Does its beauty refine as its pulses grow calm, 
 Or as Sorrow has crossed the Life-line in the palm ? ' ' 
 
 The hands mean sympathy and power. The 
 finest sensibilities are in the ends of the fingers. 
 Observe how the papillae arrrange themselves 
 in exquisite spiral sweeps. When we desire to 
 extend help or sympathy, we involuntarily 
 stretch forth the hands. Here comes the uni- 
 versal custom of shaking the hands, or press- 
 ing them when we meet. We ask the hand in 
 marriage — that closest of human relations. 
 We lay hands on persons set apart for special 
 services as a symbol of communicated power 
 and responsibility. 
 
 "Hand 
 
 Clasps hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, 
 
 And great hearts expand, 
 
 And grow one in the sense of this world's life." 
 
 The hand of God ! " From the lips of the 
 prophet an old and beautiful story was told to 
 
166 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 the children of the earth — how God with His 
 own hands gathered the Bactrian dust, modeled 
 it, breathed upon it, and it became a living 
 soul. Later the insight of the Hebrew poet 
 taught man a deeper lesson. He saw that the 
 Creator had different kinds of hands, and dif- 
 ferent ways of modeling " ; that those hands 
 were His love and wisdom extended to bless ; 
 that His right hand was the implement of His 
 Omnipotence ; that His hands were His provi- 
 dences. " Thou openest Thine hand and satis- 
 fieth the desire of every living thing." " The 
 Lord hath made bare His holy arm." " My 
 times are in Thy hands." His hands are the 
 symbols of care and strength. He continually 
 laid them upon the sick and healed them. 
 " Underneath are the everlasting arms." 
 
 ''Thou layest thy fingers on the lips of Care, 
 And they complain no more. ' ' 
 
 The shoulders, arms, and hands of the Great- 
 est Man figure the blended powers of the as- 
 cended humanities. They gather up the ten- 
 derness and strength of God — and of man 
 through God. They are the immense, yet 
 delicate, attribute of the Immortal affection. 
 
The Life-line in the Palm. 167 
 
 1 All that is real remaineth, 
 
 And fadeth never : 
 The hand which upholdeth it now sustaineth 
 The soul forever. ' ' 
 
XII. 
 FINIS. 
 
 And now at foot 
 Of heaven's ascent they lift their feet. — Milton. 
 
 The feet are the terminals of life — and of the 
 physical life. They are that upon which the 
 body rests when standing ; therefore the pedes- 
 tal of the soul. They are the medium between 
 the soul and the earth. They make connec- 
 tions with the physical universe and turn on 
 the currents of life. If man could not thus 
 conclude himself, he would be like the electric 
 conduction without an avenue of union. The 
 conduction must find a complete circuit before 
 it can even begin to carry the current. So 
 man, without this vital relation to the soil, 
 could not even begin to live. 
 
 The Latin equivalent is pedis, and many 
 words radiate from this stem. The pediment 
 of a monument is its foot. A pedestrian is 
 168 
 
Finis. 169 
 
 one who moves on his feet. Without these, 
 there could be no monument, no motion. 
 Various footed animals get their technical 
 identification from the number of their feet. 
 There is the biped, the quadruped, the centi- 
 ped, the octopod, the polypus, etc. Various 
 movements are indicated by the expansion of 
 the same radical, such as impetus, expede ; ex- 
 pedite, impel, etc. The foot is a basic, solid, 
 final epithet. The foothills of the mountains 
 are that upon which the mountains stand. 
 A " footing " is a general plane or base upon 
 which men and things rest. Looking back 
 still farther, to the risings of the word out of 
 .the virgin Sanskrit, we find its scope more 
 sweeping and inclusive. The radix pad con- 
 veys not only the idea of standing, but also of 
 motion. It is the idea of falling, of going for- 
 ward. And if we observe closely, we shall 
 see that walking is a literal falling, each for- 
 ward putting of the foot saving us from the in- 
 evitable catastrophe. To stand and to fall are 
 the intrinsic properties of the word. 
 
