1. LECTURE FIRST.
CHRONOMETRICALS AND HOROLOGICALS,
(Being not so much the Portal, as part of the temporary Scaffold to the
Portal of this new Philosophy.)
“Few of us doubt, gentlemen, that human life on this earth
is but a state of probation; which among other things implies,
that here below, we mortals have only to do with things provisional.
Accordingly, I hold that all our so-called wisdom is
likewise but provisional.
“This preamble laid down, I begin.
“It seems to me, in my visions, that there is a certain most
rare order of human souls, which if carefully carried in the body
will almost always and everywhere give Heaven's own Truth,
with some small grains of variance. For peculiarly coming
from God, the sole source of that heavenly truth, and the great
Greenwich hill and tower from which the universal meridians
are far out into infinity reckoned; such souls seem as London
sea-chronometers (Greek, time-namers) which as the London
ship floats past Greenwich down the Thames, are accurately
adjusted by Greenwich time, and if heedfully kept, will still
give that same time, even though carried to the Azores. True,
in nearly all cases of long, remote voyages—to China, say—
chronometers of the best make, and the most carefully treated,
will gradually more or less vary from Greenwich time, without
the possibility of the error being corrected by direct comparison
with their great standard; but skillful and devout observations
of the stars by the sextant will serve materially to lessen such
errors. And besides, there is such a thing as
rating a chronometer;
that is, having ascertained its degree of organic inaccuracy,
however small, then in all subsequent chronometrical
calculations, that ascertained loss or gain can be readily added
or deducted, as the case may be. Then again, on these long
voyages, the chronometer may be corrected by comparing it
with the chronometer of some other ship at sea, more recently
from home.
“Now in an artificial world like ours, the soul of man is further
removed from its God and the Heavenly Truth, than the
chronometer carried to China, is from Greenwich. And, as
that chronometer, if at all accurate, will pronounce it to be
12 o'clock high-noon, when the China local watches say, perhaps,
it is 12 o'clock midnight; so the chronometric soul, if in
this world true to its great Greenwich in the other, will always,
in its so-called intuitions of right and wrong, be contradicting
the mere local standards and watch-maker's brains of this earth.
“Bacon's brains were mere watch-maker's brains; but Christ
was a chronometer; and the most exquisitely adjusted and
exact one, and the least affected by all terrestrial jarrings, of
any that have ever come to us. And the reason why his
teachings seemed folly to the Jews, was because he carried that
Heaven's time in Jerusalem, while the Jews carried Jerusalem
time there. Did he not expressly say—My wisdom (time) is
not of this world? But whatever is really peculiar in the
wisdom of Christ seems precisely the same folly to-day as it
did 1850 years ago. Because, in all that interval his bequeathed
chronometer has still preserved its original Heaven's
time, and the general Jerusalem of this world has likewise
carefully preserved its own.
“But though the chronometer carried from Greenwich to
China, should truly exhibit in China what the time may be at
Greenwich at any moment; yet, though thereby it must
necessarily contradict China time, it does by no means thence
follow, that with respect to China, the China watches are at all
out of the way. Precisely the reverse. For the fact of that
variance is a presumption that, with respect to China, the
Chinese watches must be all right; and consequently as the
China watches are right as to China, so the Greenwich chronometers
must be wrong as to China. Besides, of what use to
the Chinaman would a Greenwich chronometer, keeping Greenwich
time, be? Were he thereby to regulate his daily actions,
he would be guilty of all manner of absurdities:—going to
bed at noon, say, when his neighbors would be sitting down to
dinner. And thus, though the earthly wisdom of man be
heavenly folly to God; so also, conversely, is the heavenly
wisdom of God an earthly folly to man. Literally speaking,
this is so. Nor does the God at the heavenly Greenwich expect
common men to keep Greenwich wisdom in this remote
Chinese world of ours; because such a thing were unprofitable
for them here, and, indeed, a falsification of Himself, inasmuch
as in that case, China time would be identical with Greenwich
time, which would make Greenwich time wrong.
“But why then does God now and then send a heavenly
chronometer (as a meteoric stone) into the world, uselessly as
it would seem, to give the lie to all the world's time-keepers?
Because he is unwilling to leave man without some occasional
testimony to this:—that though man's Chinese notions of
things may answer well enough here, they are by no means
universally applicable, and that the central Greenwich in which
He dwells goes by a somewhat different method from this
world. And yet it follows not from this, that God's truth is
one thing and man's truth another; but—as above hinted,
and as will be further elucidated in subsequent lectures—by
their very contradictions they are made to correspond.
“By inference it follows, also, that he who finding in himself
a chronometrical soul, seeks practically to force that heavenly
time upon the earth; in such an attempt he can never succeed,
with an absolute and essential success. And as for himself, if
he seek to regulate his own daily conduct by it, he will but
array all men's earthly time-keepers against him, and thereby
work himself woe and death. Both these things are plainly
evinced in the character and fate of Christ, and the past and
present condition of the religion he taught. But here one
thing is to be especially observed. Though Christ encountered
woe in both the precept and the practice of his chronometricals,
yet did he remain throughout entirely without folly or sin.
Whereas, almost invariably, with inferior beings, the absolute
effort to live in this world according to the strict letter of the
chronometricals is, somehow, apt to involve those inferior
beings eventually in strange, unique follies and sins, unimagined
before. It is the story of the Ephesian matron, allegorized.
“To any earnest man of insight, a faithful contemplation of
these ideas concerning Chronometricals and Horologicals, will
serve to render provisionally far less dark some few of the
otherwise obscurest things which have hitherto tormented the
honest-thinking men of all ages What man who carries a
heavenly soul in him, has not groaned to perceive, that unless
he committed a sort of suicide as to the practical things of this
world, he never can hope to regulate his earthly conduct by
that same heavenly soul? And yet by an infallible instinct he
knows, that that monitor can not be wrong in itself.
