Hudson Tuttle

“ We rejoice that there are clouds, and while the earth is good enough for the mortal man, in the clouds there is a grander [221] reality. If it were otherwise, if the human heart were given its intense longings, its exquisite sensibility, its delicate cords responsive to every touch of feeling only to be torn and lacerated at the grave of the loved, we would scorn the pitiable earth, despise the sham called life, hate the force called love, and believe that there is neither benevolence, wisdom, nor intelligence in the Universe. It is the clouds that give value to the earth ”

“ In the solitude of the forest, by the shores of the sullen sea, and in the depths of star-lit night, we rest as dwarfs, overpowered by the stupendous elements, yet the center of all forces and phenomena. We are in the vortex of creative energies, and if we silently question, the answers fall as soon as our minds are receptive to them. In its adoration of the boundless, the soul mirrors its own infinitude. The shoreless expanse of sea, with sky and wave blending, lost in mist, in the never-reached horizon ”

“ The savans stand around its rim like Shakespeare’s witches and chant a technical gibberish about laws; the pre-existence and correlation of force; the indestructibility of energy; the eternity of matter; the potentialities of the atom; the struggle for existence; the survival of the fittest, and in admiration praise each other’s profundity of sight, while the sharpest eyed see nothing beneath the foaming scum. They pride themselves on explanations, of causes, while really they play with words. ”

“ We may accept that all is for the best whether we understand it or not, as the unalterable decree of fate, yet as rational beings we recoil from this bondage, and the questions are ever present, of the purpose of this life and the evidences of that future of which the most doubting dream.
Religion, resting as it does on the immortality of the spirit, should answer us so plainly and absolutely that there could be no doubt. That there is weeping and broken hearts shows that it does not, or else that it makes that existence so terrible that the dread of it is more than that of annihilation. ”

“ To have been subject to the griefs of those you left, would have been painful and useless. You are now able to bear a full knowledge, you feel that of your family and friends. I will go with you, and you will find what I tell you is true, and you will bless us for our thoughtfulness.”
We were poised, as it were, over a promontory beyond which the earth hung in space, as the full moon in a summer sky. Beyond were the stars. I was aghast at the journey, and fearful of the abyss which seemed deep as infinitude. ”

“ As the foulest slime of the sewer, when exposed to the light, casts down all stains, and sparkles in the crystal [222] waves, so humanity in the light of spiritual truth is purified and freed from stains. Hope, faith, desire, the poetry of the present, are the prophecy of the future! Their voice proclaims the esoteric wisdom which is wiser than all books; for are not all books children of the mind? Has any thing ever been written that no one knew? As the mind is the receiver, so is it the radiator. It cannot receive what it has not the ability to throw out. ”

“ At the threshold of this discussion of the problem of mind and spirit we have that of life. The living being is the most wonderful achievement of force in its multitudinous forms. Life is the gateway to the realm of spirit, and beyond that gateway lie the questions we seek to solve.
The living being, by the fact of its being such, has new and hitherto undetermined relations. It has escaped from the hold of the forces in part from the common lot of matter, and a new horizon uplifts before it. New and mysterious forces intrude, the sum of which we call vital energy. ”

“ How well that order has seized its vantage, and, fanning the flames of superstition, stifled reason and led poor Humanity over the quaking bog-lands and reeking marshes of myth-theology!
This life is nothing compared with that which is to come. Its most innocent pleasures are sins; for the body itself is sinful, and by sin man came into the world. Pressed down beneath the weight of universal disaster, the doctrine of Jesus was the wail of despair. Take no heed of the morrow. Live only for to-day. Give all to the poor. Resist not the tyrant wrong. ”

“ Receptivity and Greatness.—Here and there are those who by organization are sensitive and ready instruments to bless the world with the light of higher spheres. There have been many in the past fifty years. Centuries have gone by and not one of these barren—centuries during which man remained stationary or retrograded into dense ignorance.
As mountain peaks catch the light of morning when all the valleys and plains below are wrapped in darkness, so these sensitives arise into the atmosphere of spirit, and bathe their foreheads in its glory. ”

