Genesis of power and the media through which it acts

Dedication

TO MARY S. CAMPBELL AND OUR LITTLE DAUGHTER , CATHERINE ELIZABETH, IS THIS VOLUME , AS A TRIBUTE OF PURE AFFECTION, DEDICATED BY THE HUSBAND AND THE FATHER,

T. F. CAMPBELL.

r

Preface

The mature results of thirty-six years’ labor in the church and in the school-room find expression on the following pages.

That the same things have been said, and well said, by others, does not relieve the author from the obligation to contribute his mite to the fund of literature pleading for Christian Union : for peculiar combinations of ideas, novel modes of thought, and new methods of presenting the same subjects may arrest the attention, and prompt to action some who might otherwise remain indifferent to the most important movement of the age.

The reformation leading men from fables to facts, from the counsels of men to the Gospel of Christ, from tradition to the Bible, will not yield its full harvest of blessing until Christians not only accept “ the Bible, the whole Bible,” but reject everything else, names, creeds, and differential tenets, not found verbatim in the Bible.

He who loves his creed more than he loves Christ is not worthy of Christ ; he who loves his discipline more than he loves the Hew Testament is not worthy of the Hew Testament ; he who loves his partisan name more than he loves the name Christian is not worthy the name Christian ; and he who rejects not his human creed, discipline, and name, cannot come into Christian Union.

6 Preface.

The most learned, pious, and zealous are dull of hearing and slow to understand these things : hence the necessity of “ line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little,” until they realize in the full import of its iconoclastic significance that all human organizations and denominations must be destroyed ; that they must follow the course and share the common fate of hundreds of similar institutions which have, within the past eighteen hundred years, risen and flourished, and fallen, because the gates of death prevailed against them. Of the Church of Christ alone it has been said, and can be said, “ The gates of Hell, etc.”

Christian Union admits of no compromises. — “ The truth, as it is in Jesus,” is the only possible basis of the Union of Christians for the glory of God and the conversion of the world.

If this volume shall contribute anything to the attainment of an end so grand, a consummation so glorious, it will have accomplished a leading purpose for which it was written, and the author will be, in that respect, satisfied.

An apology ought not to be demanded for the introduction of copious quotations of Scripture; for these form, no doubt, the best part of the book. A question may be asked, however, “ Why omit references by chapter and verse ? ” The answer is, first, they mar the beauty of the page, and are seldom used ; then, the quotations are generally familiar Scriptures, the accuracy of which will be recognized without examination ; and where they are otherwise, the use of a concordance will make it easy to turn to them.

A few quotations also from other sources have been introduced without reference. These, too, it is pre^

Preface.

sumed, will, on account of their familiarity, be readily recognized and referred to their respective authors.

Many valuable thoughts and pleasing ideas, gathered from forgotten sources and unknown authors, have been introduced into the body of the work without reference. This general statement is made in acknowledgment of all obligations thus incurred.

As a dove from the ark, this little volume is sent forth over the turbulent bosom of a divided Christianity, with the prayer of the author for Heaven’s blessing, and the hope that it may bear the olive branch significant of peace and of a united church.

CHAPTER I. Introduction. - 15

Manifestations of power in nature — In the mineral and the vegetable kingdoms— In the rain, flood, and flow of water— In the solar system — In the sun— In gravity and light — In the universe— The source of power— Two theories — The atheistic theory inadequate — The monotheistic better — Gravity— God the source of all light, and power, and life — He inhabits eternity, and rules all being, material and spiritual

Chapter II

Power necessary to life, temporal and eternal — Universe, material and spiritual — Matter, passive — Spirit, active — Classification of spirits — Classification of power according to its source — All phenomena either physical or spiritual — Classification of

Sower according both to its source and its results— Laws of [ature, the will of God,

CHAPTER III. Characteristics of Power, Divine and Satanic. 36

Man — Two natures in one personality — His moral accountability rests, first, on his ability to know what power moves him ; and second, on his ability to act with, or resist it — No separate characteristics for human power — Every act of man must bear the Divine, or the Satanic characteristics — He can not serve two masters — His final destiny dependent upon his words and works.

Chapter IV

Power, apart from its source, a unit — Its character determined by its results — Parental responsibility — The man working with God — The man working with Satan— The first set of charac-

Contents

teristics, light and darkness— The second, union and division — Christian union possible only on the basis of the Bible — Third set of characteristics, happiness and misery — Man must act with God or Satan— No neutral ground— “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

CHAPTER Y.

Freedom op the Will. 56

Chapter I. Introducti On

PHYSICAL POWER.

