THE TOKEN. THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE. BY ORVILLE DEWEY. To the reflecting mind, especially if it is touched with any influences of religious contemplation or poetic sensibility, there is nothing more extraordinary, than to observe with what obtuse, dull, and commonplace impressions most men pass through this wonderful life, which Heaven has ordained for us. Life, which, to such a mind, means everything momentous, mysterious, prophetic, monitory, trying to the reflections, and touching to the heart, to the many is but a round of cares and toils, of familiar pursuits and formal actions. Their fathers have lived; their children will live after them; the way is plain; the boundaries are definite; the business is obvious; and this to them is life. They look upon this world as a vast domicil, or an extensive pleasure ground; the objects are familiar; the implements are worn; the very skies are old; the earth is a pathway for those that come and go, on earthly errands; the world is a working-field, a warehouse, a market-place,—and this is life. But life indeed-the intellectual life, struggling with its earthly load, coming it knows not whence, going it knows not whither, with an eternity unimaginable behind it, with an eternity to be experienced before it, with all its strange and mystic remembrances, now exploring its past years as if they were periods before the flood, and then gathering them within a space as brief and unsubstantial as if they were the dream of a day-with all its dark and its bright visions of mortal fear and hope; life, such a life, is full of mysteries. In the simplest actions, indeed, as well as in the loftiest contemplations, in the most ordinary feelings, as well as in the most abstruse speculations, mysteries meet us everywhere, mingle with all our employments, terminate all our views. The bare act of walking has enough in it to fill us with astonishment. If we were brought into existence in the full maturity of our faculties, if experience had not made us dull, as well as confident, we should feel a strange and thrilling doubt, when we took one step, whether another would follow. We should pause at every step, with awe at the wonders of that familiar action. For who knows anything of the mysterious connexion and process, by which the invisible will governs the visible frame? Who has seen the swift and silent messengers, which the mind sends out to the subject members of the body? Philosophers have reasoned upon this, and have talked of nerves, and have talked of delicate fluids, as transmitting the mandates of the will; but they have known nothing. No eye of man, nor penetrating glance of his understanding, has searched out those hidden channels, those secret agencies of the soul in its mortal tenement. Man indeed can construct machinery, curious, complicated, and delicate, though far less so than that of the human frame, and with the aid of certain other contrivances and powers, he can cause it to be moved; but to cause it to move itself, to impart to it an intelligent power to direct its motions whithersoever it will, this is the mysterious work of God. Nay, the bare connexion of mind with matter, is itself a mystery. The extremes of the creation are here brought together, its most opposite and incongruous elements are blended, not only in perfect harmony, but in the most intimate sympathy. Celestial life and light mingle, nay, and sympathize, with dark, dull, and senseless matter. The boundless thought hath bodily organs. That which in a moment glances through the immeasurable hosts of heaven, hath its abode within the narrow bounds of nerves, and limbs, and senses. The clay beneath our feet is built up into the palace of the soul. The sordid dust we tread upon, forms, in the mystic frame of our humanity, the dwelling-place of highreasoning thoughts, fashions the chambers of imagery, and moulds the heart, that beats with every lofty and generous affection. Yes, the feelings that soar to heaven, the virtue that is to win the heavenly crown, flows in the life-blood, that in itself is as senseless as the soil from which it derives its nourishment. Who shall explain to us this mysterious union-tell us where sensation ends, and thought begins, or where organization passes into life? There have been philosophers who have reasoned about this, materialists and immaterialists; and under their direction, the powers of matter and spirit have been marshalled in the contest, for ascendancy in this human microcosm; but the war has been fruitless; the argument futile; philosophers have settled nothing, proved nothing, for they knew nothing. Turn to what pursuit of science, or point of observation we will, and it is still the same. In every department of thought and study, we sooner or later come to a region, into which our inquiries cannot penetrate. Everywhere our thoughts run out into the vast, the indefinite, the incomprehensible; time stretches to eternity, place to immensity, calculation to 'numbers without number,' being to Infinite Greatness. Every path of our reflections brings us at length to the shrine of the unknown and the unfathomable, where we must sit down, and receive with devout and childlike meekness, if we receive at all, the voice of the oracle within. Even the purest demonstrations in philosophy and the mathematics, often result in mysteries, and paradoxes. Matter that is finite, is infinitely divisible. A drop of water may be balanced against the universe. That, gentle reader, if thou hast ever chanced to hear of it, is the hydrostatic paradox. But there are pneumatic paradoxes too, and metallic wonders, wrought in the dark and silent mine, and geologic marvels, everywhere disclosed in the capacious bosom of the earth, in which flood and fire seem so mysteriously to have struggled together. Nor is there a plant so humble, no hyssop by the wall, nor flower nor weed in the garden, that springeth from the bosom of that earth, but it is an organized and living mystery. The secrets of the abyss are not more inscrutable, than the work that is wrought in its hidden germ. The goings on of the heavens are |