Before speaking of the special bearing of the Imagination upon the
manifestation of Christ’s Resurrection, let me say a word or two on the
manner in which our human environment appears to have been adapted to
foster the growth of this faculty. You will be better prepared to expect
great things from the Imagination when you reflect on the great things
that have been wrought by God for its development. You say that you do
not understand the statement in the last paragraph of my last letter,
that the Imagination has been made “the medium of conveying the
revelation of the immortality of the soul,” and still less do you
comprehend how this revelation has been going on “from the creation of
the world,” especially since, during a large portion of this time, there
must have been no men to receive any revelation at all.
I said deliberately “from the creation of the world,” and not “from the
creation of mankind,” because inanimate creation itself appears to me to
bear witness to a purpose, from the first, that this visible world
should help its future tenants to imagine things invisible. Consider but
one instance, the immense influence of Night upon the Imagination, and
you will perhaps come to the conclusion that, but for the provision of
darkness (“these orbs of light and shade”), men would never have been
led to a faith in the light of immortality. In the first place by
revealing to us the wonder-striking order of the infinite stars—which,
but for darkness, would have remained for ever a closed book to
men—Night leads us to dream, or to infer, that there may be other pages
still unturned in the book of Nature’s mysteries, and stimulates us,
however far we may progress in thought, still to press on to something
more beyond; and at the same time, throwing a temporary veil over all
the sights of day, it persuades us to trust that on the morrow the veil
will be removed, and that in the meantime all things will continue in
their order.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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