In a concert where the ‘ ‘ Anvil Chorus ” was sung, two strong men, with apparent effort, brought into the hall an anvil, upon which the chorus was sounded. At the conclusion of the piece, a child of six years old passed his tiny hand through a loop on the side of the anvil, and carrying it with one hand, bore it from the hall with apparent ease. The feat, though a deception, was, for the moment, sublime. The house cheered to the echo, as the little fellow, returning, said : “How is that for muscle?”

Real manifestations of power far more wonderful pass before us every hour, without even exciting attention. The simple adhesion of a few superficial feet of smooth surfaces will sustain many hundred pounds’ weight ; while the cohesive attraction between the molecular particles of a bar of steel an inch in diameter is equal to many thousand horse power. The freezing of a few ounces of water splits the rock in twain and rends the mountain

Physical Power.

asunder, scattering its fragments in tlie valley below ; while the crystalline force in the diamond is a miracle of unmeasured power. Nor are these prodigies of force limited to the mineral kingdom. The mustard-seed contains potential energy, which, when developed under favorable conditions, will push the plumule, seeking the light, through several inches of superimposed soil, with a force of many pounds.

The oak, springing from the acorn, is carried by the vital force into mid-air, while from the nut of the gigantic Sequoia of California springs a column thirty feet in diameter, measuring in wood ten-score cords. With these as units of measurements may be estimated approximately the vital energy necessary lo rear a forest of such trees, covering a hundred square miles. The fragrance and beauty of the garden ; the cereals and fruits of harvest ; the verdure of the plains ; the forests of the valley and the timber on the mountains of all the continents and islands of earth are carried by the same vital force out of the soil upward, some of them hundreds of feet into the atmosphere. Add to all this, the power required to uphold and sustain them against the constant action of gravity, and the fitful force of the winds pushing alternately from every point of the compass, and there results an aggregate of force, which, if given in tons, would defy the utmost grasp of the mind to comprehend.

It is difficult to pass from these phenomena, limited in scope and partial in results, to that broader and more comprehensive power coupled

Genesis of Poicer.

with heat, whose primal source is the sun, and whose influence is seen alike in the graceful homage of the sunflower ever turning its radiant disk to the king of day, and the rising of a continent from ocean’s depths and the upheaval of mountain ranges along its borders.

The rippling wave kissing the shore in peace, the rolling billow majestic in mien, and the ragingocean terrible in aspect, are the manifestations of its changeful moods, as it smiles in the zephyrs of the morning, moves majestically under the quickening breeze, or rages with terrific fury in the prevailing storm. Where shall a measure of its force be found ?

Stand on the summit of the Calaporia mountains, look to the north over the Willamette valley nestlino; between the Cascade range on the east and the Coast range on the west, in breadth from crest to crest one hundred and fifty miles, and extending to the Columbia river one hundred and fifty miles away. All this vast region is rich in grass and grain, fruit and forest. In their season, rain-clouds, wafted by the winds across the western range, come, like huge ships with spreading sails, freighted with treasure, plunging and careening up the valley and across it, until wrecked against the Cascade and Calaporia ranges, they scatter their liquid gems on the mountain sides, fertilizing them with moisture and covering them with forests of spruce and fir, and feeding myriads of brooks and rivulets flowing into the Willamette across the plain, causing it to be well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord.

18 Physical Power.

The annual rainfall over this vast region of eighteen thousand square miles is fifty-two inches, or four and one-third feet. This is equivalent to one million one hundred and fifty thousand tons on' each square mile, and on the entire area two billion seventy million tons. All this vast burden was literally lifted from the bosom of the Pacific, high in the air, far from shore, and carried on the wings of the wind to the place of deposit.

This is but a fraction of the vast volume poured down annually on the continent. The Columbia, the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the Amazon are channels through which the surplus of these floods, not crystallized in the mineral, nor absorbed in the vegetable, is borne back to the ocean. Like power is at work in the pluval irrigation of the eastern hemisphere and the isles of the seas, to say nothing of double these volumes precipitated directly back into the oceans themselves.

These exhibitions of power are still within the limits of the earth’s atmosphere.

Take position in space and mark the play of worlds as they whirl around a central orb with varying velocities, some twenty, some fifty and some a hundred times that of a cannon ball in its maximum flight ; and yet, though their orbits are measured by millions, reaching up to billions of miles, and exceedingly intricate, never an inch out of place, nor a second behind time.

