Читать книгу Intelligence in Plants and Animals онлайн

6 страница из 113

Few minds, unswayed by thoughts materialistic, can study the living works of God, whether vegetal or animal, and fail to be convinced that they, as living exponents of Divine conceptions, are as needful in the world of spirit as in the world of matter. While many are disposed to believe that man will share the future life with beast, bird, insect and such like, yet but few, if any, can be found who believe that tree and shrub and flower will be there to continue the life begun on earth and reach out to higher and fuller development. In announcing this belief, the author but expresses a conviction as deep as any that could occupy a human mind. The possession of soul and spirit can be predicated no less of plants than of man and the lower animals. They have all one breath or life and one spirit, and as such are living souls, living, breathing frames or bodies of life. From being living, breathing frames, and endowed with the same life and spirit as man and the lower animals, they have all one destiny, for “all go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” But of the new life which Christ came down to earth to proffer to man that he might inherit the kingdom of God. While to man it was only offered, and had for its purpose the uplifting and improvement of his earth-life by the promise of something higher and better to those who are accounted worthy, yet there can be no doubt that it was equally intended through his uplifting to place all the creatures of the earth over which he was given dominion by God upon a more elevated and nobler plane, so that those which had been profited in the earth-life by his beneficent influence should become partakers with him in the new life, when Christ shall “transfigure the body of our humiliation, that it may become of like form with the body of His glory, by the power of that which enables Him even to subdue all things to Himself.” As all existence is a unit, which the author has taken especial pains through the body of this book to impress upon the minds of his readers, it can hardly be conceived that an all-wise God, who is infinite in love, mercy and justice, would look to the preservation in a future state of but a very small part of the life which He has been instrumental in placing upon this earth. It would be more consistent with His attributes, and with the scheme of development of life upon our planet, whereby life has been progressive, the fittest only being allowed to survive, to have provided in the grand plan of redemption, not merely the salvation of the highest of earth-life, but of all life, the purest and the best, that would represent in the heaven-life, in spiritualized form, the highest living exponents of Divine ideas. No other belief accords so well with the teachings of science and philosophy. In its acceptance, for it makes all life related to the Divine life, can there be any hope of escape from materialism, that curse of the age.