 The feet, then, are the horizon of the physi- 
 cal life, the nether circumference of the spirit. 
 Mobility and solidity are in them. They are 
 
170 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 both the supports and conveyances of the body. 
 They are created engines for any standing we 
 may will, or any walking we may determine. 
 They are the ways of life — the hands being 
 the acts by the way. Motion and guidance cen- 
 ter in them. Without them, brain and heart 
 could find no avenue of expression. We should 
 be obliged to store our energies, waiting for op- 
 portune feet and hands to release them. The 
 intellectual life must be literally dead without 
 them — so the spiritual. Dead because inactive. 
 Without them we are baseless, and in the air. 
 Lightning is diffused in spaces until it finds an 
 avenue through the earth ; then it acts with im- 
 mense velocity, precision, and power. So the 
 spirit without cosmic footing must be nebulous 
 and ineffective. The planets are the feet of the 
 heavens, without which there could be no heav- 
 ens. By a series of magnificent discrete steps 
 from God to rock, to verdure, to animal, to 
 man, the universe finds its way back again into 
 heaven — to God from whom it came. The 
 earth is the pediment of heaven by indirection. 
 From rock, to sea, to triple atmospheres, the 
 infinities are borne down and find their base on 
 the Lord's « footstool." 
 
Finis. 171 
 
 Here lies couched the great and all-inclusive 
 doctrine of uses. Uses are simply ultimation, 
 fulfilment. Without uses there can be no real- 
 ity. Without accomplishment everything is an 
 illusion. Without footing life is but a " castle 
 in the air." Unless goodness and truth and 
 capability find expression, they do not exist. 
 They are the " baseless fabric of a dream," a 
 beautiful idea, a pleasing fancy. 
 
 The account of life is located in those drama- 
 tic parts of man — face, hands, feet. But it is 
 easily seen that the most important of the three 
 are the feet. The latter place the entire man 
 on a foundation, and render the face and hands 
 effective. The feet are not so much concerned 
 in doing, as in carrying the body where it can 
 do. They make the deliveries of life (face, 
 hands, feet) possible. Standing in the dust, as 
 they do, they are nevertheless infinitely pre- 
 cious. In them life finds solution. Any fail- 
 ure of life's forthgoings is a failure of the man. 
 Without a tongue thought is stultified. With- 
 out an expressive face much of the man is lost. 
 Without hands there is much individual sup- 
 pression. Without feet all these mentioned are 
 pinned to one spot, and instead of our going to 
 
172 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 the world, the world must come to us. So far 
 as any of these are incapacitated, dulled, unre- 
 sponsive, destitute of carrying powers — life is, 
 in that precise ratio, unrealized. What is 
 expressionless is not. And according to its 
 faintness of expression it is weakened. Any 
 insulation hinders the mind and the spirit in 
 the exact proportion of that insulation. To be 
 vulnerable here is to be vulnerable everywhere. 
 If the city has a breach in its walls, it is lost, 
 however grand its buildings, or however heroic 
 its dwellers. The classic story of Achilles, who 
 had a weak spot in his heel, is a pat illustra- 
 tion. He represents beauty, strength, valor, 
 all impregnable and panoplied, but in that one 
 little spot. The heel is symbolic of that part 
 of us which is most outward, worldly, physical, 
 through which the inner and higher parts find 
 expression and use ; that part which is the 
 basis and containent of the mind and heart. 
 The arrow of the foe finds lodgment here and 
 great Achilles falls. How many of us are 
 unshielded there? and, this failing, the whole 
 man fails. When this capitulates, the citadel 
 is taken. When Titus pierces the outer gates 
 of Jerusalem, his profane foot touches the holy 
 
Finis. 173 
 
 of holies within the temple itself. How very 
 many are allowing the cares and allurements of 
 the world to prostitute and sully the beautiful 
 within ! 
 
 That the whole life is in the feet is reiterated 
 throughout the Word. " Simon Peter saith 
 unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my 
 hands and my head." " Jesus saith unto him, 
 He that is washed needeth not save to wash his 
 feet, but is clean every whit." We dream of 
 great positions, great names, great services, 
 failing to realize that the prime and vital 
 services are in the lowliest parts of things. 
 The Lord girded Himself and washed — not the 
 heads or hands of His disciples, but their feet. 
 When He came into the earthly life, He de- 
 scended to its lowliest walks. He began in 
 the deepest stratum of human society, and, 
 saving that, saved all. He brought the king- 
 dom of God first to the " footstool " of His cre- 
 ation — " Thy kingdom come thy will be done 
 on earth." If the heart and mind are not in 
 the body — if the outer life is not pure and 
 true and spiritual — the whole being is corrupt. 
 What the outer life is, the man is. If religion 
 is not first in the daily life, it cannot be prop- 
 
174 A Little Lower than the Angels, 
 
 erly called religion. The Master dramatized 
 the beauty of His soul in His earthly acts. 
 Heaven was in His face, His hands, His feet, His 
 words. " How beautiful upon the mountains 
 are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings." 
 