“ The messenger is not needed to overtake the fugitive ray, for the light thus reflected, struck against rock and tree, and photographed the images of every moment since the stars first sang together. Every atom still vibrates to the molding hand of life under which it has at some time passed, and the sensitive mind is able to catch these vibrations and interpret their meaning in forms of thought. ”

“ We want the clouds to distill the soft dew, and bear on their broad shoulders the life-giving rain for the grass and grain, to slake the thirst of the herds and flocks; we want the clouds to spread their protecting mantle over the fields against the scorching sun of summer; and we want them to bring the crystal snows to protect the fields in winter. We want the clouds to beautify the sky, and reflect in loveliness the rays of the rising and setting sun. Half the beauty of the world would be gone without the clouds, which lift the soul on wings of aspiration. ”

“ The flowers might bloom in beauty, their fragrance would delight, but their form and color would be unrecognized. The mind, deprived of the infinite series of sensations which flow into it through the sense of vision, would have none of the conceptions thereby engendered. If a being who could see should attempt to reveal to the sightless race the beauties of the world as seen by the eye in the light, they would treat him as an impostor relating an idle tale, to them incomprehensible. ”

“ It is then that a new entity becomes recognizable. The material has become spiritual. Such an immortality at best would be not only undesirable, but unendurable amidst the changing scenes and vicissitudes of material life. Only within the refined spiritual realm can we expect to find the perfection we seek. It is a new province, subject to new conditions and new laws. There is seemingly an impassable gulf between matter and spirit, yet we shall find it possible to throw an arch across. Nature loves such blank spaces; she loves the black bars in the spectrum as well as the light. ”

“ Believing in an immortal life, they sought to force their belief on others, and proselyte by sword and torture. Dogmatism grew rankly luxuriant in this hot-bed of ignorance and superstition. Humanity was bound to the wheel; and ingenuity exhausted its skill in demoniacal inventions whereby severer pangs might be evoked, that through physical suffering the spirit might gain purification. Poor humanity might well exclaim, “Blessed be oblivion to this curse of Immortality!” ”

“ Each link is prophecy of future superiority. The fulfillment of one age can be traced until man appears as the last term in the physical series.
They who teach this doctrine of evolution, which is to life what the law of gravitation is to worlds, also teach that united with the doctrine of “conservation of force,” the hope of immortality becomes a dream.
What a sham they make of creation! What a turmoil for no result! Infinite ages of progress and evolution, during which elemental matter, by force of inherent laws, sought to individualize itself and incarnate its forces in living beings ”

“ On ultimate analyses, force resolves itself into motion, which is discernable to the senses only as expressed in phenomena. If we were obliged to explain the phenomena of matter only, some theory might be plausibly maintained; fronting one world we might understand it, but we are fronting two worlds. There is constantly the caused and the cause. We never are satisfied that the caused caused itself. We may receive the beautiful exposition of the doctrine of evolution, and yet we have only the road over which life has been irresistibly forced. ”

“ Selfishness thrust the priest between man and the invisible world of spirit, and made immortality the instrument wherewith it could rule with diabolical despotism over mankind. Even when the rain-maker shook his rattling calabash at the sky, and beseeched the moisture-giving clouds to send down rain, the priestly order had fast hold on the superstitious savage; and in all the transformations of history, surging with the coming and going of countless generations and the ebb and flow of empires, never for a moment has this grip been loosened. ”

“ Life and Mind.—Taking vital force in its highest expression, in man, it is self-conscious and has independent will. It arises above the atoms of its physical being, above the influences which environ it, and says, I will, and executes that will. I know well that if we here leave physical science for metaphysics, there are philosophers who would not only reason away this force, but the existence of the body itself. They are true intellectual acrobats; amusing jugglers, who throw words instead of painted balls, and confuse by their wonderful dexterity. ”