The force that projected the world in space with a velocity of a thousand miles a minute, needs to be multiplied by twelve hundred, to give Jupiter his

Genesis of Power .

velocity, and by factors corresponding to volume and distance from the central orb for all the other planets.

The sun, the reservoir and fountain of all the physical power in the solar system, holds the planets with their satellites in check with a constant force exactly balancing the force of projection.

A nearer approach to this central reservoir of power reveals a force, in the presence of which all organic matter, all mineral forms, would be instantly crushed to atoms and dissipated like mist before a tornado. A storm of wind on earth moves one hundred miles an hour. A storm of flame on the sun moves twenty thousand miles in the same time. The force of a slashed cane-brake burning, sends columns of flame a hundred feet above the standing trees ; in the collapse of a chasm appearing in the photosphere as a sun spot, the collision of opposing sides shoots the fiery mist two hundred thousand miles high. All these results are simply mechanical and within the scope and province of reason.

The more wonderful manifestations of power, transcending the utmost grasp of finite mind, couple themselves with gravity and light — the first a term to denote a cause ; the second, a result of motion whose cause is hid amongst the impenetrable secrets of the infinite ; yet, it becomes itself the cause of all organic being, and the condition of the play of that more mysterious and utterly incomprehensible energy called life.

Some of the laws under which these recondite in-

Physical Power.

fluences act have been discovered and placed under mathematical formulas, but their essence or being, whether entity or only inAuence from another entity, has not yet been determined.

The scientist knows not where nor how to seek for knowledge where all theories break down with every test, and where reason itself would impose an emphatic negative. How can a body act where it is not? or inAuence another hundreds of millions of miles away without an appreciable or conceivable medium? To a mind capable of logical thought, such results, in the absence of demonstration, are not only impossible but absolutely inconceivable. Nevertheless such facts exist.

The sun sends out its power, martialing the planets in space with their attendant satellites by a law which science has not yet been able to formulate. It Alls with light the entire sphere whose radius is equal to that of the orbit of Neptune, two billion eight hundred and sixty-two million miles away. All this vast space is full of power, sporting with worlds Ave, seven, twelve hundred times larger than the earth, and at distances twelve, twenty, thirty times more distant, with less apparent effort than a school-boy tosses his ball ; and full of light, vivifying and thrilling all these worlds with life.

What majesty in the sun, as he seethes and burns with unquenchable Aarne, rolling and hashing light and heat and power into outer space for millions of years, unexhausted and inexhaustible !

Even this is to be yet at home in the solar system,

Genesis of Power .

making note of the power needful for a little family of worlds, in the presence of tie innumerable hosts of heaven. Survey by night the celestial vault and consider other suns, one hundred, five hundred, a thousand times larger, double, triple, multiple, with their attendant planets and satellites infinite. Fancy fails and imagination reels and falls as a drunken man in the presence of energy so intense, of force so vast. Add to all this the mingled suns forming galaxies bright, and nebulae unresolved by telescope, and the mind is dazed and lost in the infinity of power.

SPIRITUAL POWER.

The carrier pigeon, returning, often acquires such velocity as to sweep off its plumage and cause it to settle down exhausted to many days’ needful rest before undertaking another flight ; so the mind, returning from the bewildering display of omnipotence in force and energy, shorn of vanity, seeks repose, and the renewing of strength for further research and fuller investigation.

Stimulated and excited by an increasing thirst for knowledge, it rises to renewed effort, seeking tho origin and source of all this power. Is it an element, an attribute or endowment of matter? or has it an independent and higher source, Spirit , controlling matter, and subjecting it to rational laws ?

There are two theories, the monotheistic and the atheistic. They alike make two assumptions, the former, spirit and matter from spirit ; the latter* matter and power in matter. The first refers all power to spirit, which the government both of mat-

Spiritual Power .

ter and mind subjects to rational laws ; the second treats it as inherent in matter, governing it according to “the laws of nature,” an expression in the atheistic system not well defined. In the grosser forms of matter no such endowment can be detected ; instead thereof, inertia is said to be the first and leading attribute of a body. It must, therefore, be sought for in the ultimate particles or atoms. But an atom is infinitesimal ; hence it will require at least an infinite number of them to make a volume equal to a mustard-seed.

Many species of infusoria are said to be as much smaller than a house-fly as the fly is smaller than an elephant ; and yet this protozoan must have at least a circulatory, a respiratory, and a digestive system. The blood-vessels of the larger animals are attenuated in their ramifications to the millionth of an inch in diameter. How infinitesimal must be the atoms which circulate in the veins of an animal whose whole body can be seen only under the most searching microscope ? The familiar illustration of the grain of musk scenting a room for months, even years, without appreciable diminution ; and the ductility of gold, which may be drawn out as coating or wire to the thickness of the three hundred millionth of an inch, aid in efforts to apprehend the minutia of an atom. And yet it has eluded every eye, and defied the utmost skill of science to detect it.

