The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844: Volume 23, Number 5Various
History
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844: Volume 23, Number 5
Various
Periodicals
And now there arranged themselves upon this board, in white characters,
problem after problem in Equation; the Rule in which we had been
exercising. I cannot describe the celerity with which these problems were
stated upon the board, and worked out to the intense gratification of my
son and myself; the most difficult and apparently unequal quantities being
with the rapidity of thought interchanged neutralized reduced and
determined, so that what seemed at the outset extremely involved, became
lucid as day, and the unknown quantities made specific to our perfect
satisfaction in an instant of time.
We were delighted with the lesson. I felt the hand of my son gently
pressing mine, as he was accustomed to do when he would evince his
satisfaction at any thing we examined successfully together; and we agreed
with each other to cherish the recollection of these elucidations for
future practice.
Turning again toward the board, we found it entirely freed from any trace
of what had been wrought upon it. And now, in a manner which I have no
possible means of imparting to the Reader, the good and evil of Life
formed the specific and the unknown quantities that were wrought out upon
the board. Problem succeeded problem, formed out of various conditions of
life, with the same rapidity as those in Arabicks had been, and though
vastly more complicated, with the same satisfactory result. Every variety
and combination of circumstances in life seemed exhibited; positive
negative neutral in a moment; until certain trials and occurrences led to
certain virtues, with the same precision as in the preceding series of
demonstrations _x_ had for example been shewn to be equal to 8. Our joy
was beyond expression in words; we embraced each other and I well remember
saying, 'My dear Hal, this is Truth; positive Truth; moral, but as certain
and as irrefragible, as any mathematical Truth is or ever can be shewn to
be.'
We turned again toward the Board, and another course altogether of
demonstrations passed over the surface of it, and was made scrutable to
our perceptions. By one process the illimitable power of GOD was borne in
upon my apprehension with a vividness of conception that I had never felt
before.
By another I well remember Truth and Wisdom were shewn to be one and the
same, and all Truth to proceed from and to be an attribute of GOD. By
another, Infinite Justice, deduced from Infinite Power and Infinite Truth,
was arrived at, as His essential and necessary quality. Again, the
revealed Word of GOD as declared in the Bible was established in my mind
as the irresistible result of another process; and, although several had
intermediately passed over the Board, this was I think the last. The Board
faded, the figure at our side disappeared, we were out of church, and
presently I awoke, and lo! it was a DREAM! But the recollection of that
dream has never faded from my memory, and I trust that the influences of
it may never be lost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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