 To walk with God, then, is to make the low- 
 liest things divine. It is to make the most 
 menial acts sweet, pure, full of brightness and 
 gladness. To walk is to do. To walk with 
 God is to do with God, to keep step with him, 
 to tread the same path. It is to have his gen- 
 erous motives and tender interests. It is to 
 move with him gladly, not reluctantly. It is 
 to go to life's privileges and tasks with a 
 dynamic joy that transfigures them into the 
 works of angels. It is to feel an eager haste to 
 self-immolation. It is to steadfastly, voluntarily, 
 set our faces even to the cross. Not for the 
 sake of a kingdom — but for the divine inevita- 
 ble expression of ourselves. 
 
 In one sense all men walk with God. 
 " Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee." 
 This great civilization is moving up a divine 
 plane originated in the councils of heaven ; it 
 is following the " pattern in the mount " un- 
 wittingly. By immense outlay of suffering and 
 
Finis. 175 
 
 toil the race is doing the will of God with com- 
 mingled motives and aspirations. Behind the 
 master-spirit of acquisitiveness is the shaping, 
 guiding Hand. How little would many of us 
 do were it not for the pressing need of bread 
 and shelter, for the love of name and fame and 
 rulership ! How many, many, do that which 
 they would not were it possible for them to find 
 an escape. How we chafe, like a galley-slave 
 at the oar ! Not like the pebble on the beach, 
 moving aimlessly, now up and now down, but, 
 with God as unseen helmsman, making for 
 some glorious port. 
 
 In one sense we all walk with God, for with- 
 out Him there could be no walking at all. 
 " For in Him we live, and move, and have our 
 being." Yet how many walk with Him as the 
 reluctant and whining child goes to school, 
 drawn thither by the loving, inexorable father's 
 hand. Our troubles have been called, "God 
 dragging us." Do we not tread the ways of life 
 with often bitterness, and complainings, and 
 inky doubts ? We go with God ; but so un- 
 comfortably. We go with God because we 
 must. We go stubbornly, pulling at his 
 hand, and crying to be released. To walk 
 
176 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 truly with him is to bear our toils, and doubts, 
 and sufferings with the resolute calm temper of 
 the Master. He was a " man of sorrows and 
 acquainted with grief," yet whoever saw a 
 brighter face ? And all His acts were volun- 
 tary and joyful. He even went to Calvary with 
 a song — a " song in the night." He came over 
 the rugged mountains with light, glad feet that 
 made those weary heights beautiful with their 
 touch. The mountains are hard to climb, they 
 stipulate a struggle with gravitation ; yet they 
 repose in the elevated, serene regions of peace 
 and light. 
 
 " Keeping the feet in the right paths " is 
 keeping the life there — for the life follows the 
 feet. The feet are obedience — the love of go- 
 ing in the way of the commandments. To sit 
 at the Lord's feet is to love to follow Him to 
 the uttermost. When "they came and held 
 Him by the feet" they felt this thrilling im- 
 pulse. To "keep our feet" is to maintain 
 proper conduct. " Keep thy foot when thou 
 goest to the house of God." " Hold up my 
 goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not." 
 When we ask not to be allowed to " stray from 
 right paths," we ask to have our lives kept true 
 
Finis. 177 
 
 and right. The feet determine the courses of 
 life — the direction they point the whole man 
 moves. Up or down, through vales or over 
 hills, in straight ways or along interminable 
 windings — the man follows his feet. The axis 
 of the foot is at right angles to the leg, indicat- 
 ing the straight forward movement. To " put 
 the best foot forward " is to follow the best that 
 is in us. It is to bring into requisition our 
 highest, noblest resources. We discover, then, 
 the critical, intrinsic influences of the foot. 
 Where the feet go, the brain, face, heart, hand, 
 voice — entire personality goes. Where the feet 
 go, these find their activities. How necessary, 
 then, that the feet be right ! 
 
 Paul speaks of the complaint of the foot that 
 its position and services are menial. " If the 
 foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I 
 am not of the body ; is it therefore not of the 
 body ? " Yes, it is the body gathered up into 
 a single member, finding utterance and power 
 just there. It is the motion and direction of 
 the body. To keep the feet right is to keep all 
 the other members of the body right. It is to 
 have a right hand, eye, voice, look. It is to 
 walk in the light, as the feet are in the light. 
 