“And where is the earnest and righteous philosopher, gentlemen,
who looking right and left, and up and down, through all
the ages of the world, the present included; where is there such
an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort
of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of,
he is not the Lord of this; for else this world would seem to
give the lie to Him; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the
instinctively known ways of Heaven. But it is not, and can
not be so; nor will he who regards this chronometrical conceit
aright, ever more be conscious of that horrible idea. For he
will then see, or seem to see, that this world's seeming incompatibility
with God, absolutely results from its meridianal correspondence
with him.
“This chronometrical conceit does by no means involve the
justification of all the acts which wicked men may perform. For
in their wickedness downright wicked men sin as much against
their own horologes, as against the heavenly chronometer. That
this is so, their spontaneous liability to remorse does plainly
evince. No, this conceit merely goes to show, that for the mass
of men, the highest abstract heavenly righteousness is not only
impossible, but would be entirely out of place, and positively
wrong in a world like this. To turn the left cheek if the right
be smitten, is chronometrical; hence, no average son of man
ever did such a thing. To give all that thou hast to the poor,
this too is chronometrical; hence no average son of man ever
did such a thing. Nevertheless, if a man gives with a certain
self-considerate generosity to the poor; abstains from doing
downright ill to any man; does his convenient best in a general
way to do good to his whole race; takes watchful loving
care of his wife and children, relatives, and friends; is perfectly
tolerant to all other men's opinions, whatever they may be; is
an honest dealer, an honest citizen, and all that; and more especially
if he believe that there is a God for infidels, as well as
for believers, and acts upon that belief; then, though such a
man falls infinitely short of the chronometrical standard,
though all his actions are entirely horologic;—yet such a man
need never lastingly despond, because he is sometimes guilty of
some minor offense:—hasty words, impulsively returning a
blow, fits of domestic petulance, selfish enjoyment of a glass of
wine while he knows there are those around him who lack a
loaf of bread. I say he need never lastingly despond on account
of his perpetual liability to these things; because
not to
do them, and their like, would be to be an angel, a chronometer;
whereas, he is a man and a horologe.
“Yet does the horologe itself teach, that all liabilities to these
things should be checked as much as possible, though it is certain
they can never be utterly eradicated. They are only to be
checked, then, because, if entirely unrestrained, they would
finally run into utter selfishness and human demonism, which,
as before hinted, are not by any means justified by the horologe.
“In short, this Chronometrical and Horological conceit, in sum,
seems to teach this:—That in things terrestrial (horological) a
man must not be governed by ideas celestial (chronometrical);
that certain minor self-renunciations in this life his own mere
instinct for his own every-day general well-being will teach him
to make, but he must by no means make a complete unconditional
sacrifice of himself in behalf of any other being, or any
cause, or any conceit. (For, does aught else completely and
unconditionally sacrifice itself for him? God's own sun does
not abate one tittle of its heat in July, however you swoon
with that heat in the sun. And if it did abate its heat on your
behalf, then the wheat and the rye would not ripen; and so,
for the incidental benefit of one, a whole population would
suffer.)
“A virtuous expediency, then, seems the highest desirable or
attainable earthly excellence for the mass of men, and is the
only earthly excellence that their Creator intended for them.
When they go to heaven, it will be quite another thing. There,
they can freely turn the left cheek, because there the right
cheek will never be smitten. There they can freely give all to
the poor, for there there will be no poor to give to. A due appreciation
of this matter will do good to man. For, hitherto,
being authoritatively taught by his dogmatical teachers that he
must, while on earth, aim at heaven, and attain it, too, in all
his earthly acts, on pain of eternal wrath; and finding by experience
that this is utterly impossible; in his despair, he is too
apt to run clean away into all manner of moral abandonment,
self-deceit, and hypocrisy (cloaked, however, mostly under an
aspect of the most respectable devotion); or else he openly
runs, like a mad dog, into atheism. Whereas, let men be
taught those Chronometricals and Horologicals, and while still
retaining every common-sense incentive to whatever of virtue
be practicable and desirable, and having these incentives strengthened,
too, by the consciousness of powers to attain their mark;
then there would be an end to that fatal despair of becoming
at all good, which has too often proved the vice-producing result
in many minds of the undiluted chronometrical doctrines
hitherto taught to mankind. But if any man say, that such a
doctrine as this I lay down is false, is impious; I would charitably
refer that man to the history of Christendom for the last
1800 years; and ask him, whether, in spite of all the maxims
of Christ, that history is not just as full of blood, violence,
wrong, and iniquity of every kind, as any previous portion of
the world's story? Therefore, it follows, that so far as practical
results are concerned—regarded in a purely earthly light—the
only great original moral doctrine of Christianity (
i. e. the
chronometrical gratuitous return of good for evil, as distinguished
from the horological forgiveness of injuries taught by
some of the Pagan philosophers), has been found (horologically)
a false one; because after 1800 years' inculcation from tens of
thousands of pulpits, it has proved entirely impracticable.
“I but lay down, then, what the best mortal men do daily
practice; and what all really wicked men are very far removed
from. I present consolation to the earnest man, who,
among all his human frailties, is still agonizingly conscious of
the beauty of chronometrical excellence. I hold up a practicable
virtue to the vicious; and interfere not with the eternal
truth, that, sooner or later, in all cases, downright vice is downright
woe.
“Moreover: if—”
But here the pamphlet was torn, and came to a most untidy
termination.
