1879.1 *-'*& [Chase. 



recognizes the value of the sensorium as an instrument of mind, and the 

 reverence with which he regards his experimental religions knowledge, 

 leads him to appreciate, at its fullest worth, experimental secular knowledge. 

 But the worth is spiritual, not material. Beauty and order and law are 

 spiritual attributes. The microcosm of each individual is what his spiritual 

 discernment sees it to be, even as the macrocosm of the universe is what 

 God saw it to be, when "he spake, and it was done; he commanded, 

 and it stood fast," and when he "saw everything that he had made, and 

 behold it was very good." 



The deceptions of sense are proverbial. We learn, by experience, to 

 correct such as are practically harmful, but the correction involves an exer- 

 cise of judgment, an assertion of the controlling authority to which sense 

 always is, as it was intended to be, subservient. If each of our senses 

 may sometimes deceive us we can get no valid authority from any combina- 

 tion or comparison of mere sensorial findings. But if the spiritual inter- 

 pretation of every finding has always a relative truth, a way is opened 

 for supersensual knowledge. The unsoundness of any claim that such in- 

 terpretations are " the evidence of the senses " may be made more glaring, 

 by showing that sense- deception is not exceptional and rare, but normal 

 and universal. 



Take the sense of sight. The most advanced physical science of our 

 day teaches that light and shade, color and visible form, are due solely 

 to wave-motions in the luminiferous aether. These motions are received 

 by an optical instrument, consisting of a combination of lenses and trans- 

 parent media of various refracting powers. Whatever doubts any one may 

 have as to the Contriver of this wonderful instrument, there can be no doubt 

 that it was made with a specific design for a specific end or purpose ; that it 

 was designed to meet certain wants or needs of its possessor, and that its pur- 

 pose is vision. There is little room for doubt that the sethereal vibrations 

 enter the eye, aud-are transmitted to the brain, where Consciousness receives 

 them, not as wave-motions, but as a beautiful and inexplicable panorama 

 of blended ideal harmonies and contrasts. Light as we know it, and light 

 as a material agency, are two entirely distinct realities. The spiritual 

 power of the soul transforms the simple motions into conceptions, supple- 

 menting creative purpose by introducing a new order of things, and show- 

 ing that the highest reality requires, for its continued existence, the con- 

 tinual exercise of intelligence. 



Turn next to hearing. The unanimous verdict of the most competent 

 judges is again in favor of motion, as the physical instrumentality of all 

 the impressions which reach us through this important sense. The waves, 

 however, are now in a much grosser medium, and are received by a much 

 more sluggish apparatus. While the slowest visible light waves vibrate 

 more than three hundred million million times in a second, the swiftest 

 audible sound waves do not vibrate more than seventy-five thousand times 

 in a second. The frequency of vibration is, therefore, more than four 

 thousand million times as great in light as in sound. The atmospheric 