178 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 Swedenborg says that the sense of touch in the 
 soles of the feet communicates more immedi- 
 ately with the cerebrum (the thinking region) 
 than any other portion of the body, indicating 
 that the feet have a closer relation to the mind 
 as the determining forces of the entire man. 
 " Thy Word is a lamp [light] unto my feet." 
 The feet symbolize the subjugation of every- 
 thing low and base. What we stand upon we 
 conquer. The final stamp of the will lies in 
 them. When the Saviour said, " All power is 
 given unto me in heaven and in earth," He had 
 " put all things in subjection under His feet." 
 He had conquered Himself, defeated hell, and 
 redeemed man. When He " set his right foot 
 upon the sea, and His left foot on the earth, 
 . . . and sware by Him that liveth forever 
 and ever . . . that there should be time 
 no longer," he had universal dominion. We 
 get hints of this in the instinctive tendency of 
 people to lift the foot and bring it down hard 
 as a correspondence of determination and 
 power. It was the custom of ancient victors 
 to set their feet on the necks of defeated mon- 
 archs as a symbol of complete triumph. There 
 is little doubt but this dim and sinuous thread 
 
Finis. 179 
 
 of correspondence, running through the ages 
 from the most ancient times, found survival in 
 this act. The powers of self-conquest reside in 
 the feet. We think and speak spontaneously 
 of treading on our unworthy instincts. 
 
 The gait, postures, and bearing of the body 
 become, then, but spiritual results. They start 
 in the deepest recesses of the soul, and find 
 realization in the fringes of being. The atti- 
 tudes of the body become a striking and 
 intensely interesting exposition of spiritual and 
 mental states. Every light and shade, every 
 word and tone, every motion of hands, feet, 
 face, is a soul in action — a soul writing its 
 autobiography. Every movement is an unfold- 
 ing of the deep within. When we realize this, 
 what a drama life becomes ! Not common the- 
 atricals — not simulated and automatic, some- 
 thing entirely apart from the actors — but dra- 
 matics that thrill with their tremendous veri- 
 ties ; dramatics that are fundamental and 
 instructive. Human society flows and quivers 
 by us swifter and more incessant than the rush- 
 ing biograph. There is the greatest temptation 
 to stand and watch it as mere spectators. But 
 God will not let us do that — we are a part of 
 
180 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 the movement, and must flow with it. We find 
 ourselves both auditor and actor. Without this 
 vast theatre of nature, life could not be ulti- 
 mated or interpreted ; in short, it could not be 
 at all. There is no other way to live. From 
 within out, culminating in action and color, is 
 life's very definition. This vivid outer play 
 of the invisible and mystic within is the only 
 life that is or ever can be. 
 
 The undying, universal love of expression 
 attends eveiy thing that breathes. Even the 
 leaves of the trees rustle and whisper. The 
 flowers utter themselves in hue and fragrance. 
 The clam betrays his hiding place in the black 
 mud of the bay by the clear stream of sea- 
 water he throws through the doorway of his 
 humble dwelling. The cricket chirps, the frog 
 peeps, the owl hoots, the lion roars, the cattle 
 low, the birds sing. The infant cries five min- 
 utes after its birth, and inaugurates the wonder- 
 ful expression of races, from the stone age, up 
 through monuments, architecture, painting, mu- 
 sic, literature, and oratory, to the crowning 
 industrial and mechanical creations of the 
 twentieth century. From earliest times man 
 has etched his individuality in durable and 
 
Finis. 181 
 
 readable substances. The " footstool " of the 
 Lord has become a running biography of the 
 Ifaximus Homo. 
 
 "All the world's a stage, 
 And all the men and women merely players : 
 They have their exits and their entrances ; 
 And one man in his time plays many parts, 
 His acts being seven ages. ' ' 
 
-^v^^c-<<^- 
 
 EPILOGISM. 
 
 — ^<^^^- < 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE WONDROUS INTERCHANGE. 
 
 I see in part 
 That all, as in some piece of art, 
 Is toil cooperant to some end. — In Memoriam. 
 
 The study of the human form is central 
 among studies. Unbounded treasure will re- 
 pay search along these thrilling, all-inclusive 
 lines. The human form sets the model for the 
 universe in its mighty sweep from God to God. 
 Everything aspires to His image throughout 
 the entire creation. The cosmos is but an 
 adumbration of this mystical, infinite struc- 
 ture. Physiology is full of acknowledgment 
 of the remarkable adaptation of the whole, and 
 every separate part of the whole, to the great 
 Prototype. As knowledge advances and we 
 get deeper glimpses into the Infinite Order, 
 this will be seen more clearly. The subject 
 will enlarge the knowledge of the soul, of the 
 material universe, of the superstructure of the 
 185 
 
186 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 heavens. It alone can formulate the laws of 
 true life. 
 
