The gospel of nature

Preface

These chapters were written in the city of Chicago during the summer of 1871. The ideas were given in a series of lectures through the organism of M. L. Sherman, and written in the same manner as the Hollow Globe, which has been before the public since that time, and of which this work is a sort of sequel.

It is not pretended that this volume will solve the great problem of living conscious existence; but the authors indulge a hope that a perusal of these pages may reflect a flood of light upon very numerous vexed questions concerning man's earlier history, and his relationship not only to the planet which gave him birth, but to the boundless universe.

It may properly be considered a search after foundations — a sort of delving down to the substratum of existing things — an inquiry after the secret springs, or the very fountain head of evolutionary forces — an investigation of the hidden wheel works of nature's wondrous machinery; thus clearing the way to a better understanding of the divine records found everywhere in the economy of the universe.

The bungling record which forms a part of the theology of the present period presents the inquiring mind a very lame and unsatisfactory solution of such a mighty problem as the genesis of conscious existence; and as yet the theory of evolution, as presented by the materialist, is in an exceedingly crude and undigested condition.

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Mr. Darwin is compelled to suppose there was some sort of an animal organization existing as a starter, or basis, upon which might be built his wonderful system of natural selection and variation.

Mr. Huxley finds his protoplasm, or basis of life, a regular organized being, possessing certain powers and performing various functions incident to living existences; and as microscopic discoveries do not at present extend much further into the realms of the infinitesimal, he leaves the whole subject shrouded in the darkness of those forbidden fields termed the unknowable.

Mr. Tynclall, after all his extended researches, has simply arrived at the conclusion that the "promise and potency of every form and quality of life exists in matter." Thus far he goes, and no further. As regards the working processes in the great laboratory of nature by which these innumerable forms are differentiated, or eliminated from the universal matrix where all substance or matter must at some time have resided, he maintains a profound silence.

The great mass of people, including the devout believer in the divinity of book revelation, scarce give these difficult subjects a thought.

The paramount question for consideration just at the present period would seem to be — did some supreme intelligent Being produce by his own power this mighty universe? or did the universe itself exist from all past eternities, and unfold by virtue of its own inherent powers every grade of intelligent beings it contains?

Biological science has repudiated the long-cherished doctrine of spontaneous generation, and emphatically declares that the minutest individual form of living existence must have had its progenitor equally with the greatest.

A very eminent modern lecturer, who has had every oppor-

PREFACE. 5

tunity, and is abundantly capable of investigating this matter from a material standpoint, so far indorses the doctrine of evolution as to say that he believes we came up from the lower animals, but is not quite sure. However, upon this subject he says "he stands about eight to seven."

It is at just this period of the earth's history, and in this condition of human development, that we send our book into the world, hoping it may fill to a certain extent a vacuum, and partially supply the present needs of humanity in this respect. We cherish a hope that these pages, over which we have labored so assiduously, may serve to illuminate, and perhaps enlarge, the intellects of many persons who are famishing for the want of knowledge of this character.

We are aware that the ideas presented, or at least a large portion of them, are radical almost to the last extreme; still we think there are many minds prepared for their reception even now, and we modestly predict that another, and perhaps still other, generations will very largely increase the numbers who will appreciate these thoughts, which have come to us from the spirit abodes.

We are fully aware that somewhere in the amplitude of nature's mighty volume is inscribed the whole history of the advent of our earth and all its appertainings, together with their unfoldment up to the present status ; and if, in the event, it shall prove that we have succeeded in reading some of these divine pages correctly, and in transcribing their contents truthfully into this our book, we shall be amply compensated for all our labor and anxiety.

The indulgent reader will doubtless leniently pass over anyseeming repetitions either in language or ideas which may occur, as our whole repertory of words have been many times insuflicient to express the idea we wished to convey; and perhaps in some instances we have made a second or even more

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attempts. It is not that this work possesses superior literary merits that we give it publication, but that it explores many new fields of thought, and reflects, as we think, many illuminating rays upon numerous unsolved problems which are of such vital importance to the modern thinker.

THE GOSPEL OF NATUEE.