The fancied endowments of this mysterious body are as diversified and versatile as its size is diminutive and inscrutable. It is seen to have in crystal-

Genesis of Power.

lization varied and definite forms, with six systems of axes, giving rise to a great variety of crystals ; its molecular combinations show that it can number and measure, and weigh and choose ; on these properties are based the chemical laws of proportion, equivalent, multiple, definite, etc. It has for electricity two sides, a positive and a negative, and the molecule responds to electric action alike in analysis or synthesis. The porosity of different bodies depends upon its ability to keep itself at a certain distance from its neighbors on every side. Gravity requires that this atom attract every other atom with a constant power, in direct proportion to its weight and inversely as the squares of the distances through which it acts. The production of light by attenuated luminiferous ether, composed of atoms, is the result of five quatrillions of waves per second.

More astonishing still, these atoms combined into molecules, marshal themselves in the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdom at pleasure, and form a germ, a plant, an animal — fish or fowl, insect or mammal — by an inherent but undiscovered law. These are endowed with cohesive, crystalline, and vital forces by which they construct fibre and tissue, nerve and muscle, energize with instinct and reason, and crown with life.

The final outcome is man, the last of a series of developments, in which these atoms have advanced from a diffuse mass of inert matter to simple forms of mineral structure, held together by cohesion or crystallization ; followed by a “ change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity into a definite, co-

Spiritual Power.

Such an atom with such endowments is an impossible conception ; or if possible, wholly inadequate as a cause to the results of power everywhere apparent.

The other theory begins with the Bible ; places spirit behind and God above matter ; and finds in Him the genesis of all things : ‘ 4 God created the heaven, and the earth was the beginning.” “By faith,” says the Hebrew letter, “ we understand the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen, were not made of things which do appear.” And in Corinthians : “To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things ; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things.” And in Homans : “ For from him, and through him, and to him are all things.” In these and many parallel scriptures is seen the intimate relation between the Author and his work.

Matter is because he created it ; continues, because he sustains it ; preserves harmony, because an omnipotent mind governs it. It bears the impress of an omniscient will.

Every law that controls a power within, as energy, or without, as force, from the combining proportions of atoms to the revolving spheres and systems of spheres in infinite space, is immutable.

The laws of light, heat, and electricity vary not with the ages ; the law of life requires that the germ, whether vegetable or animal, shall “bring forth after its kind.” This is the line of dcmarka-

Genesis of Power.

tion between the Bible and the Darwinian theory. The skill of the beaver and the bee, the wisdom of the ant, and the flight of the birds of passage, are the promptings of the laws of nature, which are, in the theistic theory, the will of God impressed upon nature. Gravity, acting between grains of sand contiguous, or suns remote, obeys the same law. It is the mighty though invisible chain that binds together a hundred million suns and their attendant systems in one harmonious whole ; while light, the luciferous telegraph, writes upon the spectrum the composition of each, showing that the same infinite mind which said, “Let there be light, and there was light,” dwells in all space and gives the same law to the light of all systems.

“ God is spirit.” He is declared to be light and to “ dwell in light which no man can approach unto” — intensified electricity with its polarity, in which will ultimately be found, no doubt, the solution of the problem of gravity. As a constant force in matter, attraction is all-pervasive, detected in every class and form of motion — the fall of a pebble, the motion of an animal, the revolution of a world on its axis, in its orbit, the interaction of double suns and binary systems. “It is but reasonable,” says Dr. Ilerschel, “to regard gravity as a result of consciousness and a will existent somewhere.”

All other theories fail utterly. It is said in Job : “ He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” And the author of the Hebrew letter says: “Thou, Lord,

Spiritual Power .

in tlie beginning lu;s laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands.” Of him who was made flesh and dwelt amongst us, it is said: ‘ ‘ By whom, also, he made the worlds; who, being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, upholding all things hg the word of his power.” Again, by him all things consist (stand together). lie sustains, he governs all. In these and like passages all physical phenomena are referred to an omnipresent, immanent mind, the source of all power and the Author of all the laws by which it is controlled.