 Crystallized in a sentence, it is the divine 
 interchange of myriad parts, with a mutual, 
 beneficent result in view, that constitutes the 
 definition of the Human Form. It is each 
 working together for the love of each, and for 
 the love of the whole. It is the fundamental 
 principle of cooperation, threading and binding 
 all that is ; the true socialism that, as evolution 
 advances, will possess earth and heaven. Mu- 
 tual, spontaneous responsiveness, with a great 
 ideal in view, is the word. It is the joyful 
 liquidation of common debts and reciprocities 
 set to eternal harmonies. 
 
 Let us step from nature up to man. From 
 the lowest round of the ladder this altruistic 
 ideal has prevailed, and no single inch of pro- 
 gress has been made without it. Nothing, 
 nothing ever has or can succeed without co- 
 operation. In nature the interdependence of 
 part with part is unalterably established. The 
 whole system of things, from top to bottom, is 
 an uninterrupted series of reciprocities. King- 
 dom answers kingdom, organ organ, cell cell, 
 atom atom. The alternating law of action and 
 
The Wondrous Interchange. 187 
 
 reaction is everywhere discovered, from the 
 minutest unicellular tissue, to the redeemed and 
 perfected humanity in heaven. There is the 
 " reciprocal sea," the flux and ebb of the tides, 
 the undulations of light and darkness. 
 
 "Sweet interchange 
 Of hill and valley, rills, woods, and plains. ' ' 
 
 With the verdure the law is beautifully ap- 
 parent. The flowers club together for mutual 
 advancement. The workmen's unions find 
 their duplicates here. Each separate depart- 
 ment of a rose must do its whole duty or there 
 is blight and arrest. The thistle and the sun- 
 flower are cooperating communities of flowers. 
 They are towns or cities grouped for mutual 
 protection and profit. There are advanced 
 and brotherly alliances with other kingdoms 
 than their own. They strike their roots into 
 the soil as into the bosom of love — and the 
 rock and the plant celebrate their bridal. They 
 help each other, for each has what the other has 
 not. They open their hearts to the sun and, 
 over the spaces of a hundred million miles, 
 fraternal hands are clasped. They woo the 
 passing winds and send their messages on these 
 
188 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 light wings. They press on more boldly and 
 enlist the insects in their services. They can- 
 not move, being fixed in the soil, and the ani- 
 mal moves for them. Inducements of the 
 most attractive nature are held out. The ban- 
 quet of nectar is spread for the bee and the 
 butterfly — and in return the bee and the butter- 
 fly carry the fertilizing pollen, thus officiating 
 at the wedding of the flowers. They fling out 
 their bright banners as if to say, " Honey here 
 to-day." They breathe their incense on the air 
 as a delicious guide. The accommodating 
 winds bear the perfume, and float the tiny 
 parachutes that contain the seed destined for 
 some distant plot of earth. The very birds 
 and brooks lend a willing hand. By certain 
 mutualities the vegetable becomes animal. It 
 steps from its own kingdom to the one above 
 it. It is on its way to heaven, which, by a 
 series of discrete steps, through ineffable reci- 
 procities, it will one day reach. The vegetable 
 with its piercing roots breaks up and lifts up 
 the soil, the brute in its turn carrying the mat- 
 ter upward ; the immortal spirit of man trans- 
 muting all into brain, into heart, into the po- 
 tent invisibilities that crown and complete. 
 
The Wondrous Interchange. 189 
 
 Human society is catching this unique idea. 
 We are beginning to see that a stable and en- 
 during humanity can be built up in no other 
 manner. Federation is in the air, and is daily 
 gathering volume. From a withering, destruc- 
 tive individualism the race is moving up the 
 plane of social evolution. From individual, 
 family, and interstate alliances it is passing to 
 the " Parliament of man, the Federation of the 
 world." By brotherly returns and entertain- 
 ment of great ends there will some day even- 
 tuate a united group of nations — in God's mind 
 from the beginning. The State is but a collec- 
 tion of families, the nation but a collection of 
 States, and the world but a group of nations. 
 If cooperation is good between persons, if it is 
 good in families, it is good in the world — for 
 the world is the family of the Father God. 
 The present commercial alliances, the reciproci- 
 ties between countries, the imminent federation 
 of everything industrial, educational, ecclesi- 
 astical — are an indication of the spirit of the 
 times, the prophecy of the near domination of 
 this grand and divine instinct. It is the pat- 
 tern in the Mount at last comprehended and 
 used. It is that which lies at the heart of 
 
190 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 creation flowering forth into living, tangible 
 utilities. 
 
 In us this principle is discovered in its 
 greatest perfection. For we are the gathered 
 universe, the last inclusive creation, a tran- 
 scription of all that has gone before — a work- 
 ing model of what God is, what heaven is, 
 what the universe is. Here are myriad-organ- 
 ized interdependencies, a great social inter- 
 change, finding the most delicate shadings and 
 adaptations. Here is a little universe within 
 the universe, a microscopic world within the 
 vaster one. Study thyself and thou wilt find 
 the secret of all that has been or will be. God 
 has told us all that we can wish to know by 
 His human inscriptions. " The greatest study 
 of mankind is man." A hundred cottages in 
 a row will never make a palace. Why is the 
 palace so distinct and effective ? Not the num- 
 ber of rooms, for they may be fewer. Not their 
 differences in size and hue and shape. Not 
 their furnishings and uses. It is this — the 
 palace is a cooperative institution instead of 
 many distinct minor institutions. It is that 
 all the departments are for the whole. It is that 
 each department is different from any other, 
 
The Wondrous Interchange. 191 
 
 has different purposes and uses, each adapted 
 to the other, each shading into the other, and 
 each operating, not only for the good of each, 
 but for a harmonious and beautiful structure. 
 What makes a city a city ? Not its numerous 
 buildings, but its interesting variety, centered in 
 a useful and symmetrical unity. Any building, 
 business, person, that does not lend itself to this 
 unit idea is a vampire and an intrusion. So, 
 in the human body, living side by side, is a 
 vast democracy of unicellular artizans, each in- 
 spired with a love for the prosperity of the 
 whole. 
 
 Therefore, coming, as we do, out of the past, 
 as a product of the past, — and being built for 
 the future, as the vessel is for the ocean, as the 
 bird is for the air, — we must be finely related 
 and poised to our whole circumference, to what 
 is above, below, or on either hand. Our en- 
 vironment is the universe — the universe is in 
 us — it is without us, and we are a part of its 
 composition and conformity. We are the rocks 
 through the ministries of the verdure and of 
 the animal that eats the verdure. By these 
 transforming agencies the rocks become nutri- 
 tive. Some philosopher has said, "Man is 
 
192 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 what he eats." It is almost humiliating to 
 realize how utterly dependent man is on what 
 is below him. How potatoes, and wheat, and 
 eggs, and meat are his daily necessity. But 
 when we learn that these are but the vessels 
 that bear the Lord's own life to us, the feeling 
 of humiliation ceases. We are here, ensphered 
 by soil and sea, by sun and atmospheres, the 
 nearest and remotest perfectly shaded to our 
 powers of reception. 
 
 Another word should be said. We are at- 
 tuned not only to what we see and touch, but 
 to an unseen region at our feet and an unseen 
 region beyond telescope or camera. This is 
 not all — we are adjusted to heaven and hell. 
 "Angels now are hovering round us, unper- 
 ceived they mix the throng." Our deepest 
 promptings are invisible ; our finest alterna- 
 tions are something that nine out of ten of us 
 do not even remotely fancy as existing. We 
 are " spirit, fire, and dew." We are uncon- 
 sciously related to redeemed and ascended 
 societies composed of the elect of all the ages 
 of the past. We are more finely related to 
 them, they sway us with surer power, than the 
 world about us we can touch and see. The 
 
The Wondrous Interchange. 193 
 
 pull of these upper spheres on the soul is 
 sometimes irresistible, and outdoes gravitation. 
 We have a grip on the verities we call immor- 
 tal beyond the declarations of the most pro- 
 phetic. We call this an age of materialism, but 
 it is only apparent. Men and women never 
 lived so fully in the spirit ; they never so 
 fully, though indirectly, made acknowledg- 
 ment. What we call the " moral force " is in 
 politics, industry, education, as never before, 
 and is always reckoned with. 
 