Passing above and beyond the realm of matter, God is declared to be the Father of spirits; “the God of the spirits of all flesh.” For in him, “ we live and move and have our being.”

lie is the genesis of all spiritual being, the Author of life, and the omnipotent source of all intellectual power and moral beauty, human and angelic, in heaven and earth. He rises above time and inhabits eternity, sustaining and ruling in the midst of ranks and orders of the angelic hosts, principalities celestial, powers omnific, and dominions seraphic.

King David says : “ Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? If I ascend up into heaven thou art there ; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost pails of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”

He has the keys of death and hades ; and he

Genesis of Power.

will utterly destroy them, casting both “into the lake of fire.” “ He hath in himself life,” and he dispenses it through all departments of nature for time and eternity', for the “gift of God is eternal life.”

At His presence, when He shall come to receive his bride, “heaven and earth shall flee away ; ” and by his power the dead shall be raised, and the living changed, and all clothed with immortality.

He is the Lord Almighty, where originate and whence flow, all the powers physical and spiritual in the universe.

Such knowledge is cont dned in the inspired volume ; and such wisdom is taught on its sacred pages. It is the “Book of books,” a sublime volume with God for its author, Jesus, the Messiah, for its subject, the glory of God in the salvation of the world for its object, the fall, sacrifice, and rescue of humanity the first act, on the scene of earth and time ; the resurrection, exaltation and coronation with a crown of life to the glory of God, the second, on the scene of heaven and eternity.

In the language of another, “The Bible is, indeed, the tongue of the universe, ever unfolding its mysteries, ever developing the awful and glorious character of that magnificent architect, whose sublime and omnipotent fiat broke the solemn stillness of eternity, and gave birth and being to a thousand millions of suns, and thirty thousand millions of attendant planets,

Forever singing as they shine,

The hand that made us is Divine.

Spiritual Power.

In it are depths of knowledge unfathomed, and unfathomable by finite mind ; heights of wisdom unsealed by the ££ angels that excel in strength,” on their boldest wing ; mercy that moved the throne of God ; condescension that caused him to £ £ bow the heavens and come down ; ” love that redeemed man from death and crowned him with glory, honor, and immortality in the realm of light and life and peace.

To the man of faith, it reveals an inexhaustible source of power to move all, and infinite wisdom to govern all.

Genesis of Power .

CHAPTER IT.

GENESIS AND CLASSIFICATION OF POWER.

Where there is no power there is no force ; where there is no force there is no change ; where there is no change there is no motion ; where there is no motion there is no temporal life, animal or vegetable : therefore power is necessary to temporal life.

Again, where there is no power there is no energy ; where there is no energy there is no change ; where there is no change there is no conversion ; where there is no conversion there is no justification ; where there is no justification there is no salvation ; where there is no salvation there is no eternal life : therefore power is necessary to eternal life.

Power is that which moves or tends to move an entity at rest, or changes, or tends to change, the motion of a moving entity. If the entity is material, it is a body, if not material, it is spirit.

Power is either statical or dynamical : statical when its tension, or strength, is equal in all directions, producing rest. This is the vis inertia , not, as often defined, the absence of all power, but the equilibrium of power; and dynamical when its strength is unequal in different directions, giving rise to motion.

Energy is power, viewed subjectively in reference to its source. Its tendency is generally expansion or development, as the unwinding of a spring, the bursting of a bud, the growth of an animal. When rendered statical by the equilibrium of power, it is potential energy, as the tension of a spring, or the vital power in a germ.

Force is power viewed objectively in reference to its results. In its statical relations, it is considered only as potential, or simply as power.

Strength is the measure or intensity of power, and is applicable alike to force or energy.

Power exerted on spirit, in the form of law, is authority, and is applicable to every class of spirits.

With these postulata and definitions, it is easy to conduct a more critical investigation of the sources and qualities of power.

The capacity of any man is accurately measured by his powers of generalization. The undeveloped mind of the child extends with difficulty to the limits of the yard, or the village in which it lives. The youth well versed in geography contemplates the surface of the earth with its continents and zones, its oceans and islands, with the same facility that he views the surface of an orange. The cultured and comprehensive mind of a Newton, ora La Place, could grasp the solar system, as a whole, and see its several parts moving in their orbits, as a general understands the manoeuvring of his army. And it may be easily conceived that one of those angels of light which “excel in strength,” might view a hundred thousand suns with their attendant planets and satellites in their marvellous and mystic

Genesis of Power.

waltz around their several centres, as a unit constituting a single member of an infinite system of systems.

The same standard serves to measure the culture and mental powers of a nation. The generic terms in a language increase in comprehension and diminish in number until, in the last categoiy, a term or phrase is reached of universal comprehension.