 There are the dual and triple commutations 
 within us. There are the affinities and Mend- 
 ings of the three graces that make the man. 
 Body, mind, and heart intermingle with a fra- 
 ternity passing comprehension. The contact of 
 the body and the spirit cannot be characterized 
 by any known symbols. The meeting is so 
 consummate that the argus eye of science, the 
 penetrable vision of the seer, fails to find a par- 
 tition line. The body is the home of the spirit 
 and the spirit interweaves itself into every 
 fibril so finely that matter and soul become 
 indistinguishable one from the other. The 
 responsiveness of each to the other is faultless. 
 The discrete link that binds them is the " miss- 
 13 
 
194 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 ing link/' not because it is not there, but be- 
 cause it is undiscoverable by any power of 
 man. The body is the expression of the spirit, 
 its faithful reporter, its pedestal and ultimation. 
 It is the cosmos of the spiritual man. It is the 
 spirit's hands, feet, and tongue. The mind is 
 the lamp of the body, the lamp of the soul. 
 Its illuminating beams make the whole trans- 
 lucent. By it the whole is transfigured. And 
 the heart suffuses and warms all with its affec- 
 tions. The immolations of each for each, and 
 for the whole, is the health and happiness of 
 each, and the sanity and symmetry of the entire 
 structure. 
 
 Let us now consider Man as a unity in 
 variety poised and aimed to a divine end. An 
 infinite diversity of parts is builded into a 
 structure so economic that to remove a single 
 item, to alter a single atom or faculty by the 
 finest possible shading, would derange and mar 
 the whole. Nothing is precisely alike, no cell 
 or fibril identical. Taken separately, with the 
 idea of cooperation omitted, we contemplate 
 not a man, but the fragment of a man — some- 
 thing as yet meaningless, inexplicable ; as the 
 three kingdoms of nature would be if consid- 
 
The Wondrous Interchange. 195 
 
 erecl separately ; as the worlds would be minus 
 their crowning and completing heavens. We 
 cannot do this with any degree of reason or 
 profit. If we try we grope in midnight, we 
 are in a winter that will have no vernal awak- 
 ening. We must realize the variety in the 
 unity, we must traverse all the avenues of light 
 through the entire domain. If we do not per- 
 ceive the subtle blending of spirit and clay, we 
 perceive nothing really comprehensible. Here 
 is the barrier where the mere physiologist has 
 to pause. It is his insoluble perplexity. He 
 must see a complete mansion graced with its 
 incorporeal inhabitant. He must see the ex- 
 quisite order, room added to room, organ to 
 organ, faculty to faculty, with the light of a 
 dominating mind, the glow of a dominating 
 love, streaming from cellar to attic. He must 
 hear the footsteps of God resounding through 
 every corridor, and recognize a federated unity 
 linked by divine and inseparable bonds. He 
 must see that the w T arp, the woof, the hue, the 
 figure, the fashion of the whole can be consid- 
 ered only as a unit. 
 
 No two portions of man can perform the 
 same use in the same way, any more than they 
 
196 A Little Lower than the Angels. 
 
 can occupy the same place at the same time. 
 Each part is imbued with a similar spirit and 
 has a similar purpose — the good of each, for 
 the sake of the good of the whole. Each toils 
 not for itself; yet in its sacrificial efforts for 
 each, and for the Avhole, it toils for itself most 
 effectively. Its unselfishness is its sanity and 
 its joy. The good of the whole is the high- 
 est good of each, and all pull together with 
 singleness of aim. This idea is now taking 
 possession of society. It is being realized 
 that an impoverished and selfish member of 
 society suffers — but that this is not the worst 
 of it. The worst of it is that every other 
 member suffers — and the whole society suffers. 
 Society has a blotch on it ; it becomes ineffec- 
 tive, weak, pregnable. As an inflamed eye 
 makes darkness for hands, feet, the entire man. 
 As an inflamed nerve sends the fiery demons 
 everywhere in the body, even to the mind and 
 the heart. As the sapping of the energies of 
 an organ like the heart or the lungs robs the 
 whole body of elasticity. As the maiming of 
 the foot that lives in the dust fetters the eye 
 and holds it to circumscribed limits. It must 
 have a healthy foot if it is to visit new scenes 
 
The Wondrous Interchange. 197 
 
 and feast itself anew on beautiful images. It 
 is a scientific aphorism that the swerving of the 
 minutest planet of the universe a hairVbreadth 
 from its assigned orbit thrills every sun and 
 satellite of the system. Its waves of discord 
 touch the shores of the unknown. 
 
 There is, then, a divine and lawful selfish- 
 ness. Each must labor for itself so far as to 
 appropriate that which others have labored to 
 give it, else those others' efforts will be vain 
 and its own ability to that extent impaired. 
 It must consider itself enough to appropriate 
 its precise portion — no more and no less. It 
 must have the spirit of acquisitiveness enough 
 to do the best for itself, that it may do the best 
 for each and all. Its aim must be altruistic, 
 while its immediate act must be individual. 
 It must honor the attempt of each to give it its 
 proper sustenance ; it must honor each enough 
 to take only what it needs — more than enough 
 would be as illegal and injurious as less than 
 enough. It must stand in its own strength, 
 yet realizing that its strength is the gift of each 
 and all. As the whole body is impoverished 
 or energized each part is impoverished and ener- 
 gized in a graduated ratio. We must make the 
 
198 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 
 
 most of ourselves in the world, that we may 
 make the world most, and each inhabitant 
 most. We must be the most perfect individual 
 possible, that the collective individual, the 
 family, the nation, the race, may be most per- 
 fect. This is the status of heaven — the as- 
 cended, completed humanity — the " redeemed 
 form of man." In heaven there is an indi- 
 vidualism that seeks the highest for itself for 
 the purpose of lifting all to the highest. It is 
 an unselfish selfishness. The aim is infinite — 
 the act circumscribed. The ancient idea of a 
 select company of over-lords, and a vast world 
 of serfs, no longer holds. An equality that 
 makes one as essential as the other, as honored 
 as the other, as happy as the other, with each 
 wonderfully different, holding an unique posi- 
 tion, has superseded it. A divine individual- 
 ism for the sake of a divine democracy now 
 occupies the hopes and aims of the highest 
 thinkers. 
 
 When this is perfectly true of the body, there 
 will be a perfectly healthy and happy body — so 
 much so that one will not be conscious of a 
 body. It is disease that makes the body 
 obtrusive, and continually in one's thought. 
 
The Wondrous Interchange. 199 
 
 A peace and melody follows perfect health 
 that sinks everything but gladness out of 
 sight. Adaptation to environment is so fine 
 that the connection is not recognized. Disease 
 is the result of some single organ or cell failing 
 to perform its whole duty to itself, and thus to 
 the whole structure. When it toils for itself 
 alone, when it seizes more than its share, or 
 inertly absorbs less ; when it does less than it 
 ought, and casts its own duties on another, 
 relieving or burdening another beyond its 
 healthful exercises, the entire system is de- 
 ranged. When it takes more than it needs, 
 it is absorbing the needs of another, contrib- 
 uting to that other's impoverishment, and 
 itself suffers from engorgement, surfeit, con- 
 gestion. At the same time the whole stream 
 of life is tainted, agitated, weakened, carrying 
 its imposed poison through brain and nerves. 
 In a word, symmetry of action and interaction 
 is health — the lack of it is disease. 
 
 Here lies the secret of the difficulties of 
 human society. There is surfeit and squalor 
 on every hand. There is impoverishment and 
 surplus, congestion and depletion, until the 
 "whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. " 
 
200 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 
 
 The redemption of society is revealed in the 
 mutual interchanges of the human form. The 
 pattern is in the Mount, waiting to be oper- 
 ated among men. The remedy is as old as 
 humanity itself. How blind we are that we 
 have not discovered it before! We make hu- 
 man and empty designs, all-remedial inven- 
 tions that become the fad of the hour and fail 
 as others have failed before them. The statute- 
 books are laden with the wrecks of Utopian 
 ideas that have turned out anything but 
 Utopian. From Sir Thomas Moore to Edward 
 Bellamy, the result has ever been the same. 
 We must return to God and find the solution 
 written in characters as indelible and living as 
 the body itself. Here is the infinite scheme 
 for us to follow. It has been invented by the 
 Infinite Mind that built society and knows 
 what the ultimate socialism is to be. Feder- 
 ation is daily attaining vaster proportions. 
 Cooperation is the idea of federation. The 
 swift aggregation of enterprises under a single 
 governing head, threaded by a single vital 
 principle, mutual profit and economy, is in 
 the right direction, and is, as the poet has 
 said, " Some far-off divine event to which the 
 
The Wondrous Interchange. 201 
 
 whole creation moves." Though at present 
 animated by greed, and aimed for the profit 
 of the few at the expense of the many, it 
 will extend until the whole world is included 
 in its sweep, and the whole race shall partici- 
 pate in its blessings. 
 
 "Where single forces faile ; conjoyned may gaine. " 
 — Faerie Queene. 
 
(Sob Winning TUs. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. CLARENCE LATHBURY. 
 
 Price, 40 cents. 
 
 The Church Union says of it : 
 
 " Some of the titles of chapters of this little book are more 
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 crystallize in a sentence the truth that the volume seeks to unfold. 
 
 " The author is a Swedenborgian minister, but he is wise 
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 boleth to create a new standard forjudging his fellowmen." 
 
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The Church's One Foundation. 
 
 REV. B. F. BARRETT. 
 Price, 75 cents. 
 
 The New York Independent says of it : 
 
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